Jericho

Chapters

Chapter 2 — Nemawaschi
Chapter 3 — That Government Boy
Chapter 5 — Dice
Chapter 6 — Justice
Chapter 7 — Bump
Chapter 8 — Dogs
Chapter 9 — Brunch
Chapter 10 — Stories
Chapter 11 — Knights
Chapter 12 — Smile
Chapter 13 — Nuts
Chapter 14 — Mother
Chapter 16 — Orpheus
Chapter 17 — Mud
Chapter 18 — Drown
Chapter 19 — Mirage
Chapter 20 — Foreleg
Chapter 21 — Arm
Chapter 22 — Crystal
Chapter 23 — Ice
Chapter 24 — Canterlot
Chapter 25 — Cherriest
Chapter 26 — Somewhere Far Beyond
Chapter 27 — Courses
Chapter 28 — Gunslinger
Chapter 29 — Black
Chapter 31 — Victory...
Chapter 32 — Oaken
Chapter 33 — Decked
Chapter 34 — Ende
Chapter 35 — Glass
Chapter 36 — Rosenlied
Chapter 37 — Thinking
Chapter 38 — Depths
Chapter 39 — Back in Black
Chapter 40 — Penrose
Chapter 41 — Death of a Teuton
Chapter 42 — Lady
Chapter 43 — Der Leiermann
Chapter 1 — Also Sprach der Engel
Chapter 4 — Cards
Chapter 15 — Murderer
Chapter 30 — Robbery

Chapter 2 — Nemawaschi

Chapter Two: Nemawaschi

“When somepony offers to do you a favor, like making you a beautiful dress, you shouldn’t be overly critical of something generously given to you. In other words, you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so of me just blankly staring down at her hoof, nothing continued to happen. Finally, I managed to squeeze out something: “Pardon me?”

“I said, you seem a bit lonely out here.”

Of all the possible ponies that I run into, why did der Allmächtige have to send one that was highly attractive, a lady... and naked? He’s just trying to test my cool, isn’t He? A dreary spark of recognition bloomed in my head. “Wait. Haven’t I seen you before? Earlier this night, in that inn?”

“Mm-hmm,” she chirped. “And do you know what?”

I didn’t reply, just stared into her eyes.

She frowned for a moment, but lost none of her initiative. “And do you know what?”

After another pause, I slithered my arms through my sleeves, taking them out into the cool but humid Equestrian air. “What?”

“I realized something: I didn’t know you. And, see, Ponyville’s a small town, the kind where everypony knows everypony else, the kind that isn’t exactly known for its tourism business.”

Wait. Pony. Ville. As in, a village of ponies? That’s really this place’s name? Wow. Just... wow, that’s awful. But I think fish is horrible and that rain is wet, so who am I to judge? Maybe it’s actually a very clever name.

The mare went on. “And then I find this very same pony brooding out in the rain, sitting all by himself.” She extended her arm, holding out a hoof towards me.

“Wha’?”

Eloquent as always.

The mare giggled. “Well, it’s a hoof, and I’m offering it to you, and you look so sad on that bench. You do the math.”

“But, Ma’am, I don’t even know your name.”

“Lyra, Lyra Heartstrings,” the mare offered. “And you?”

“Jericho.”

“What a strange name, Jericho. Never heard anything like it.”

“My father named me after some ancient city, I believe,” I said, shrugging. “I can’t help that he was a fair bit eccentric, Miss Heartstrings.”

She rolled her eyes. “Call me Lyra, not ‘Miss Heartstrings’.” Before I could reply, Lyra gave her extended hoof a jostle. “Come on. Don’t just sit there in the rain.”

My eyes shuffled to her hoof, peering at it, as if expecting it to suddenly slug me upside the jaw. Just don’t ogle her naked body. Just don’t ogle her naked body. Pretend she’s wearing something. Anything! I don’t care. Just don’t stare! Then, extending my hoof, I grabbed Lyra’s. Soon I was on my hooves, standing beneath her umbrella.

Lyra flashed me a smile. “You can let go now.”

“Huh?” I mumbled, looking down. “Oh. Oh, oh, oh, right.” Still looking at the ground, I let go of her.

“What are you doing out here, Jericho?” She took a step to the side. “You know, other than just looking lonely?”

“I—”

“Hey, here’s an idea: let’s go for a walk.”

This girl needs to get her head examined.

Mental cogs still slogging through the muck of confusion, I ambled after her, keeping pace and staying under the umbrella. “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I lack a satisfactory answer. But were I to make one up, I would say, ‘sitting’.”

“I could see that,” she chuckled. “But why were you sitting out in the rain?”

“I had nowhere to spend the night. I had wanted to get a rest tonight, to leave tomorrow morning, but there were... complications.”

Lyra flashed me a sideways look as she stepped onto a stone bridge spanning a narrow brook. “What do you mean?”

“No Equestrian money, plenty of money from everywhere else. What was I to do?”

She paused, angling her head up to me. “What does that mean?”

Inclining my head, I replied, “When the total amount of time you’ve spent in Equestria is less than two hours, you don’t find much in the way of Bits.”

Now it was her turn to stare like an idiot. “What?”

“I said—”

“No, no, no. I know what you said. The other thing. What do you mean?”

I let the question hang in the air for a moment. “I’m not exactly from around here.”

Her mouth creaked open. “But, but, but, no way.” She spun around to face me, her umbrella consequently abandoning me.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“There’s no way you’re not from Equestria. You’re even speaking Equestrian!”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I learned how.”

“How?” she demanded.

“Studying hard.”

“But you don’t even have a foreign accent at all!” she countered, shaking her head.

“Neither do you,” I said, my tone flat.

Lyra rubbed the bridge of her noses. “Look, I know ponies from up north with brogues that are almost unintelligible. I mean, you sound like you’re from Equestria. Maybe even somewhere in the South.”

“I had a good teacher.”

She put a hoof to her chin. “Well, well, if you’re not from Equestria, then... then you must know another language, right?”

I nodded, then cleared my throat. “Ich würde dir doch niemals belügen. Ich werde immer ehrlich sein. Ich würde dich doch nie etwas sagen, was nicht der Wahrheit entspricht.” I lifted my hoof and pounded it once over my breast. “Hand aufs Herz. Ich gebe dir mein Ehrenwort.”

The rain applauded me, and a singing cricket shot me a decent review. But even so, the mare before me held her tongue.

“My apologies; should I go?” I asked.

Nothing.

“Miss?”

“Oh, my,” she almost crooned, her eyes sparkling. “I don’t know what you said, but I liked it. A. Lot. There’s just something—” she hesitated “—spooky about it! There’s, like, a certain throaty toughness to it, I think.”

A weight rose from my breast. “All in all, what I said was: I would never lie to you. I will always be honest. I would never tell you something that was not true. Cross my heart. I give you my honor-word.”

She ran a hoof through her pale cyan mane, playing with the hair’s white stripes. “I, I just... wow. I’ve never met somepony from outside Equestria before. I mean, wow!”

“Is it really that big of a deal?”

“Um, yes!” Lyra leaned towards me. “Where ya from?”

“Teutschland,” I offered with some degree of hesitance. “And therefore am I ein Teutscher.”

“Toych-lahnt,” she slowly repeated. “Toych-uh.”

My eyes scanned the shadowy alleyways flanking the street before returning back to Lyra’s face. “Yes, Ma’am.”

A grin broke out across the mare’s face, only for her to swallow it down. Lyra took a deep breath, making of motion with her hoof that seemed almost to mime the action of breathing. “Okay, calm yourself down, girl,” she mumbled.

I allowed myself a hesitant step towards her. “Are you alright, Ma’am?”

Lyra shuffled, sliding up next to me as she put me back under the cover of her umbrella. “Come on, we’re wasting time,” she said, advancing forwards.

For a moment she was in front of me, and I was leering directly at her hinds. I thanked dem Allmächtigenthat Lyra had such a long tail, the closest thing to a nod of decency I’d seen so far. With any luck, having such tails would be the dominant local fashion. Realizing that I was staring, I stumbled forwards, trying to keep pace with her. “Hey, wait up!”

“Sorry,” she giggled, pausing and letting me catch up. As I did so, she resumed walking, mumbling, “Oh, wait till I tell the girls about this one!”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, I, um, nothing.” Lyra chuckled. “So, I guess that means you haven’t heard the crazy news out of Baltimare, right? Been wanting to talk to somepony about that all day.”

Rather than reply, I simply cocked a brow. Is she right in the head?

“Well, you see, some sailor got caught up in a storm, they say, and a large wave was about to sink him. Apparently, he got saved when some titanic monster ate him.” She shook her head and sighed. “It’s sensationalist garbage, I’m sure, but I guess anything passes for news these days.”

I glanced around the empty Ponyville street Lyra was leading me down. “To where do we go?”

“Hmm? Where are we going, you mean? Well, you don’t have anywhere to go tonight, right?”

“Quite.”

“It’s not exactly a warm day, well, night out, either.”

I narrowed an eye. “What’s going on?”

Lyra stepped around a puddle, the umbrella momentarily shifting and rain hitting my hat. I picked up my pace for a moment, trying to keep under her umbrella. Noticing me falling slightly behind again, she paused and waited for me.

“And why are you out strolling around in the rain?” I continued as I got back under the umbrella.

“Can’t a girl walk around on her own?”

“That’s not the point. The point is that it’s rather odd to be wandering around in the rain. The streets are empty. We’re its only denizens.”

“Well, maybe I just like walking in the rain,” Lyra said, flashing me a mischievous smile. Eyes forward, she chuckled. “Or maybe I just accidentally got caught up in it. But, hey, that’s what you get for not paying attention to the forecast, am I right?”

“Oh, that makes sense. But why were you in that tavern, then?”

“Just a quick stop to talk to a friend of mine. Nothing major or time-consuming.”

I nodded. “I see.”

Lyra glanced over her shoulder. “So, tomorrow you’re heading out? You’re not staying... not even for a while?”

“The mere thought of me staying here for any longer than I need to be hasn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind. It’s a quaint town, but I’d probably just cause problems.” I hesitated. “Why do you ask?”

She made a hard turn right.

“Scheiße, stop jumping around,” I mumbled as I turned after her.

As the rain slid off her umbrella, the mare walked up to a house. Stopping at the door, she used her magic to fish around in her little saddlebag.

The raw temptation to observe her work overtook me. Attempting to avoid catching sight of anything too sensitive of hers, I crept sideways. After only a few steps to the side, my heart froze as I caught a glimpse of her haunches, a piece of her mortal soul laying bare for all to gaze upon. It was simple, just a golden lyre resting at a slight angle. Yet it somehow looked as if der Allmächtige Himselfhad put all of His creativity into etching this part of her soul onto her naked body, like a legendary artist making every brushstroke with the greatest of love and the deftest of care. The strings on her lyre, even, looked so realistic and perfect that it felt as though I could just reach out and play the mare herself as an instrument.

“Maschinengeist, give me strength yet,” I muttered, forcing my eyes away from her lyre mark and to the ground. “Es tut mir leid,” I apologized.

“You say something?” she asked.

“No. I mean, yes. I mean—” I stopped and took a breath. “Why are we at a house?”

“You like asking questions, don’t you?”

“A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break,” I replied in a cool tone of voice, recomposing myself.

“Ah, there you are,” she cooed to her bag, levitating out a small key. Humming to herself, Lyra slipped the key into the door, turned it, and I heard the tumblers click. As she put the key back, she twisted the knob and pushed the door open. The mare looked over her shoulder to me. “Coming?”

I just stared at her.

Lyra rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. Don’t just stand there in the rain.” She gestured her head towards the house. “Come on in.”

Setting a hesitant hoof forwards, I eyed her, as if expecting her to bite. Another hoof over the other, and soon I stood in the dark house. The door shut behind me, prompting me to spin around. There, folding the umbrella, was the naked lady, remarkably dry for all things considered.

Catching my look, she chuckled. “What? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“More akin to witnessing a scenario that’s played out far too often in the past,” I muttered, “one that ends with bad things happening to either me or my player character.”

“What was that?”

“Huh? Oh, just muttering my thanks to you for, uh, bothering,” I stammered.

She smiled. “You know, you don’t have to wear a soaking wet outfit indoors, right?”

Staring at her, I took my cap off, then, slowly, worked to remove my duster. As I did so, she flicked on a light and walked into the next room over. Peering down into the darkness of the rest of the house, I could only make out a hallway and maybe a staircase, as well as a doorway leading into some sort of den. To my flank was a doorway leading to the room Lyra was in, the kitchen.

When my gear was off, I looked around for a hat or coat rack, but found nothing of the sort. After folding my duster, I set it onto the floor, then gingerly topped it with my hat. On the wall by where I’d put my duster, I observed, was a black-and-white poster of several instruments, the caption reading, “La Musique est Magique!” which I instantly translated in my head as “Music is Magic!” The poster had a signature on it, but I couldn’t read the cursive script—partly because it was dark, partly because I just couldn’t read cursive. Calligraphy, as far as I was concerned, was a dead art.

I sighed, patting myself down to make sure I was presentable when I remembered what else I was wearing, something which I thought might frighten my hostess. Quickly I removed the dagger and its sheath from my shoulder, sliding it under my folded clothes. As I attempted to remove my sword’s sheath, the girl came out of the kitchen. Our eyes met.

“Hi,” she said, staring at the sheathed weapon in my hooves.

“Fräulein,” I replied, giving her nod.

A pregnant pause.

Her eyes flicked over my body. “Interesting outfit.”

I adjusted up the waistline of my black suit pants. “One always overcompensates for disabilities. I’ve been thinking of having my entire body surgically removed.”

“Wha’?”

“But until the day that happens, I’ll just stick to wearing awesome outfits; they make me feel cool.” As I set the sheath down next to my hat, I turned to her. “Can I ask why you brought me here?”

Lyra licked her lips. “Well, since it’s cold out there, I figured you wouldn’t mind for some tea.” She flicked her gaze to the left. “I felt rather bad for you, just sitting there and looking all sad-like.” Stepping back into the threshold of the kitchen, she said, “If you’d like, the tea’s ready to drink now. I started it before I left, so, I mean, it should be ready. Or burnt.” She put a hoof to her chin. “Can you burn tea?”

For the longest time I just stared at her, and, slowly, she seemed to shrink away from me.

As completely unrealistic as this situation is, we’d best play along. There’s no telling what could offend these ponies. I nodded. “Thank you kindly, Ma’am. I love tea.”

She let out a quiet sigh and put a hoof over her breast. “Great! I was worried there for a second.”

I soon sat at a small table with Lyra sitting across from me. Before me, placed atop a little plate which itself rested upon the wooden table, was a cup filled with a semi-opaque brown liquid. The mare eyed me, as if studying every motion and hunting for weaknesses.

Adjusting the collar of the white shirt beneath my black suit, I looked to the side, to the rest of the room which composed both kitchen and dining room. “Nice place you have here,” I commented, my gaze falling to the teacup’s liquid.

“You know, that’s a strange outfit you’re wearing,” she observed, playing with her mane. “Is it cultural?”

I shrugged.

She shot me a small smile. “You look almost like an undertaker, wearing all of that.”

“So I’m told.”

I took a quick survey of the room, taking in the sights. To the wall on my right was a noir-esque mural of a jazz band playing on a dark stage; a mare who looked almost like Lyra was playing a lyre somewhere in the middle. On the wall behind me and next to a doorway to some other room was a framed painting of a strange green parrot with a yellow neck, red face, and white beak perched upon Lyra’s head; she was smiling and looked to still be just a filly, but it was definitely her. I mistook it at first for a photo, it was painted so lifelike and realistic. But then I saw a signature at the bottom right, “J.J. Audubon.”

“Aren’t you going to take a drink?” Lyra asked, indicating my cup.

I saw a note posted on the room’s icebox. Squinting, I barely was able to make out a few words, namely, “Dear Lyra: How NOT to make tea—”

“Ladies first,” I replied, nodding to her drink.

Lyra rolled her eyes, smiling playfully. She took a sip. “Now it’s your turn.”

Last time a girl offered you a drink, it was poisoned. That was fun, though, trying to solve your own murder. Still surprised we managed to torture the cure out of her so easily—and all we had to do was manually remove her ovaries without the use of anesthetics.

I inclined a brow. “Hmm. Friendly company, warmth, shelter from the rain, and a hot drink too. With all my good fortune, I wouldn’t suppose the tea’s poisoned, is it?”

“Oh, just drink it,” she chuckled, and I eyed her every action. Lyra’s facial muscles contracted in a perfectly natural way, and their timing was just as natural. Her eyes remained on me, save for a quick, bemused roll. Her body language was fluid, not stiff, and her whole form stayed facing me. She didn’t give an out of place shake or nod of her head. Her voice had inflected naturally when she laughed.

Okay, so her body language just then suggested that she’s not lying. However, she didn’t make a direct statement, didn’t tell me that it wasn’t poisoned.

Raising my forehooves in a mock defensive gesture, I said, “Hey, I’ve had far too many experiences with cute girls and poisoned drinks. Do forgive me if I’m a bit paranoid.”

“Sure, sure. That’s not at all silly,” she said with a playful roll of the eyes.

Comparing her current behavior and physical mannerism to how she was earlier, I think I can safely assume she’s not trying to murder me. Accidental food poisoning, on the other hoof…

I took a sip of the liquid. “Mmh.”

Ach lieb’Gott im Himmel, what vile womb spat out this horrid ichor?!

“So?” she asked, leaning forwards. “How is it?”

“To put it as precisely as possible, it tasted like a substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”

“Huh?”

I shook my head. “It’s fine, Miss Lyra.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “I’m glad. I’m usually an awful cook.”

I can tell!

“Well, it’s a hot drink with nice company; my answers have been prayered.” I blinked. “Prayers been answered.”

She giggled.

Setting the drink down, I sighed. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Only if I can ask you one.”

“Deal.” I adjusted my collar. “This is a rather large house for a girl on her own, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, yeah, you caught me.” She held up her forehooves. “I don’t live alone.”

“Boyfriend?”

Lyra laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. I suppose you could call her my, uh, best friend, but she’s out this week for some family thing. She’s supposed to get back sometime soon, but she neglected to tell me when.” She shrugged. “I shouldn’t worry about her.”

I nodded.

“So, it’s my turn,” Lyra said with a smirk. “Without that coat you were wearing, you look almost like the director of a funeral parlor, with that impeccable black suit and white shirt. But you’re clearly no mortician: the suit looks too expensive, the cut too... elegant and fresh.” She leaned forwards. “What’d you do back home?”

“Nemawaschien.”

“Neh-mah-vah-sheen?” The mare tilted her head to the side. “Huh?”

“Nemawaschien. It’s a word that’s hard to translate, especially since it’s a loanword. In its original context, the word was ‘nemawaschi’, which literally meant ‘digging around the roots of a tree, to prepare it for a transplant’. By the time it entered our vocabulary, it came to mean ‘to lay the groundwork’, which is more-or-less what the phrase meant to those we borrowed it from.” I sat back in the chair. “In more precise terms, I laid the groundwork for a safer society. I even had a title, Spezialagent.” Letting out a nostalgic sigh, I shook my head. “It was things like that which probably contributed a great deal to making me the psychological mess I am today.”

Lyra opened her mouth, only to be interrupted by a knocking at the front door. She glanced over her shoulder. “Um, I’ll be right back.”

“Please, take your time,” I replied as she stood up.

As she left the kitchen, I looked down at the table. There was a newspaper, the headline reading: “Monster! Off the Coast of Balitmare!” Pushing my cup to the side, I picked up the paper.

The article’s cover depicted a stallion lying in a hospital bed. His face sported a two-day-old beard, the white of his eyes so bloodshot they looked purple, and bandages covered a good portion of his body. He was holding out his hoof; held within was a black pin depicting some sort of bird of prey.

“Ponies have always been fascinated by tales of monsters, from wereponies to sea serpents, from the kraken to mind flayers. Today we add a new monster to that list of those that fascinate us: the Steel Leviathan.”

Aren’t conjunctive adverbs like “today” usually followed by a comma? I’m not even an Equestrian, and even I know that.

“Last night, during a large storm just off the Equestrian shelf, Baltimare local Sharp Eyes met such a monster. ‘In all my years as a photographer,’ he told reporters, ‘I’ve never really believed in monsters. Now I can’t say that anymore.’ Sharp Eyes went on to say that his career was all about taking beautiful photos of nature at her deadliest, ‘from roosting dragons, to active volcanoes, to the dangers up in the Crystal Empire. I’ve always been the first on the scene, camera in hoof. Last night… [however], I thought I’d try to get perhaps the most dangerous snapshot of all: images of a storm at sea.’ He says that he went out near the Equestrian shelf, where the ocean suddenly deepens by monumental levels, eventually leading into the abyssal plain.”

The article went on to give information on how the Equestrian shelf was long a notable area for monster sightings back during the old days. I put the paper down as a voice from the front door got louder; it wasn’t Lyra’s, but that of another mare.

“No, no, Lyra, I’ve got it covered,” the other voice said. “I’m just glad to be back so soon. So, anything fun happen while I was—” She gasped as she caught sight of me. Her eyes had already gone wide.

There, standing in the doorway between the little foyer and the kitchen, was an earth pony mare with a cream coat. Her arctic blue eyes stared at me as she held a half-closed umbrella to the side. Though not soaked, water still dripped from her fuchsia-highlighted mane of cobalt blue.

Our eyes met, and a heavy, uncomfortable silence overtook the room.

Slowly, as though her neck were made of rusted clockwork, she turned her head to Lyra. The mint-coated mare was standing just slightly behind her friend and trying her best to look completely innocent. “Lyra,” the cream mare said in a calm, almost dangerous voice, “why is there a stallion wearing a suit in our kitchen?”

“Um,” Lyra droned.

“Lyra, what did you do this time?”

“Good evening, Ma’am,” I said before taking a sip of my drink.

She flashed me a glance, then looked back at Lyra, who forced a smile and an awkward chuckle. The mare took a deep breath, then gave me her attention. “Terribly sorry, where are my manners? My name is, uh, Bon Bon. And you are?”

After quaffing the rest of Lyra’s concoction, I flashed Bon Bon a smile. “Name’s Jericho.”

“Yeah,” Lyra said. “I invited him over because he looked lonely and because he’s not from around here.”

Here we go.

The perky girl gave Bon Bon an outline of what she knew about me, not that I paid any attention. Somehow during the span of my aloofness, the mares had sat down at the table. They now both possessed their own steaming cups of Lyra’s unconscionable ichor.

“So you’re really not from around here?” Bon Bon asked, snapping me out of my daze.

I ran a hoof through my hair as I settled back into reality. “Correct, Ma’am.”

“And so what were you planning on doing?”

“Spend my night on a park bench, in the rain. Perhaps there was a better solution, but I was too exhausted to search any further,” I said with a shrug.

“No specie?” she asked.

“No what now?”

“Specie. It means any form of coined money.”

“Oh, I have specie, just none of it Equestrian, as I’ve said.”

“It’s like I said,” Lyra chimed. “He just looked so lonely, and I just felt so bad.”

Bon Bon gave Lyra a look, whispering, “He’s not some stray cat, you know.”

“Well, yeah,” Lyra replied, her voice also quiet.

As they began to talk, I picked up the paper and briefly skimmed through the day’s other major story. Apparently, the Equestrian western frontier was in grave danger from the buffalo. As the settlers expanded their operations further into the frontier, they appeared to have angered Chief Standing Bull and Chief Crazy Horns, two incredibly influential figures to the buffalo. However, Chief Thunderhooves, a known friend to the Equestrians, had strongly urged for both sides to cooperate. There was also mention of how Chief Thunderhooves had been invited to tour Equestria so that he could gain a better understanding of Equestria and her ponies, and that Princess Luna was to personally greet him when he arrived.

“You were planning something, weren’t you?” Bon Bon accused as I put the paper down.

“Why do you say that?” Lyra said innocently.

Bon Bon shot Lyra a blank expression. “You know why.”

“Okay, maybe. But what was I supposed to do? I’d feel bad if I just left him there. I mean, he just seemed so lonely, and it’s probably because he’s so far from home.”

“It was bad enough when you went through that phase where you kept bringing home stray cats. But this? You brought a strange stallion into our home, and who knows what kind of foreign things he’ll do.”

They know I can hear them, right?

“Sie wissen, ich kann Sie hören, ja?” I muttered at them, shaking my head.

“Hmm?” they chimed in unison, looking at me.

“Oh, nothing,” I chirped. “Just remarking on how lovely your house is.”

Lyra glanced at Bon Bon, smirked, then looked at me. “Say, Jericho, you don’t have anywhere to spend the night, right?”

Bon Bon’s eyes flicked to Lyra.

I nodded. “Indeed, Fräulein.”

“Froy-line?” she asked. “You’ve used that before, right?”

“Fräulein is a slightly dated term for ‘Miss’. That’s Miss as in ‘Miss Lyra’, not in the ‘I miss you’ sense. Point being, you are most correct; I have nowhere proper to spend the night.”

“Oh, okay,” Lyra replied. “So, Jericho, since you don’t have anywhere and plan to leave in the morning, don’t suppose you’d like to spend the night here, would you?”

Bon Bon’s eyes nearly burst out of their sockets. When she forced them back into her skull, she glared at Lyra.

“Excusez-moi?” I asked, blinking.

Lyra shrugged. “Well, we’d feel bad if we just left you out there in the rain, riiight, Bon Bon?”

Gritting her teeth, Bon Bon replied, “Of course, Lyra.”

“See,” Lyra went on, “a while ago we tried renovating the basement because of—” she glanced at her friend “—reasons, but all we managed to do was create a guest bedroom and a fully featured bathroom. Other than that, there’s only the laundry room in there. If you wanted to, you could hold up there for the night.”

“But then that would be rude of me,” I replied in a calm voice.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been so kind as to offer me tea and company during a rainstorm. I’d hate to impose any further on you, Ma’am.”

“But then where else would you go? Back to the park?” she asked.

Bon Bon flashed me a look.

I shrugged. “Or maybe the graveyard.”

“But those are, like, haunted,” Lyra replied.

I shook my head. “Graveyards aren’t haunted, hospitals are.”

“What?”

“Well, if you think about it, ponies die in hospitals, but are buried in graveyards. So, logically, they would haunt where they died, the hospitals. A graveyard should probably be one of the safest places to sleep: there are no ghosts; and nopony will bother you, as they think ghosts are there.”

She put a hoof to her chin. “That makes sense. Too much sense.”

“My point being, were I to accept your offer,” I continued, “I would be most mortified about having nothing to repay you with, save for worthless trinkets from across the globe.”

More importantly, I’d be in your debt.And we can’t be having that, now can we?

Turning her icy eyes to Lyra, Bon Bon remained silent.

Flashing Bon Bon an “oh, yeah?” smirk, Lyra said, “I have an idea, then.”

I tilted my head to the side.

“Here’s what we’ll do, a trade. Bartering, if you will. You give me—I mean, us something interesting that you have, it doesn’t really matter what, and we’ll take that as payment, hmm? That way we get something neat to show to our friends, and you get a roof over your head.” She chuckled. “And I don’t feel bad about leaving you out in the rain.”

As I pushed back my chair, I stood up, noticing that Bon Bon was grinding her teeth. “I’ll be right back, Ma’am.”

Sauntering into the hallway, I found a smile on my face as I heard the furious whisperings of the mares. Getting to my bags and rifling through them, I found myself muttering. “Nein… nein… nein… Oder ja? Ja, erledigt!”

Picking up something that I thought would strike Lyra’s fancy, I closed my bags and stood up. I turned around and strolled onto the tiles of the kitchen. The whispering quickly jerked to a stop.

“Ladies,” I greeted, walking up to the table.

Lyra offered me a victorious smile. Bon Bon just sulked in her chair, her shoulders scrunched together and eyes to the wall.

Setting down a tiny coin purse on the table, I yawned. “Here’s a neat little thing for you.”

That I looted from the dead body of a tomb robber whose throat I slashed, I didn’t clarify.

Flipping out my dagger, I positioned it beneath the strings that tied the purse together. With a swift motion of the blade upwards, the string split and the bag’s contents bloomed for them to see. The mares gasped as I slid the knife back in its sheath, which I was now wearing around my waist.

“I-is that real gold?” Lyra asked, jaw open.

I shrugged. “Well, they always told me that ladies liked shiny things. Never really understood why that was.”

Bon Bon reached into her little saddlebag, which was unceremoniously placed by the foot of her chair, and pulled out a tiny coin of her own. Putting it on the table, she compared it to the coinage from my purse. “By Celestia, that’s the real McCoy.”

Looking down at her coin, I noted that it almost looked like gold. In fact, if viewed from a distance, one could easily mistake it for gold; yet her coin, in reality, was not actual gold, but some kind of look-alike metal.

“What’s that coin you’ve got there. Ma’am?” I finally asked.

“Huh?” Bon Bon looked up at me. “Oh. This is an Equestrian Bit, our unit of currency.”

“Why’s it made of false gold?”

“You’ve got a sharp eye,” Lyra said through a forced chuckle. “The prices of gold, stocks and such, are through the roof and getting cozy with Nightm—” She stopped, shaking her head. “Er, sorry, force of habit, using an old phrase that we shouldn’t say anymore.” She swallowed. “See, it’s kinda hard to use actual gold for currency when its price is so high. But this? This is, like, wow.”

I was about to mention how the money from my homeland is usually printed on slips of special blend of wool and linen that most ponies mistakenly think is paper, but I didn’t. Instead, I asked a question: “So, if I gave these to you, would that cover any cost?”

Bon Bon snapped her attention to me. “With this? Heh. This is enough to cover any possible costs from that, and probably a few months of the mortgage too.” She flicked her gaze to meet Lyra’s, then cocked a brow. “Plus a few other things.”

Lyra giggled, rolling her eyes.

“So, you’ll accept it, then?” I asked.

“Of course!” they both replied in unison, and laughed.

I’m glad I’ve got tons of inconsequential gold just sitting around in my pack. It can’t be healthy, hoarding all those tons of it. But, hey, now I know that Equestrians will accept my random coinage.

I nodded. “Most agreeable. I don’t feel bad about accepting such a generous offer, I get a room for a night, and you gals get to do whatever with that gold stuff.”

Lyra stood up. “Hey, so, want me to show you where that spare room is, hmm? It’s a little bare, but functional.”

“I’d be delighted to, Fräulein.”

She giggled. “That's such an odd word. Whenever you say it, it sounds like you’re purring.”

I was about to say something in response, but I struck the thought from my head when it dawned on me that my words might be interpreted as flirtation. So I just nodded at her and smiled. I glanced to the side, momentarily peering out of the kitchen window. There, resting so peacefully on the outside sill of the window, was a paper crane.

Chapter 3 — That Government Boy

Chapter Three: That Government Boy

“Prejudice just sounds better with a Southern accent.”

Fog.

It choked the air in a thick, soupy blanket. The rain had cleared up, though, so there was some good news. My watch (recently set to local time) told me the time was about five in the morning, and it showed. Even as I stepped onto the Ponyville train station, my ticket stolen from the sleeping attendant mare at the front counter, the morning darkness plus the fog made visibility next to nothing.

Still, I was finally on my way out of town. And by some divine coincidence, the train pulling up in a few minutes was going to Sleepy Oaks next. All I had to do was get on the platform, wait by my lonesome, board the train, and leave when the engine eventually pulled into the next station.

The station itself was thoroughly unremarkable, just a raised wooden platform with a shoddy wooden roof barely clinging to life above it. I judged (guessed) there was room for maybe twenty ponies, if they packed together tightly and didn’t make eye contact. And to my annoyance, there were no benches to rest on. At least the wood didn’t creak when I walked across it.

Then my eyes fell upon the shadowy figure standing near the edge of the platform. From what I could tell, the robed figure—barely more than a black silhouette against the low-hanging moon—was a mare.

Adjusting the collar of my duster, I ambled towards her. As I got close, I could hear the mare humming under her breath. She didn’t notice as I took up a position next to her, careful to maintain a fair deal of personal space between us. I had no exact idea of how close or far apart the Equestrian idea of personal space was, so it was better to err on the side of caution. So I just stood there and idled, enjoying the tune she was humming. In my opinion, she was quite good at it, and it helped the time go by faster.

Eventually I turned to her. “Quite a catchy tune, Ma’am.”

Before I had even finished the sentence, the mare let out a large gasp and spun to face me. Her cyan eyes found themselves staring at me, the hood of her robes bouncing as she moved. I looked back, quickly forming the opinion that she was one of the nicer things about belonging to a race with two sexes.

I held out a hoof. “I’m sorry, Miss. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

A hoof of her own over her breast, the tall mare took a deep breath. “No, no, it’s okay; I just wasn’t expecting a strange stallion to come waltzing out of the fog, especially not at this hour.” Her eyes scanned over the platform. “How long have you, uh, been there?”

“Long enough.”

Composing herself, she nodded. “So you heard that little song, then?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” she slowly repeated, inclining her head.

“Something wrong with that word, Miss?”

The mare shook her head. “No, no, just that I haven’t been called that in quite some time. Nor ‘Miss’, for that matter.”

I gestured to her ringless horn, shrugging. “Aren’t they the appropriate forms of address for a young, usually unmarried mare?”

A ghost of a smile darted across her face. “Yes, I do think they are.” A quick, awkward pause followed, only to be axed when the mare said, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.”

Without thinking, I replied, “Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait.”

Her eyes twinkled at that. “Wait, you’re familiar with that absolutely ancient song?” When I didn’t immediately reply, she took a step towards me. “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien—the song I was humming. You are familiar with it?”

My mind conjured up memories from years ago, from the S.E.S. Roger Jeune. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, despite being dreadfully ancient, was a favorite tune of the Marines aboard the ship, and they’d made sure I both memorized it and could sing it without a Teutsche accent. I simply replied to the mare, “Non, rien de rien.”

She suppressed a laugh. “That’s really, uh, cool. You’ve got to be one of the only ponies I’ve met who knows the song.” The mare let out a quiet gasp. “Oh my stars, I’m so sorry. My name’s Selena. Yours?”

“Jericho,” I replied, holding out a hoof, which she gingerly accepted. The strength of the shake did not impress me.

Selena cocked a brow. “Jericho. That’s a strange name.”

“And you’re named after an ancient lunar goddess; it has the same meaning as the name Luna, no?”

She tensed up at the mention of the Princess. “Yes, it does. Same meaning.”

I tightened my hat. “Clearly both our parents thought we should have unusually unorthodox names, then, hmm?”

Selena’s muscles loosened back up. “Yeah, I guess they did.” As she looked into my face, a lone brow shot straight up. Her eyes repeatedly scanned over every corner of my countenance, as if trying to memorize each facet.

“Something on my face?” I asked in a casual tone.

“I—” She shook her head. “No, just a, a thing. Um, that is, you bear resemblance to somepony I once knew.” Selena shrugged. “My mind wanders sometimes.”

A moment of silence filled the cool air.

Her eyes darted side-to-side. “Soooo.”

“So,” I replied, tightening my collar. For a moment I thought I saw a figure out in the fog, but a quick glance revealed no such pony. I looked up at the moon. “It appears your namesake is still doing her rounds tonight, looking as lovely as ever.”

She shot me smirk from the corner of her mouth. “Yeah, that she is. She always looks so nice, don’t you think?”

I nodded.

Selena took a half-step towards me as she turned her body to face the railroad again. She let out a long sigh. “Most ponies don’t seem to notice the moon, though, I think. Well, they notice it, but they don’t ever seem to really give it a second thought, as though it were just part of the background.”

I shrugged. “Yet another reason I’m glad not to be most ponies.”

She cast me a curious look from the corners of her eyes. To me, it seemed almost like the kind of look a girl gives a guy when she’s trying to figure out if what he’s saying was either genuine or him just trying to get into her pants—not that Equestrians actually wore pants, that is. Selena lazily pawed at the ground. “So... what’s such a clearly clever colt like yourself doing here this morning?”

A hiss of air distracted me from replying. Down the track and only barely visible was a train, creeping along the railroad. It was hardly visible through the fog, but it could be seen thanks to the train’s lantern. I heard Selena let out a quiet groan. Looking to her, I saw the small frown on her lips and the droop of an ear beneath her hood. When she saw me looking, however, she wiped the frown away and perked her ear back up.

“Well, it appears my ride’s almost here,” I said. “Are you going somewhere? Waiting?”

“Hmm? I?” She shook her head. “Waiting. Where are you going?”

“Oh, a bit to the north. Certainly nothing to do with anything boring. I’ve got heroic feats to perform.”

“Heroic feats?” she mumbled.

“Yeah, you can probably figure out what boring things that entails,” I chuckled with a dismissive wave of the hoof.

Her eyes darted up into one corner as she put a hoof to her chin. I guestimated I’d been standing around for nearly ten seconds, watching Selena frolic about her own little world, before she snapped back into reality. “Hey, what’s your sign?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Yes, in case of dwarf hamsters,” she said with utter seriousness. “What’s your sign?”

“Yes,” I hesitantly offered.

“Huh? I, I don’t think that ‘yes’ is a—” Selena slapped her forehead. “Ah! I’m sorry; I haven’t slept well in a day or so. I sort of just... phased out there and stopped thinking, didn’t I?”

I flashed her a smile. “Nah, it’s fine. Kind of endearing, really.” Endearing? I don’t think that was the word you wanted to use at all.

“Wait, what? Endearing? Me?” She set out a bubbly giggle. “You think I’m endearing?”

Rubbing the back of my neck, I replied, “Unless the word suddenly became an insult since last I checked a dictionary, yes.” Note to self: check the dictionary.

The quiet but distinct clack of the train’s wheels on the railroad squeaked as the conductor put on the breaks. Slowly the black steel engine rolled into the station, the four cars behind it following suit.

I let slip a nervous chuckle. “Well, I suppose this is where we say our goodbyes, then. It was fun talking to you, Miss.”

“Likewise,” she chirped, smiling warmly at me.

“If fate permits, maybe we’ll see each other again sometimes soon, yeah?”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t that be just the treat?”

The engine stopped, the gears hissing out air and steam into the cool night, dispersing some of the heavy fog. In the dim light of the cars, and through their curtains, all of which were shut, I saw shapes moving. A car’s door opened up and a lanky green stallion wearing a pants-less suit stepped out. He nodded to Selena, but cocked a brow when he looked at me.

“Howdy,” I offered.

He glanced to the red caboose. “Sir, due to certain circumstances, would you step onto the train now?”

“Excuse me?”

He rose a hoof to me. “It’s a long story, but we need all outgoing passengers to board. Now. Would you kindly show me your ticket and head on in?”

Confused but compliant, I offered him the ticket. So, what, is the Equestrian railroad operated like a police state? Or maybe this isn’t so odd in Equestria? Further investigation needed.

He glanced at my ticket, then took a step to the side. “Everything checks out. Have a good trip, sir.”

“Thanks, mate,” I returned. Walking to the train, a thought crossed my mind. Wait. Why isn’t he asking Selena for a ticket? I mean, yeah, she’s not going anywhere, but he can’t have known that.

As I boarded the train, I glanced back to see Selena shooting me a curt wave. I replied in kind before entering the car proper. “Huh,” I muttered as I realized the entire car was empty. I didn’t waste any time putting my gear into the overhead compartment above the cozy spot I’d chosen to sit.

Though muffled, I could make out voices—Selena and that other stallion—discussing something. I wasn’t able to make out anything specific, just that they were speaking. A large door from the back of the train opened and closed, the motion jostling the whole train. Soon a third, rather deep and throaty voice joined the discussion.

Relaxing, I folded my arms and closed my eyes. I leaned back and let myself get an extra hour or so of sleep.

|— ☩ —|

I let out a satisfied groan as I stepped onto the station platform. Except for actually having a few benches, this station was as unremarkable in design as Ponyville’s. Clearly, the Equestrian railroad companies had spared no expense in trying to make it look like they spared every possible expense. With a cocked brow, I noticed somepony had painted “Go home!” over the door leading to the station’s inner office. The painter had clearly been in a rush; the words were unevenly spaced, had leaked black paint down the door, and there were spots where it had simply splattered. A piece of paper had been nailed to the wall next to the door. “Celestia help us and damn the government!”

What’s going on here? Isn’t the Princess also the government? The sound of company coming up one of the wooden stairways caught my attention. A little blue colt trotted around the corner, only to freeze as he saw me, his eyes going wide.

“Howdy there, kid,” I greeted as warmly as I could. Before I could ask him any questions, he let out a shrill shriek and darted away. He was out of sight in less than a second. “Well, that happened,” I muttered, toying with my hat’s visor. Trying to act as casual as possible, I made my way around the station and into town.

Aesthetically, Sleepy Oaks had a similar look to Ponyville and, I thought, probably the rest of Equestria. Thatched roofs, housing varying in stories but none more than two, unpaved roads, and so forth. The main difference, aside from the odd looks I was getting from the few ponies I saw, was the smell. The air tasted faintly of sweat and hard labor, and as the big “WANTED: MINE WORKERS” sign on the town’s public billboard suggested, that was for a reason.

“Are you strong? Tenacious? Good with levitation?” the poster asked. “A natural leader? Or just looking for a good, solid income in these hard economic times? Then you’re in luck!” The rest was obscured by rather vulgar graffiti suggesting an act that involved the extremely creative use of a rabbit.

The board was located somewhere in what I guessed was the middle of town, against the wall of a building loafing around a large plaza of sorts. Around the plaza, I noted, were a number of shops, including one which boasted “the best malts & smoothies in the South!” That last one stuck out only because the shop had an outdoor section, tables with umbrellas in an area fenced off from the rest of the street, where an opal-coated pegasus mare was. She was slumped forwards, her disheveled mane of light and dark amber having partially fallen over her face. The mare was staring blankly ahead like a rabbit trying to get run over by a carriage, a straw in her mouth as she lazily sucked down what I thought was a smoothie.

Hey, look—someone not giving you a weird look.

I glanced back at the board. Other bits of the board were public notices, various advertisements, unused space, or graffiti. “Count how much the Baron is a See You Next Tuesday!” declared proudly one piece of colorful graffiti. Something about its phrasing rubbed me the wrong way, and whatever a “See You Next Tuesday” was eluded me. So I just stood there, reading the graffiti aloud to myself, hoping a spark of understanding would hit me. See You Next Tuesday was key here, I was positive. Some sort of code?

“Hey!” a lean red stallion called out. I turned to face him just as he went, “You that government boy?”

“‘That government boy’?” I repeated, furrowing my brow.

He spat on the ground. “By Celestia, you are him, ain’t ya?”

“Now, just hold on a second, mate,” I said, holding up a hoof. “Your accent’s a bit hard to understand; I need a moment to process it.”

The stallion lurched towards me. “First ya come to take my home from me, then tried to take my livelihood and family from me, and now you’re sayin’ my accent’s stupid, that it?!”

“Excuse me?” I asked. “I never said that at all.”

He rose a hoof to me, his intent clear in his eyes. “Come here, you little pencil di—”

I gave the guy a side-neck chop as I pivoted and let him fall past me. The mare at the malt shop jerked to attention, staring at me, as were the other ponies I could see through the various store windows. All I offered the mare was a slight tip of the hat before turning my attention to the others. “Don’t worry, everypony!” I called out. “It’s all part of the show, folks. Nothing to see here.”

My attention wandered to the stallion. It took some physical prodding before he was capable, and willing, to speak to me. I started the dialog off myself. “Sorry for that, mate. I didn’t really mean to hurt you. Sometimes good things happen unintentionally, you know? Anyways, here’s my question: why’d you attack me?”

His response was to suggest a rather depraved series of sexual acts involving my mother, something called a “half-bred freak”, grave robbery, and probably broke numerous international laws, I’m sure. For his kind words, I helped him up to his hooves, only to pin him against the wall.

“Okay, you’re clearly about as sharp as a burlap sack full of wet kittens. So let’s start over,” I said with a winning smile. “My name’s Jericho, and I’m from out of town. What’s your name, sir?”

“I’m the Countess of Baltimare,” he spat.

“Oh, my apologies. What’s your name, Ma’am?”

“You ain’t tellin’ them that sent ya.”

“‘Them that sent me’?” I asked, and he simply spat on the ground. “Why don’t you tell me who you think ‘them that sent me’ are so I can tell you that they didn’t send me.”

“That’s just what one’a them’d say,” he growled.

I grabbed him by the chin. “Everypony is entitled to be stupid, but you’re starting to abuse that right, mate.”

He grunted. “And your insults are about as artistic as a group of colorblind hedgehogs in a bag.”

“Look,” I sighed, “I’m a very reasonable stallion, but you’re not helping me, Ma’am. Why not be a dear and simply tell me what I want to know, then I’ll be on my way, and nopony need be inconvenienced any further.” I noticed the wedding ring around his horn. “I’m sure your wife would like you to return as well.”

His eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. “You leave her out of this.”

I smiled. “Of course, Ma’am. I too want that. I mean, what kind of a monster kills a loving husband for no reason? But give me something to work with here, please. Do you know where the, uh, local sheriff is, perchance?”

He shoved his face into mine, growling, “We ain’t got anythin’ for the likes’a you. Go home an’ tell your half-breed concubine to screw ya—‘cause if ya don’t, we’ll do it for ya.”

“I don’t really know what that means, but I imagine I should be offended, right?”

A grunt was all he gave me.

“Very well,” I sighed—

“Daddy! No!” a little filly cried out.

“Blossom, no!” both he and some distant mare cried out.

A little yellow filly burst out of nowhere and threw herself between the stallion and me. “Leave him alone, you big bully!” she snarled at me.

I took a healthy step back. “Excuse me?”

“Blossom, get outta here!” the stallion begged.

“No, I won’t let him hurt you!”

“Get away from him!” a peach-coated mare shrieked, grabbing up the filly. She was also wearing a wedding band. Her eyes locked onto me. “You should be ashamed of yourself, beating up on good ponies like us!”

“Don’t antagonize that government boy,” the stallion pleaded.

I saw the mare had a bruised eye. “Ma’am, what’s with the black eye?” My glance fell back to the stallion. If he had something to do with that...

She glared at me. “You know darn well where I got it, gov’ment boy.”

“Yeah!” the filly yelled. “When Pwincess Celestia finds out what you been doin’, there’s gonna be a world of hurt for you!” She squirmed in her mother’s arm, her little teeth bared at me. “You’ll never hurt my mommy or daddy again!”

I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Look, would you crazy ponies just calm down so we can talk this over and show you that I’m not whoever you seem to think I am?”

“Liar!” she called out. “Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar! Only a gov’ment boy could do that to my daddy!”

“Do what now?” I asked. “Oh, you mean the side-neck chop? That’s just a martial arts move. I mean, yeah, if I’d done it wrong, it would have killed him via cardiac arrest, and so, in hindsight, that was highly irresponsible of me to do but... I’m not helping my case any, am I?”

“Get outta here,” the mare growled, “you dirty punk. And tell them that sent ya that we’ve had it with your kind.”

“Please, don’t antagonize him,” he begged. “You know what he’ll do!”

I facehoofed. “Okay, you’re all clearly too worked up to care for any civilities. So tell you what, you tell me where I can find the local baron, and I’ll be on my merry way, ’kay?”

“We’ll never tell you!” the filly blurted out.

“No, Blossom, please,” the stallion said. Then he looked directly at me. “Up the road. The fancy mansion with the stone walls. Can’t miss it. Please, just don’t hurt my family.”

“Which road?” I asked. “There are several.”

“North.”

I bowed my head to him. “Thank you very much, Ma’am, other Ma’am, and little Miss.” As I turned to go, I gave the stallion one last glance. “Oh, and remember to tip your waiter—or I’ll cut your balls off.”

That was a stupid thing to say and it won’t help you win over their hearts and minds.

When nopony replied to my comment save the voice, I turned northwards. That one pegasus mare had been watching me the whole while, her eyes glittering with intrigue. The other stares, the ones from the windows, however, were all glistening with what looked like hatred.

So, a baron, eh? Ten Equestrian Bits says that he’s evil—all barons are. It’s the rule.

The walk north didn’t take long, and soon I reached the edge of town. On a nearby hill overlooking the town was a respectable plantation house, but its size certainly didn’t lend itself to being a mansion. The plantation’s design reminded me of back home, though, back to the city of Neuorléans. I continued up the road, noting that the area around the town was characterized by patches of trees, a dreary creek snaking between the trees, overgrown grass and weeds everywhere but the road, and one large boulder marking the official end of town (a posted sign told me so). It all made the town seem barely settled, all alone here at the edge of civilization.

Passing across the little wooden bridge over the creek, I spied distant movement up ahead. As I neared the plantation, I could see the movement had come from the lone stallion standing guard by the plantation’s front gate. His armor was made of iron, failed to cover his neck, face, arms, or anything below the chest, really, and looked like it’d just hastily been put on in the last minute or so.

The insignia on the wrought iron gate behind him was that of a large eye, where the words “Vous Vois” had been inscribed. That means “I see you” in Französisch, a friendly voice in my head offered.

“You’re that government boy, right?” said the guard unicorn, his voice shaky.

“Nope,” I chirped, affecting my friendliest tone. “I’m here to fix the plumbing.”

He blinked. “Wh-what? Really?”

“Dude, yeah.”

“So you ain’t the guy that done beat up the local doctor this mornin’?”

Doctor? Zum Teufel is he talking about? Does he mean that crazy father from before? I asked him, “Somepony actually did that?”

The guard took a long, deep breath, relaxing his stance. “Yeah, pony. It was that government boy, the one they said rolled up on into town by train this mornin’.”

How did he find that out? I made a beeline here, and I only just arrived. A pegasus messenger, perhaps? “No kidding?”

“Yeah, it’s crazy, right?” He shook his head. “This whole nation’s going to, uh, merde, if you’ll pardon my you-know-what.”

Your pronunciation of Französich sucks. “Yeah. Hey, listen, can you open the gate for me? The Baron won’t be too happy if he can’t use his fancy flush toilet, you know?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. I heard that.” With a push of his leg, the gate swung open. “Go on in; there’s no real lock on the gate, so, uh, yeah.”

You are a very trusting stallion and should be fired from your job. You didn’t even check to see if I had any identification... if Equestria even uses identification like that. Huh. I should look into that. “Thanks, mate,” I said, walking past him.

“You have a nice day now, ya hear?”

A burst of movement erupted to my right. I jerked my head in its direction, only to be bashed upside the head with a baton and knocked off balance. “That’s for my sister’s black eye, you bastard!” The weapon, floating in an aura of magic, came at me again. With a jerk of the arm, I deflected the blow off and rammed my shoulder into the stallion’s collarbone.

The shock of my blow allowed me to grab the nightstick and with it jab him in the solar plexus. He managed to let out a choke as I swept a leg around, kicked out his arms, and threw him to the ground. Just as quickly as it had began, it was over, him on the ground, and me pressing a hindhoof onto a very precious part of the male anatomy.

I spat out blood mixed with saliva as I rubbed my aching shoulder. A word to the wise: don’t ram your shoulder into iron armor. It never ends well. “Well, that was most uncalled for, friend.”

“Celestia damn you to the moon!” he hissed at me.

With a smile, I tossed his baton off to the side. It landed in some bushes, scaring a rabbit that had apparently been hiding there. “See? I’m unarmed, you’re unarmed, so let’s just take a deep breath and calm down.”

He tried to spit on me, but the spit didn’t go far enough and just landed on his cheek. “Government boy!”

“Listen, buddy, I might be a government boy, but I most certainly am not from this government.”

“No shit, Sherclops.” He licked his lips. “And when Celestia gets whiff of whatcha boys are doin’ down here, y’all goin’ straight into the sun!”

“So, you hate the government, but not Celestia?” I asked. “What’s going on here?”

“Enough, you savage brutes!” a voice ordered from the plantation. I turned my head to see a mule standing in the opened doorway, wearing a posh monacle over a milky white eye. “Get off him now, government boy!”

I did as asked, allowing the guard to jump to his hooves. With a smile I asked, “Are you a reasonable person who’s willing to talk and not assault me without provocative, uh, providence—no! Without provocation.”

He pointed to the guard. “Stand down and get back to the gate.”

“But,” the guard protested, only to shut up as he caught the mule’s glare. He nodded, silently going to his position.

“As for you, government boy,” the mule told me, “come with.” He gestured his head into the house, and I obliged.

I silently followed him inside and let him lead through the lavishly decorated house to a third-story office. He gestured to the desk as he took a seat at it, and I took my spot facing him. Of course, my attempts to suavely sit down resulted in me bashing my funny bone on the armrest. I tried to hold back a yelp, poorly, and resisted the urge to rub my now-burning arm. But ignoring the pain and the tear wanting to well up in my eye, I kept a straight façade. Or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

“Would you like a drink? A glass of chardonnay, perhaps?” he started off. The light from the large window behind him made him look like a silhouette, and I could see dust particles flying around in the sunbeams.

“No, thanks,” I said, shaking my head. The pain in my arm had died down to tolerable levels.

“Hmm...”

I glanced around the room, asking, “Tell me, sir—”

“Sir?” he scoffed. “Do I look like a bloody knight to you? Call me ‘Baron’, it’s what I am. I’ve at least earned that much, haven’t I?”

That got my attention. “You’re the Baron, then?”

He grunted in acknowledgement. “Yes, my title. Pretty much my only thing left in my pitiful life.”

Oh, great. He wants a pity party. “So, what’s going on here?”

“What do you mean, government boy?”

I sighed. “I have a name, you know, Baron.”

“And I’d rather not know it,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

You have no social skills, jerk. “Look, I don’t know what your deal is with me. I’m not here to cause trouble; your people attacked me and I defended myself.”

He adjusted his monocle. “I’m well aware, but can you blame them?”

“Yes, yes I can.” I folded my arms. “I don’t even know what’s going on here. All I can figure is there’s something wrong with the local government, and you are the local government, but they seem to love their eternal monarch.”

A pause.

“Is this some trick?” he asked.

“Oh, of course. I’m an expert at trickery in much the same way bricks aren’t.”

His brows furrowed. “What do bricks have to...”

“You’re the local government, so you must know what’s going on here.” I shrugged. “Ergo, I came here.”

He inclined his head. “You’re... you’re not with them?”

“The so-called ‘them that sent me’?” I chuckled. He seems spooked by whoever they are. Perhaps we could play against that? “You might think very well think so; I couldn’t possibly comment. Lying is a very bad habit to have, Baron.”

A burst of comprehension flared in his good eye. His face went red as he stood up, knocking his chair over. “Listen here, government boy!” he barked, pointing a hoof in my face. “I don’t know what kind of sick game them that sent you are pulling here, and, frankly, I don’t give a damn! I’ve had enough with you bullying my town! This. Ends. Here. Got it? Here!”

Well, that failed. Spectacularly. And you’re an idiot for thinking it could ever do anything but. I groaned. “Seriously? And I was finally starting to have a conversation with someone who wasn’t insane.”

He slammed his hoof down on the desk. “Just because my mother was some donkey whore and thus I am some half-bred freak does not mean you can just waltz all over and control me! I don’t care what you do to me, but I’m standing up for the good peasants of Sleepy Oaks!”

My mind was suddenly filled with the inexplicable but terribly attractive vision of the Baron being mauled by a pack of feral dogs—their leader being the three-headed one with all the medals pinned to its chest—which the baron tried to flee from, only to gallop straight into a crowd of rowdy stallions who proceeded to beat him to death with rubber chickens. All that clucking…

Facehoofing, I sighed. “Calm yourself down.”

“You’ve got till sundown to flee town and never come back, or I will call on all my vassals to take up arms against you, march to Canterlot, and personally tell the Princesses of your evil!”

“Wait. If you could have done that the whole while, why didn’t you do that from the start? And now that I think about it, how come Celestia doesn’t already know?”

“Out!” he barked, grabbing a dagger from a desk drawer. “Or so help me, in the name of Princess Celestia, la Maîtresse du Soleil, I will kill you myself!”

A bluff if ever I saw, but best not call it. I doubt this guy could so much as smack a fly, let alone murder a pony. Still, I’d rather not push him into actually having to do anything. I stood up. “There’s no need to be violent—I’ll leave, I’ll leave. But I seriously have no idea what’s going on.” In no time at all, I showed myself out. The guard glared at me as I walked by. I shrugged a “what?” at him, and he only sneered.

As I left the gated compound, I looked out over the trees and at the town. It wasn’t a particularly big town by any stretch of the imagination, I observed. The only interesting thing about the skyline were the two or three little factories spread about the town; at the far western end, the town ended in a small number of docks on the lake’s edge, a lake which quickly turned into a dense swamp the further west it went.

Reaching the small bridge again, I paused and rubbed my shoulder. The hypochondriac in me worried that I’d managed to give myself a hairline fracture during the fight, not something I could really afford to have when the local doctor apparently hated me. Not to mention the wound my pride had taken when I bashed my funny bone. That entire arm was just having a bad day, really. And I was probably going to get a nasty bruise where the nightstick had hit me, if I didn’t have a huge one already. With a sigh I leaned my side against the bridge railing, looking down at the anemic excuse for a creek below.

I didn’t get it. Why had Ponyville, save for that bartender, been so warm and inviting, yet the ponies in this town so tired and angry? The towns were literally a single train stop apart from one another, so what was with the radically different dynamic? And for that matter, who zum Teufel was Selena? The more I thought about her, the less everything made sense. Like that stallion in the suit and the entirely preposterous idea of how he rushed me into the train. That couldn’t have been how trains normally worked, and he most certainly never got back onto the train, because I most certainly didn’t see him when the train arrived in Sleepy Oaks.

“What the hell is going on with this country?” I sighed, shaking my head. “It all looked so sugary and nice up until an hour or so ago.” A large fish surrounded by a school of smaller ones swam through the creek, going in the direction of the swamp, and an idea slowly crawled into my head. With a hoof I performed das Kreuzzeichen. “Himmlischer Vater, time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer,” I said in a deep voice, kneeling down. “Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer. Death is speechless, so hear my speech, himmlischer Vater.” I stood back up.

What was that?

Trudging towards the town, I replied, “When an angel is giving you directions, it helps to be in the good graces of his boss.”

|— ☩ —|

“Enough is enough!” the newly nailed-in paper on the public billboard read. “First our land, then our livelihoods, and now they come again to take our FREEDOM?!?! This calls for an emergency meeting in town hall—stat!” It gave a time of when it’d be, which, I noticed from my watch, was ten minutes ago. Perfect.

Looking around the board, I saw what I was searching for. It was an advertisement, complete with a drawing of a stethoscope. “Doc Dome’s Clinic: located on the south side of town, in the old colonial-style house on the hill. Open all hours and days!” Hastily scrawled across the bottom in pen was, “Temporarily moved to 316 Walnut Street.”

The streets around the central plaza were arranged in a sort of heptagonal shape, which quickly branched out a little ways down the streets. Accordingly, if the address to the road nearest my right began with a seven and the street to my left was a one, that presumably meant that 316 Walnut Street was the third street going in a counterclockwise direction from me. And there it was, a sign proudly declaring it as “Walnut Street”.

You realize that you just really overcomplicated that, right?

“Shut up,” I said. In small communities, like those of Sleepy Oaks, the community tended to rally around a certain few figures, such as the sheriff, any democratically elected mayor, the local pastor, and even the doctor—all members who also had a stake in the community, too. And so I set my plan into motion. Admittedly, plans usually had more going for them besides “breaking and entering” and “hope for the best”. Plans tended to have plan stuff.

316 Walnut Street was located in a two-story house on the right side of the street. The house had a covered wooden porch whose stairs squealed in protest when I walked up them. Next the door was a sign reading “Doc Dome’s Clinic!”, decorated with that same stethoscope logo. I opened the screen door and knocked on the real door behind it. No response, formal or otherwise, not even the sound of ponies moving around inside. A few moments later and I knocked again, getting the same response.

The street was empty, so I concluded that the household was probably all at the town hall. Satisfied, I took out a dagger and lockpick. I slid the latter into the lock and used the blade to apply torque to the lock’s plug in order to hold any picked pins in place. A quick bit of fiddling later and I turned the lock’s plug, opening it with that satisfying click of roguish behavior paying off.

Too easy, I thought, slipping my tools back. The door opened without a problem and I slipped in, carefully closing the door behind me. Immediately my nose was assaulted by the scent of vanilla mixed with stale antiseptics and... and... syrupy waffles?

Puzzled, I looked around the hallway that made up the first room of the house. On the left side were two doorways, each leading to two rooms packed with chairs, with respective signs above declaring them a “Well Room” and a “Sick Room”. Walking down the hall brought me to the first doorway (with an actual door, too) on my right. Beyond was a room with two beds and what looked like what would have been an operating table if not for all the tools, bottles of pills, strange fluids in vials, and one hypodermic needle on it. Creeping into the room, I saw that the needle was labeled “morphine”; it was empty, a faded blood stain on its tip.

I backed out of the room and continued down the hallway. On my upcoming left was a dual staircase, one stairway going up and the other down. The one going up had a purple curtain covering its entrance, and the one going down had a sign labeled “operating room” above its doorway. Ooh, basement operating room. The idea of that reminded me of the first case I’d ever worked on, where a psychotic professor at some prestigious medical school had been going around murdering girls, stuffing their dead bodies full of extra organs because “aliens told him to do it”.

Having no immediate interest in the basement, I ascended the stairs. None of the upstairs’ rooms had signs labeling them. They clearly hadn’t been thinking about ponies like me when they were moving in. The first room I entered had a king-sized bed, a closet, a single quadruple-level drawer, and a vanity. While there were a sparse few other things in the room, there was a foreign object on the vanity, and that caught my attention.

It looked like some kind of unusually skinny record player made of wood that some madpony had cut in half and gutted, only to put it back together in an L-shape, find a way to slide in a record partly into the middle, and stuck buttons and a handle on. A luggage tag attached to the handle simply read “Technology!” The little metal panel whereon the buttons were had a little red one labeled “play”. Unable to resist, I pressed the button and immediately crackly voices came out of the device as the record started spinning.

“...and that’s how you get it to erase the odd recording and make a new over it,” a stallion’s voice came out. I quickly recognized it as that of the father from earlier, only without any hint of the earlier accent.

“Really? It’s just that easy?” said a mare, probably the mother, her accent most certainly still there.

“Yep. It’s recording this as we speak, even.” I heard them kiss. “My, the wonders of technology, huh?”

The mare sounded hesitant. “I don’t know, honey. I mean, what does it really do for us?”

He chuckled. “Why, it’s a note-taking device! Rather than spend time writing down any notes about my patients or somesuch, I can simply set the machine to record and take my notes aloud. It’s like dictating to a personal secretary who never gets anything wrong! It’s faster and nopony—nopony—will ever have to suffer through reading my chicken-scratch penponyship ever again.” With a dying whir, the recording halted, the voices going quiet.

Well, that was weird. Nothing else in the room was interesting in the least bit. I sighed as I left the bedroom, my master lack-of-a-plan having failed and made me look like an idiot. Most things of interest would have been stored in the bedroom; as it stood, I was simply breaking into the house of a respected member of the community. Rubbing the side of my face, I found myself staring at a white door with butterfly and flower stickers on it.

No, we’re not doing that.

“Yes, I am,” I countered, opening the filly’s room and stepping in. There, on her nightstand next to a candle, was a book. Approaching it, I found it labeled in nigh illegible script “My Diary”.

Don’t you dare, you monster!

“Oh, but I do,” I said, opening the filly’s book up. It took me a moment to manage to understand all the spelling, tense, and other grammatical errors—aside from the downright schizophrenic capitalization. The first entry was dated about a month ago. By the end, I managed to mentally correct all the errors and made it actually understandable to me.

Dad says we had to move to this crummy house because the old house was old. I don’t know what that means; the old place was awesome! But Star Charmer told me her parents told her it was because those nasty government guys took the house from Dad. I was at a school the other day when Dad came and took me here. I saw Mom and Dad crying together later, but I didn’t let them know I saw them. I was scared. But Daddy gave me a new diary today, so I guess it’s not all bad.

Today, Daddy was happy again. The townsponies all helped give him things—and now I have a bed again! Dad says my old diary got lost, but I think it’s because those meanie government guys took it. Oh no! That means they’ll read all my secrets and tell all my friends and embarrass me and I’ll become a social loser and worse! I’ve gotta go back to my house and get it.

I was so right! Those meanie guys are totally in my house! But it’s okay, ’cause I snuck into my house last night and got my diary and Mrs. Cuddles back! It’ll be our little secret, okay, new diary? If you don’t tell mommy and Daddy, I’ll keep writing in you, okay?

Something weird happened last night. Daddy made me go to my room for no reason when the Sheriff brought something to him. Daddy even closed the clinic! But I’m a clever girl and managed a peep at what Daddy was doing. I didn’t know what it was, but when Dad first saw it, he ran to the sink and puked. Gross! And the Sheriff looked really scared, too. Then they brought it into the basement, but Dad back came upstairs, grabbed one of those voice-thingies, then went back to the basement. He was down there all night, but in the morning he came back up and was all pale and stuff. But then he saw Mrs. Cuddles... and got really, really scared. He asked where I got her, and I told him the truth. I’m a good girl, really! He didn’t punish me like I thought he was; he just stumbled into his and Mom’s bedroom.

Two government guys came to the house last night. It woke me up from a dream about, well, that’s private. But they were all yelling, and I snuck downstairs and saw them: hats and long coats, and all looking scary. One of them punched mommy in the eye! When they saw me, Mommy and Daddy begged them not to hurt me. They hurt Daddy again and left.

The last entry was dated three days ago.

When I finished, I took a deep breath. I ran my tongue across my teeth as I closed the book and set it back where I’d found it. Nodding to myself, I mulled over everything I learned, putting it all into perspective. My angel had directed me here because of them, and for a very specific reason. And in light of all this, whoever they were and whatever they wanted was irrelevant. “By this time tomorrow, you will again have blood on your hooves,” his letter had said. If he was correct, and I had no doubts that it was going to be, then within twelve hours I’d have committed murder. Well, not murder. Murder implies taking the life of an innocent. Murder was a sin; what I had to do was no sin; it was divine retribution. It was my God-given duty as a Teutscher to do this, I resolved.

But before any of that, I needed to go see whatever was in the basement.

|— ☩ —|

That smell of vanilla and stale antiseptics was stronger in here, being the air’s dominant stench, but the sweet scent of syrupy waffles now sadly absent. As I entered the basement proper, my eye was drawn to the chrome operating table in the center of the room, dust particles dancing in the beams of light from the basement windows. Behind the table was a long counter and cabinets the whole length of the back wall.

Up close I could see a strange orange stain on the operating table. By the table was a little table with various tools: scalpels, an unused IV drip, a bottle of whiskey (half full, because optimism was something I really needed right now), a full syringe of morphine, and a bottle of something called “laudanum”. I picked up the last object, looking it over for any indication of what it was; all I found was a label saying “For headaches, cramps, stomach aches, and every other pain—now with 20% more opium!” I set it down, having no need of any such opiates. The syringe, on the other hoof, I pocketed. One never knew when medical-grade painkillers could come in handy, even if those were opium derivatives.

Moving to the back counter, I passed over bottles whose names I couldn’t comprehend, ignoring strange surgical tools whose purposes were beyond me. I opened up one of the cabinets and struck paydirt: another one of those gutted record players; the tag on the handle labeled it as “Coronary Report #1”. After taking it out, I set it on an empty part of the counter and hit the play button. The whir of the record started up, and then the Doctor’s voice, now with a notable hint of his earlier accent but still more formal, came to life.

“This is Doctor K. Dome, resident doctor of the towns of Sleepy Oaks and, if recent events are any indication, the de facto coroner,” he said in a distant, solemn voice. He let out a long sigh. “When the Sheriff came to me with this, I... I didn’t know what to do, but... well, I suppose it was his only choice.” The recording clicked. “Both the time of death and its cause cannot be accurately determined, I’d guess the time has to’ve been within the last few days. The victim appears to be a young mare, between sixteen and twenty-one years of age—it’s a bit hard to tell; the swamp rats appear to have gotten to her... to her... countenance. As for her cutie mark—well, both sides of it, really—are curiously absent from the body. Where they would be is now just raw flesh, as if somepony had been using a cheese grater with murderous intent. Indeed, the only real marks on her body appear to be several bite marks around her neck and inner thighs. And save for that bite on the inner thigh, uh... there doesn’t appear to be any sign of a sexual motive. I checked. ”

He took a deep breath. “But I suspect that’s not the main reason why you wanted me to look at her, now is it? No. Before being brought to me, her heart appears to have been surgically removed, as a part of her chest was open, said vital organ unaccounted for. But here’s where things get complicated: the heart was removed antemortem, that is, before she died, and it wasn’t the cause of death. Where her heart would have been has evidence of bruises, and all veins and arteries leading to the heart were... are surgically tied and show clear signs of rudimentary healing. What’s more, her sternum was broken, seemingly to get at her heart, but that wound was made postmortem—you can tell from the way the bone is fractured, almost none of the typical curling and uplifting associated with fresh bones.

“So... Look, I don’t believe in dark magic or necromancy or any of that hoodoo, I’m a rational stallion, but... unless this mare was literally walking around without a heart for at least a few days... No, forget it. I’m not trained for this, and I’m sure I’m missing something obvious. We need a professional, one trained specifically for this, to examine her before we jump to any irrational conclusions.” The recording clicked. “That said, my official recommendation is that Sheriff Strong restrict any access to the swamps until further notice.” He paused, then added, “And to look for any missing person’s reports filed in the last month for any young mares in the local tri-county area.”

The whir of the recorder ended.

I tried to think of something witty and clever to say to myself, to try to lighten the dreary mood hanging above me, but nothing came to mind. Well, nothing that could at least pretend to be witty or clever. That sucked. A part of me wished I could get a transcript of the recording, but the only way to do that was to play it again and jot one down for myself, something I didn’t really have any time for. I let out a heavy sigh as I put the gutted player back into the cabinet.

As I stepped back onto the main floor, I noticed a back door leading into an alley behind the house. I went to the front door and locked it from the inside. They would never know I was here. Going to the back door, my jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me...” I turned the doorknob and opened the door. “The door was unlocked?” I facehoofed. “You’re an idiot, Jericho.”

Within moments, I was stalking through the back alleys. An idea of where to go next was on my mind, and it had something to do with the direction a certain fish had been going.

Author's Note

Footnote:

0/1 Speech checks passed this chapter.

Quest completed: Unto Dawn

Quest added: That Government Boy

Jokes aside, this chapter is probably a good example of what to expect in the future, lots of jokes, humor, adventure, and but not without its darkness. So, do take the time out of your day for a comment, even a small one—tell me what you liked or disliked, what I did right or wrong, praise or criticism, or even your predictions.

Chapter 5 — Dice

Chapter Five: Dice

“So... got any problems, troubles, conundrums, or any other sort of issues, major or minor, that I as agood friend could help you solve?”

Cards.

The mare slid her key into the door, heaving a sigh as she opened it up. She turned her head, bringing her sad, empty eyes to bear. Note to self: she reacts poorly to me murdering her friends. “Well, this is the house of Cards,” she deadpanned.

“I’m guessing everyone must say that about your place,” I said, looking up at a second story window.

She grunted as she stepped inside, and I followed her in. The house wasn’t anything too impressive or noteworthy, especially before she turned the light on. Even then, the front hallway was neat enough, little rooms branching off to the sides, as seemed to be the customary house design in this region. And then I peeked into what I assumed was some sort of living room. I assumed because it looked as if there’d been an explosion in a public library, not a place where ponies lived.

There were papers and a few books scattered around, piles of unidentifiable junk, trash; the coffee table had stains because she had apparently never heard of a coaster before, and the pillows on the couch were sitting sideways—to name the first few things that were wrong. Gritting my teeth, I fixed the pillows and grabbed as much trash as I could from the room. Trash being carried, I wandered into the kitchen, where Cards was, and threw it all in the garbage, which, by no coincidence, was the cleanest part of the house. I also took the moment to get rid of my empty box of saltine crackers.

Cards grabbed a glass out of the sink, frowned at it, and washed it out with tap water. Above the sink was a wooden sign that read, ‘Bienvenue à ma Maison Descartes’; I knew what it was trying to mean, but the writer had failed something awful. What was with these ponies and that language? Cards drank half the glass of tap water before dumping it back in the sink.

I looked down by the trash and saw a dog bowl. “You have a dog?”

She looked at me, frowning. “No.”

“Then why do you have a dog bowl?”

Cards fidgeted with a piece of her long mane. “Yes, um, well... it turns out you’re supposed to feed those.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“Are you going to take that shower now?” I prodded.

She nodded, turning around and walking out of the kitchen. I just sort of stood there for a moment, then went after her. Cards was climbing up the stairs when I reached her. She glanced back at me but said nothing.

“Hey,” I prodded. “Hey, Cards.”

The mare reached the top of the stairs. “What?” she grunted, looking back at me.

“Why’s your place such a mess?”

“Well, you try cleaning up your house between working overtime for your father and being exhausted,” she muttered. “Now, would you please give me a moment to myself? I really need to wash. I smell like the unfortunate aftermath of a minibar spending the night in bed with an unflushed toilet.” Cards turned and trotted into her bedroom, and I followed.

Her bedroom had that unmistakable scent of mare to it, different from each individual female, yet easily identifiable enough. A lonely looking queen-sized bed with purple sheets, a heavily curtained window, a closet, and an open door leading to a bathroom. On her night table was a candle and a rather dented alarm clock. Cards slipped off her raggedy chest-barding, tossing it aside into a laundry hamper.

Well, she just stripped before you and thought nothing of it. The best you could you do is not think about it, either.

“Do you own this place, or...?” I asked.

She looked down at the ground. “Why the hell are you in my room? And why the hell why do you keep asking so many damn questions?”

I shrugged. “A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break.”

Card gritted her teeth, her muscles tensing up. She held out a hoof to me. “Give it to me.”

“Give you what?”

“The bottle of Bucking Bronco,” she said in a terse voice. “I’d like to have it with when I go in.”

I glanced past her, looking at the bathroom shower. “You really want a bottle of alcohol in the shower?”

She nodded.

“That so?” I growled, taking a step towards her. Cards inhaled sharply, backing up into the bathroom. “Because excuse me for thinking here, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” As I crossed the bathroom’s threshold myself, the mare swallowed hard, eyes wide. I took out my knife and slammed it onto the sink.

“Wha’-wha’?” she gasped as I grabbed her arm.

With my hoof I traced a line up along her arm’s vein. “Here’s a tip—cut vertically along the vein. Horizontal cuts are a beginner’s mistake,” I hissed in a venomous tone. I left the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.

I stood there for a moment, an ear perked in the door’s direction, listening to Cards whimper. A minute ticked by. Two. Three. Then I heard the shower come on, and her whimpers quickly mutated into bawling. “Oh, Celestia, why!?” she howled. A bang of something hard against the wall came once, twice, as she screamed. “You stupid girl!”

The sound of the knife scraping off the sink arrested my attention. Cards gasped for breath between her cries. Then she threw something hard at the door, likely the knife, screaming, “No!” I heard her body fall backwards. The sound of water running over her body came next, barely audible over her cries. She was going to be in there while, I figured.

Satisfied by the turn of events, I turned my attention back to the room. A part of me knew I still didn’t really know the mare crying her soul out in a bathroom shower, but that same part knew her room was the best place to start learning. I started with, of all places, her laundry basket, because personal space and privacy be damned.

Her old barding smelt of piss and vomit. I couldn’t quite tell what the blue parts were made of, ditto for the black bumps on it which seemed to be some kind of armored padding. It didn’t take a genius to know the armor was worthless in a real swordfight.

Poking around the barding’s sides, I found a set of pockets. Without sparing a second to contemplate the possible ramifications of what I was doing, I opened and searched through her pockets. There was a badge stating that she did indeed work for the local sheriff, a housekey, seven Bits scattered about, but, to my disappointment, no deck of cards to be found anywhere. Closing her pockets, I slid her baton from a little holster on the side of the—and I use this word loosely—armor. I got a feel for the wooden thing’s weight with my magic. It would have been much more useful were it made of metal, but if wood was what they had, it would have to do.

I put the gear in the hamper and set about the floor. The black carpet itself was fairly clean, but the things on it weren’t. By the bedside was a number of identical uniforms, just like the barding she’d been wearing. Yet for all the vests, there was not a shirt, skirt, or pair of unreasonably skimpy panties among them. I picked one vest up and, on a hunch, sniffed at it. Yep. Smelled unwashed and sweaty. Did she not have a laundry room?

But as I dropped the gear back on the floor I saw something poking out from under her bed. Pushing the clothing to the side, I laid down and looked under the bed. I pulled out a magazine from under the bed. “Wingboner Magazine” it declared itself to be, a pegasus mare on the cover giving me a seductive look.

“Well, glad to see some things are universal,” I muttered. Quickly I put it back under the bed, not even looking through it.

Okay, maybe a little. What? Cards’ interests piqued my own. Was she bisexual? Secretly into mares? Just confused? And, for that matter, were any of those things particularly shameful in Equestria? That was something I had to look into, Equestrian social taboos... Probably shouldn’t ask Cards—last thing she needed was another reason to hang herself. “So, I found your poorly hidden dirty magazine,” I imagined myself telling her. “Pretty classy.” In any case, it gave me something to ponder as I walked downstairs and into the kitchen.

Humming a song to myself, I rummaged through the room. I paused as I looked at the calendar hanging by the doorway, its date at least two months off. The calendar’s monthly image, however, simply read in big, friendly letters, “~~Don’t~~ Panic”.

Shrugging, I looked over to the sink and the cabinets around it. It appeared that Cards had been forgetting to do the dishes. More importantly, I saw as I got up close, there was a rather fresh-looking envelope on the marble counter. I picked it up and slid the letter out.

Cards,

Hey there! How’s my favorite granddaughter doing? (What? Your cousins are all brats. It’s true!) I just finished spending a year dead for tax purposes, and so next weekend I’ll be in the area. Not in town, of course—that college town a few hours out. I got business in the area, and I was hoping maybe, if you weren’t too busy at your job as a big, tough deputy pony in small town Equestria, you’d have time to see your poor old grandpa. What do you say, Cards?

—You Know Who

The letter was dated a few days ago, I noted, putting it back where I found it. Glad to see somepony didn’t treat Cards like an outcast. Or, more likely, Cards had just been being overdramatic about everypony’s opinion regarding her. Whatever.

I found two address books in one ground-level cabinet. Nothing interesting. From there, I moved over and opened up her icebox. Inside was a helter-skelter menagerie of all sorts of things, a good portion of which, I was sure, didn’t belong in the icebox. Most of the food looked cheap, the stuff a young bachelorette would reasonably have. Other things included a slab of graham cracker, a bag of sugar, cottage cheese, and a large mixing bowl.

My eyes shifted to Cards’ oven, then to the icebox, then to the oven again. I set her oven to three hundred and fifty degrees, then grabbed out a specific amount of ingredients (and oddly placed cooking implements) from the icebox, cleaning most of the box out. I wasted no time mixing it all up. Because, after all, I had time.

|— ☩ —|

Cards stood there in the kitchen doorway. I could see her chest heaving as she glared at me, her horn alight. To her right she held up my knife, on her left she held a tuft of her still-wet mane. A lone bead of water dripped from her forehead and onto the kitchen tile. “Take your fucking knife,” she spat, tossing me the weapon. It clattered across the floor, landing at my hooves.

I look up at her now much shorter mane. It was no longer as long and feminine as it had been, but still easily a mare’s haircut. Rather tomboyish, if you asked me. “What happened to your mane?” I asked, picking up and sheathing the knife.

“Cut it,” she said evenly.

“I can see that. Why?”

“Because,” she said, and that’s all she said. Cards dropped the tuft of hair to the floor.

What, did she think cutting her hair would somehow solve all her problems? I looked down at the hair, then arched a brow. “Good job. You just gave yourself a haircut. Because, I don’t know, symbolism. Does it symbolize the start of your new life without Glasses?”

She gritted her teeth. “Government boy—”

“I have a name, Cards. Told it to you once, even.”

She sauntered off to a lone chair in the corner and sat down. Her petite body was still a bit wet but far from soaked; she seemed to have given up on using a towel three-fourths of the way through drying herself, maybe because the towel somehow reminded her of me. “I don’t want to know your name, not that I even remember you telling me it. You’ll always be the buck who murdered Glasses to me, always just be that government boy.” Even as she mentioned Glasses, she held her cool.

Buck? There’s that word again. I am not a deer. Shaking my head, I sighed. “Fine, you do that. It’s no wonder you didn’t have any friends but him.”

Cards’ hard expression fumbled as she sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

“Oh, that?” I asked, cocking a brow. “Just a little nothing.”

“No, really. What is it? Smells—” she sniffed the air “—good.”

With a casual shrug and a sideways glance, I opened up her icebox and pulled out my lovely production; it’d been in there to help it cool off. “You were in there for over an hour, constantly crying, so I occupied myself,” I said, and her eyes went wide.

“Is... is that a cheesecake?” she gasped.

“Yep. Made it just like they do back home,” I replied, cutting out a slice. Floating the freed slice onto a plate I’d rescued from the sink, I offered it to her. “Care to try?”

“Where the hell did you get a cheesecake from?” she inquired, warily narrowing an eye.

“Weren’t you listening? I made it while you were in the shower—you were crying like an emotionally unstable teen on her period in there—and from what I found on hand.” I walked over to her and offered it to her. “Try some.”

She looked at it as if she thought it were poisoned. “I, uh...”

“Oh, come on,” I scoffed, grabbing a fork. A second later and I was chewing a delicious bite of my creation. “See,” I said through a mouthful of cake, “if it were poisoned, I’d be dead. Want a slice now?”

“Um...”

Setting my plate off on a little two-pony table, I grabbed another plate and fork. In another second I was offering her a piece of sugary goodness. With a faint amount of hesitance, Cards accepted the plate and fork. Trying to hold back a smirk, I leaned against the wall and watched her. She put the first bite in her mouth, her eyes going wide.

“Oh my Celestia,” she mumbled through her full mouth, “this is delicious!” Cards swallowed. “I actually just had the ingredients lying around?”

Wonder if I’m finally getting her to stop hating me... Probably not. Still, food’s a good start to any healthy, stemming-from-mental-abuse-and-murdering-your-best-friend relationship. “Yes indeed, Ma’am.”

“Mmm...” she purred as she sank into yet more bits. Catching my look, Cards crossed her arms and declared, “I still hate you.”

I grabbed her chair and dragged it up to her table. She protested but didn’t stop me. Pulling up my own chair, I took a seat across from her. “May I ask you a question?”

She looked up at me from her cake. “Why?” the mare asked, turning her shoulder to me as if protecting her cake.

“Because I’m curious.”

Cards gave a hesitant nod.

“When you were cowering before me, you stated your name and then mentioned a ‘special talent’, but refused to explain that. What’s a special talent?”

The unicorn froze. “Excuse me?”

“What’s a special talent?”

She didn’t reply for the longest time, just sat there. After nearly a minute, she worked her mouth up. “Well, it’s what you’re best at, ya know? That ‘special talent’ is that little thing you’re especially good at, or else especially love. It’s a part of each pony’s destiny.”

“And this is an incredibly important concept to Equestrians?”

“To Equestrians? The hell...? No, it’s a universal pony thing. Says so in all the books. Hell, if you’re a lucky sonofabitch, you might even get a job where you’re doing that exact thing, but with the economy as it is...” She let out a wistful sigh. “Too bad there aren’t many jobs ’round here that have much use for girls skilled with cards, ya know? It’s kinda the definitive point of your childhood; it’s when you finally know who you are and what you’re meant to be.”

I snorted. “Are you saying that... das Zeichen, the, uh, mark is the focus point of one’s life?”

“The mark? Well, cutie mark, but yes—”

“Cutie mark,” I deadpanned. “I always hated that term. Feels so... emasculating. Why doesn’t everypony just make it gender neutral and call it ‘the mark’?”

She shrugged. “Well, that’s what it called in this part of the country. I mean, call it ‘the mark’ and nopony’s gonna raise an eye, really, or go around the nation and hear whatever the local slang terms are, but...”

I rose a hoof to silence her. “We can talk about how the term ‘cutie mark’ will kill my ability to produce testosterone later. Right now I’m more curious about the significance your culture places on the... er, cutie mark itself. Mostly because I entirely disagree with your point of view, but still want to hear it out.”

“Well, what do you know about them? I mean, I don’t want to sound condescending about the things you might already know.”

Rolling my eyes, I sighed. “Das Zeichen, as we call it, is the mystical, poorly-understood mark that appears on both sides of a young colt or filly’s flank, a mark which persists throughout one’s entire life. Unique only to ponies, its time of appearance is somewhat random, usually while one is still very young, and we think it’s caused by some sort of... action the child performs but we don’t know how that triggers its appearance. The mark is usually some sort of symbolic depiction. Strangely, as scientists have noticed, these symbols are unique to each culture: for example, in one culture the symbol for an apple is an apple tree, in another it’s the apple itself. I always thought was so cool how a mark could mean the exact same thing, sorta, and yet be represented in radically different ways, depending on the culture in question.”

I leaned back. “From a less scientific perspective and looking at it from the point of view of my country’s religion, das Zeichen is the mark of our sins, among other things. See, thousands of years ago, the first pony conceived via sexual reproduction was born, and his name was Kain. Soon, the second pony was born, Kain’s brother, and was named Yulakh. Later on in life, Kain become jealous that Yulakh’s offerings were earning more favor from Adonai—that’s, uh, that’s sort of the nickname of my religion’s sole and supreme deity, but He’s more commonly known only as ‘God’, and most people don’t even know He has any names other than God. But back to the story, Kain became so jealous, so very jealous, but he was a smart, reasonable stallion, and so let the hate fester deep within. That is, until he met the Queen of Graves.”

“The Queen of Graves?” Cards asked hesitantly.

“Yes, the Grave Queen, die Königin des Grabes,” I replied in a dark voice. “One, she was the favorite and powerful angel of the Allfather, of Adonai, but she had forsaken the perfection of Heaven, believing that God was a wicked tyrant. It was she who convinced Dhälenin, the first mare, to eat of the sacred fruit forbidden by the Allfather; and because the first stallion, Melikow, loved Dhälenin so much, he willingly ate of the fruit in order to be with her forever afterwards, willingly forgot the face of the Father, even though even though Maelikov, as Equestrians might say his name, knew well how it would damn him from Paradise. That is why, no matter how hard we want to or try, no living pony will ever be able to remember or even look upon the face of the Father.”

“And Kain? What about him?”

I gave her a little smile, and she actually seemed to recoil from it slightly. “Ah, yes. Back to the story, shall we?” I grunted. “When Kain met the Queen of Graves, the dark lady spoke clear and seductive: ‘The Allfather has thee abandoned; it is thy brother whom He loves more.’ She spoke well and soft of how Adonai was a cruel and wicked king, unfit to rule Heaven and Earth, and Kain listened to her. Oh, did he listen to her. At the end of it all, the Queen of Graves kissed him and left.

“She left Kain to think about what she’d said, to let him make his own choice. She had merely provided him one side of a story, as she’d said, and would never stop him from seeking and hearing out the other side of that story. She said she was honorable and good like that, for God would never let you hear the other side of the stories He tells. But Kain did not seek out God’s side of the story, no. Instead, Kain did the unthinkable: he forgot the face of his father, and murdered his own brother.” I shook my head sadly. It was for effect, really, not because I had any real angst over an old myth. “When He found out, God was furious at Kain, so He rent Kain’s soul asunder in a fit of rage, but it did not kill Kain.”

Cards tilted her head. “And then what happened?”

“Well,” I went on, “because of this, a piece of Kain’s soul was forever laid bare on his naked haunches for all to see, that all would know of Kain’s greatest sin, that all could see into Kain’s very being. We call this das Kainsmal or das Kainszeichen. Kain, now forever cursed with the mark of the deed, was cast out of his homeland, made to forever walk the earth. In Teutschland, you can call your mark Kainsmal or Kainszeichen just as you could say either mark or cutie mark here, if what you’re telling me is accurate. They’re rather interchangeable in a way.”

I shrugged and took another bite to my cake. “While that story does go on for quite a while longer, and is actually a really good story to listen to, read, and analyze, watching Kain’s character develop into the dark hero of early ponykind, the point is that that’s how our religion explains away the mark.” I ate a piece of my cake. “Now, I’m not saying that that’s the absolute truth and that I’ll kill you if you say otherwise, no; it’s just what my religion says happened. If Equestrian mythology explains it differently, I won’t argue; I was taught that no deity or faith is any better than any other; that we Teutsche must be tolerant and accepting of all beliefs. I’ll still put faith into my story because, as my father used to say, ‘God likes to see an atheist. It gives Him something to aim at’.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment somepony knocked at the door. Cards shot me a look. “Um, you might want to hide yourself.” The knocking came again. “Just a minute! I’m getting outta the shower.”

I stood up and made my way to the hallway. Trotting as silently as I could, I made my way into her bedroom and closed the door. A positively dumb idea struck me as I looked at her bed and noticed just how much room there really was under it. Putting my hat and duster in her closet to give me more room to maneuver, I crawled under her bed.

“Wait. Why am I here?” I asked the stuffy interior as I brushed up against the bits of junk Cards had swept under here. My eyes fell open four tube-like items and all my other thoughts died. I picked them up and brought them close.

Two pairs of socks, that’s what they were. They were black-with-red-stripes, exactly like Cards’ mane. I looked around but failed to find any boots they would go with, and I couldn’t recall having seen any such boots anywhere in her house. So, why did Cards have the socks? And why were they colored like her mane?

And then I remembered Cards’ dirty magazine as I saw it lying there. On a hunch that no reasonable pony should have ever had, I pulled up the magazine and flipped to the first mare past the cover. Indeed, there she was, a pegasus wearing socks. My head began to make connections that I really didn’t want to make. I suddenly had an odd feeling of being like a stallion in the act of adultery who is surprised when the mare’s husband walks in, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks on the weather, and leaves again.

I closed the magazine and pushed it and the socks as far away from as possible. As I put my ear to the floor and tried not to think very hard about however kinky Equestrians seemed to think the common sock was, I heard voices from downstairs.

“Dad!” Cards exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

Oh no.

“There’s been a problem, Cards,” Sheriff Strong, I assumed, said. “Have you seen Glasses today?”

Well, that’s what I get for being in a hurry.

“I...”

“Because Deputy Lockstock was passing by the old cabinet of curiosities when he... he... Oh Celestia, you knew, didn’t you? How come—whoa, whoa, whoa, sweetie! Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

Ooh, I am so going to die. He is going to come up here and kill me.

Cards sobbed. “I’m so sorry, daddy! I, I saw it happen and, and I ran! I don’t know how, but I ended up here, and, and thought that maybe it was a bad dream, and—” Her voice broke into unintelligible whimpers.

“Hey now, Cards. It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said in a soothing, fatherly voice. “Don’t cry. You’ve gotta be strong, if not for me then for Glasses... Wait. Did you cut your hair? And... is that fresh cheesecake? And... are those two plates? Cards, who was eating with you?”

“Glasses. He, he was here earlier but had to go out.” She sniffled.

“Hey, hey, hey, sweetie—stiff upper lip, remember? We need to stay strong during these dark days.” He sighed hard. “It was that government boy, I’m sure. He strolls into town, beats up the Doc, assaults the Baron, and now he’s murdered Glasses and made my little girl cry!” Sheriff Strong let out a growl. “I tell you what, Cards. I’m gonna round up the deputies and find this bastard. And when we do...”

Great. They’re going to lynch me.

I heard wings somewhere off in the distance as Cards said, “But what about me? Sh-should I go get my things a-and meet up with you?”

“I...” Sheriff Strong sighed. “No, Cards. You’re clearly still in shock. You should probably go lay down or something. Just... just don’t worry about it, okay? Daddy’s got it all covered, alright, sweetie?”

“Alright,” she sniffled.

In a few moments the door opened and closed. I heard Cards coming up the stairs, and quickly scrambled out from under her bed. An eyeblink later and I was putting my cap and duster back on, which was precisely the moment Cards walked into the room.

Her face lacked any tone when she said, “I just lied to my own father in order to protect the pony who murdered my best and only friend.” She looked me in the eye. “I could have told him you were up here, holding me captive or something, anything really. Instead, I lied to him. I faked tears to get him to leave.” I tried to put a calming hoof on her shoulder, but she smacked it away, snarling, “Don’t touch me!”

“You made the right call, Cards,” I said. “If he had come up here and attacked me, well, that’d’ve been that. I would’ve tried to not hurt him, at least.” I glanced at her laundry hamper. “Do you have any bits of your police armor that might cover the rest of your body?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because the armor you were wearing is woefully insufficient,” I said. “Were we to get into a scrape, your lovely little haunches would just become an easy target. You’ve got no armor on.”

Her brow furrowed. “But you aren’t wearing any real armor, either.”

I shook my head and removed my duster. Adjusting my brown shirt and blue pants, I put the duster on her bed. “Pick it up.”

“Wha’?”

“I said, pick it up. Pick up my duster and put it on.”

Cards shook her head. “But it’s too big to fit me!”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Try it.”

She hesitantly reached out with her magic and grabbed my duster. “Whoa! It’s heavier than it looks.” Cards grunted as she lifted it over her shoulder. “Ah, well. Still heavy, but I guess it’s something. Why’s it so heavy?”

“Probably because I compulsively hoard things in its pockets, for one reason,” I said in a casual tone.

“Huh. And the other?”

I put a hoof to my chin. “Well, that’s a state secret. Suffice it to say that it affords me the maximum amount of protect I can possibly expect without compromising mobility. Plus, it looks really good on me!” I shot her a smile, but Cards just stared at me. “In any case, is there any more body-protecting armor like the vests scattered all over your floor?”

Cards hesitated. “I think, but not here.”

“Where and what is it?”

“Well, a few years back, just before the brief return of Nightmare Moon, we received a shipment of this... really strange kind of armor. All we knew at the time was that the shipment was addressed to my father and had the seal of the Royal Canterlot University. Plus a little note that basically said, ‘Pray you never need it’.”

I nodded. “What’d it look like?”

“Er, kind of like a strange—” she made a few gesture with a hoof “—cloth thing. It was kinda thick and was just sorta strange, but it covered the whole body, even came with boots. Reminded me on a suit of armor, but wasn’t like any suit of armor I’d ever seen before.”

“You have the most elegant choice in words,” I said, then paused. “When you think of armor, what do you picture?”

“Uh, big, heavy steel armor. I mean, it’s really all there is. Why?”

Thought so. Point goes to the Reich. “And where was this suit of strange armor?”

She scratched her mane. “Back of the local Sheriff’s office. I have a key ’cause I’d often hung there to avoid having to do anything.”

“Hmm... Cards, would you ever so kindly run your police vests through the wash? I have a feeling we’ll need them later. After that, we’re going to have to pay the Sheriff’s office a kindly visit.”

“Oh, do I have to wash ’em?” she whined.

“Would you like some cheese?”

She blinked. “What?”

“For that whine. Would you like some cheese?”

“I... what?”

I heard a distant flapping again. “Do you have lice?”

“What? No! And what’s with all these random question—” Cards went silent as I put my hat on her head. Wearing my duster and hat seemed to make her look twice as small.

“There. Now you’ve got armor. And until we get that tantalizing bit of armor, I’d feel much better if you had that on. Plus, it smells much better than any of your gear, somehow.” I reached into her hamper and pulled the things from the armor’s pockets, including her wooden baton. Turning around, I offered them to her. “There’s a number of pockets in that coat. Be careful if you open one. There’s literally no telling what I’ve put into them over the years.” I reached into one pocket and pulled out a small bottle of painkillers, replacing it with Cards’ things.

“But it’s too big for me!”

“I’m sorry, Miss, but I don’t actually have any cheese.”

She inclined her head. “Huh?”

“Explaining that would ruin the joke and clue you in that I’m making fun of you.” I smiled at the bewildered mare. “Now, come on! Lead me to where this armor is.”

|— ☩ —|

Cards had insisted on leading me solely through the town’s various back alleys. With the sun still high and ponies going about their usual business, I supposed that was for the best. “Not much further,” she was saying. “We’ll just sneak in through the back, take it, and be gone, right? Right? ’Cause, no offense, I really don’t want to be seen with you.”

“I know you don’t want to be seen with me. That’s the fourth time you’ve said it this walk,” I groaned, feeling ever so naked without my duster. So I kept staring at Cards; an outsider observing would have seen me leering at her haunches, but I knew I was leering at the duster.

Cards glanced over her shoulder, and I darted my eyes to her face, hoping she wouldn’t become that outside observer. “So, I’m curious. Can I ask a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“What are those pants you’re wearing all about?”

I paused, and Cards stopped walking too. “Ever heard of Denîmes?”

“Denîmes?” She shook her head. “No, can’t say that I have.”

“Er, it comes from a phrase meaning ‘from Nîmes’, a town in Teutschland, specifically from the federal state of Louisiane, whose residence are collectively referred to as Louisianais.”

Cards gave me a blank look. “Uh... I was asking about why you were wearing them. They look kinda silly, you know?”

“Ah, did not realize that,” I panned, ears flopping. “Um... I wear them because where I’m from, it’s considered indecent not to wear them.”

“Oh, okay.” She shrugged.

“Wait. That’s it? You’re not going to ask any further questions?” I tilted my head to the side. “Not even a few?”

“Well, no. Why bother? I’ll just add it to my ‘What the fuck’ list and, if I remember, ask later. But I probably won’t.” She pawed at the ground. “Why? Do you want me to ask you questions?”

I frowned. “What’s the point of being an exotic foreigner if ponies all just say, ‘Oh, that’s neat,’ whenever I tell them about my strange foreign things? Ruins all the fun, you know?” I looked over my shoulder, peering down one of the side alleys. “And would you stop following us?!”

One of the garbage cans in the alley squeaked out a gasp. Cards just looked at me and asked, “We’re being followed?”

“Yeah, at least since a block away from your house,” I said, then looked back at the alley. “You’re not fooling anypony except for maybe Cards here, but she’s not exactly the most observant pony, so she doesn’t count!”

“Hey!” Cards hissed, stomping a hoof. “I’m right here.”

A familiar opal head popped out from its hiding place behind the trash can. “Um, hello there, government boy and his, uh, vague associate,” she called out.

I waved her over. “Get on over here, please.”

“No, thanks. I’m fine here.”

I sighed. “Um Gottes willen! I’m not going to hurt you, Lightning Dust.” I pointed a hoof at Cards. “As for the lady, though, I can’t speak for; she’s kind of crazy.”

“Right! Here!” Cards protested, gesturing at hoof at herself for emphasis. Then she blinked. “Wait. You know this mare?” she asked, pointing at the pegasus. “How do you know her?”

Lightning Dust took a hesitant step out from cover. “Uh, I wasn’t following you.”

“Nonsense. You’re so awful at it that I thought you were playing some kind of joke. Now, come on, I don’t bite. Well, not unless it’s one of those safe, sane, and consensual sorts of romps where things get a bit odd, but that’s not the case here, so...”

Cards shot me a bemused look. “Are you... are you trying to be funny? Because it sucks. Stop it.”

I shot Cards a venomous glare, and she took a step back from me. A hard look on my face, I nodded at her. Shifting to a much friendlier look, I called out to Dust, “Come here. I want to talk to you.”

Dust blinked at me. “R-really?”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod, smiling. “You know how to fight, right?”

The pegasus took a hesitant step towards me. “Well, I suppose I can.”

I trotted up to her. Dust looked like she might bolt up into the sky, but the mare held her ground. “Well, then I’d like to ask you to join me.”

She inclined her head, pointing at herself. “Me?”

“Or your evil twin. Either way, really. I could use a companion that can fight.”

“I can still hear you!” Cards called out. “And I had to spend a few months training before I was allowed to become a deputy!”

I nodded. “Like I said, somepony who can fight.”

“Why me?” Dust asked, shifting her weight from side to side.

“Well, you look tough and have proved it, plus I like the way you look.” I shrugged, and Dust rubbed the back of her neck, looking down at the ground. “See, I happen to think a reporter like you needs herself a big scoop, and how better to get the scoop than with the pony who’s going to literally be making the scoop?”

Her ears perked up. “You’ve got a point...”

And you’re easily manipulated, it seems. But we’ll not mention that.

“So, how game are you with helping me and this young lady here break into the Sheriff’s office, steal some armor, and then go bust this government conspiracy wide open, eh?”

Her whole body, wings included, perked up. “Wait. Government conspiracy?”

“Oh, did I mention that?” I asked, suddenly acting like I was tactfully trying to tell her all about Cards’ dirty magazines. “Well, I’ve probably said too much.” I turned around and walked back to Cards, saying, “See, I can’t say anything to a reporter. It’s the rule, you see. But were we on a team, well, then you’re no longer so much a reporter as you are an ally.”

“You utter bastard,” she laughed. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing here.”

I peered over my shoulder at her. “But of course. I’m blatantly manipulating your desire for that big story for my own personal gain. Truth is, I could really use the help of a pegasus; they can get places we unicorns cannot. And in exchange, I’ll get you that story, whether we find it or I have to hack, slash, kick, scratch, and bite my way into making it.” Turning around, I checked out my hoof. “So, are you game, pegasus girl?”

Cards shook her head at Dust, mouthing words I couldn’t see. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was trying to do, to discourage Dust. The pegasus, however, wasn’t looking at her. “Well, at least you’re being upfront. That’s more than I can get from most of the colts in my life.”

Great. She has colt issues. I mean, am I trying to create the most angsty band of adventurers ever—plus me?

“I think you’ll find I’m not like most colts in Equestria,” I said.

“So I’ve started to figure,” Dust replied, trotting up to me. Her eyes fell upon Cards. “So, who’s the earth pony?”

“Earth pony!” Cards bellowed. “I’m a unicorn!”

Dust furrowed her brows. “Well, where’s your horn?”

Cards telekinetically tore the hat from her head, pointing at her horn. “See?!”

“Wow. It’s small,” Dust observed, and I just stood back and watched. Cards put a hoof over her mouth and screamed into it.

I put a hoof on Dust’s shoulder and pushed her away from Cards. “I’d appreciate it if you two ladies didn’t kill each other.”

“It’s not small!” Card protested.

Dust frowned. “I’m sorry. I meant to say ‘bite-sized’, not small.”

Well, it’s good to know that nopony will be murdering each other while I’m asleep...

Cards stamped a hoof in the dirt. “Fuck you, it’s ‘bite-sized’!”

“Would you prefer the term ‘dwarven’?”

“That’s even worse!”

Dust shrugged. “Well, then bite-sized it is.”

I grabbed my hat and put it back on Cards’ head. “Be quiet, girl!” Cards flinched backwards as I turned to Lightning Dust. “And you! Did I ever tell you that really interesting thing about that one thing?”

Dust paused. “Say again?”

“Good. You’ve calmed down, both of you.” I poked Cards’ shoulder, and again she flinched back. “Cards, lead us. Come on, we don’t have all day.”

“No, no, no—what?” Dust insisted. “GB, what’d you say?”

I glanced over at Dust. “‘GB’?”

A gust of wind knocked down a nearby trashcan as Dust said, “Uh, GB: Government Boy.”

I stared down at her. “Well, I guess there are worse names to have.” I shook my head. “Anyways, Miss Dust, this here feisty thing is Miss Cards, daughter of the local Sheriff, the same Sheriff now after my head.”

Dust inclined her head. “Wait, why’s she working with you, then?”

Because she has no choice and is too terrified of me to say no.

Before I could make something up, Cards spoke for me. “Because, like it or not, that government boy’s the only one trying to save this town.” Her eyes went dark as she said that, as if resigning herself to it. To be honest, it was better said than I could have done.

“So,” Dust said, “what are we doing now? Breaking into the Sheriff’s office, right?”

“And you don’t have any problem with that?” Cards asked, and the pegasus shrugged.

“Hey, you’ve got to step on some hooves if you want the truth. If I gotta step on local hooves to put food on my table, it’s fine by me.” Dust blinked at me. “Speaking of which, what’s this about a government conspiracy?”

I shrugged and gave her an outline of what little I know. She listened intently, as if I were telling her some interesting, possibly erotic (that is, everypony wearing socks) adventure story. When it was over, Dust sat down hard and stared at me, her jaw opened as if to catch flies. She was silent for the longest time as she just sat there, her jaw slowly opening and closing.

“I... I...” Dust tried, looking directly at me. “I thought that maybe it was a tax issue, that Duke Elkington had surreptitiously raised taxes to help pay for an upcoming celebration or something.” She rubbed the side of her head. “But, but a dark conspiracy that’s been ruining lives and homes, beating up and doing... worse to ponies? I...”

“Who is Duke Elkington?” I asked.

Dust and Cards both looked at me; both tried to reply. After a bout of them speaking over each other, Dust silently allowed Cards to take this bull by the horns. “Duke Elkington is, well, he’s the local duke. Specifically, he’s the Duke of Marcia.”

Marcia. Why does sound so much like “mare, see ya”?

I nodded. “Figures you’d blame him. Can’t trust landed aristocracy.”

Both mares exchanged looks before coming to stare at me. They each asked something that could be summed up as, “What?”

I shrugged. “‘What’ yourselves. You can’t trust aristocrats, and that’s a fact. They’re an untrustworthy, lying bunch only out for themselves.”

“But if it weren’t for the nobility, who’d lead us?” Dust countered, seeming sure of herself. “They’ve helped Celestia rule for over a thousand years!”

“The people can lead themselves. It’s called ‘democracy’. You know, everyone casting a vote for the candidate whom they think will best serve the community, or state, or whatever municipal level you’re voting on.”

“That’s sounds needlessly complicated,” Dust said, and Cards agreed.

I sighed, rubbing the side of my face. “Look, a big thing they taught me in Equitologie class was that there was no such thing as an inherently ‘better’ system, whether religious, political, or whatever. What matters is whether or not it works. If it works, it’s fine for them. If it doesn’t work, then it’ll change. I personally think my system is better, but I’m not here to spread a revolution, especially not if the aristocracy works for you. But in my experience, aristocracies never work out.”

Rubbing my eyes, I said, “Look, we can discuss this at a later time, okay? As it stands, now is neither the time nor place to discuss politics.” I offered Dust a hoof and helped her to her hooves.

Dust looked very contemplated as she just stood there. Then, ears perking up, she smiled. “This. Is. The. Story. Of. A. Life!” She pranced around in place, giggling to herself. “I can see it now—me, my article getting headlined across the nation. Oh, there’ll be interviews about how I broke the story in, how I defied law and risked life and limb to bring ponies the truth!” Her eyes filled with tiny stars. “Paper interviews, fame, renown, meeting all the most famous ponies, show up the Rainbow Dash bitch, a place in the history books! Even an ice cream flavor named after me!”

Cards and I exchanged glances, her look saying flatly, “This is your problem, not mine.”

“Alright, Cards,” I said. “If you’d be so kind as to lead us to the Sheriff’s office, I’d be most appreciative.”

|— ☩ —|

“Starting to have second thoughts about this,” Cards said as she eyed the back door to the Sheriff’s office, a three-story concrete building that looked like some sort of incredibly depressed warehouse. The alley around us was empty; my local guide seemed to know her way around, how to avoid the townsfolk. “I mean, do we really need to go in there?”

I looked over at Dust, who smiled back at me. “Miss Dust—”

“Please, just call me Dust,” the pegasus interjected.

“Alright then, Dust, would you mind doing a flyby and seeing if there are any ponies outside the building?”

She saluted and took off into the air. I watched her tear through the air at record speeds. Before I could so much as think of a witty remark, she landed before me. “Alright, GB, there’s nopony. Not a mare, colt, filly, zebra, griffon, or stallion in sight.”

“Thank you. Now, Cards, please open the door. I’m sure we won’t get any nasty surprises from outside.”

Cards frowned. “What about any ponies already inside?”

“Well, you must be familiar with the duty roster. Should there be anyone in the building?”

She sighed. “No, no, I don’t think so; that’s usually me. My patrol often has me in this part of town, which is why I could sometimes get away with taking naps in the storage room. It’s nice and cool in there. Plus, on slow weekends, the boys and I would sometimes play poker.” Cards adjusted her hat as she took out a key. A moment later and the door was opened. “Alright, let’s get this trainwreck on the way.”

“I get off the train,” I replied, expression utterly straight.

“What?”

“I said, I get off the train. If I know it’s going to wreck, I’m going to get off it.”

Cards furrowed her brows at me. “That’s an expression, government boy.”

I blinked at her. “I knew that.” Expression blank as both mares gave me a strange look, I cooly opened the door and cooly slipped in. Well, that’s what I tried to do, anyhow. In reality, I missed the door complete and rammed my shoulder into the doorframe, which was rather the opposite of opening the door and cooly slipping in.

A grunt of pain slipped through as my arm took its third pounding today. “Ah! Damn doorways—one of my many one weaknesses!” At this rate, I was almost certainly going to lose that arm by the end of the week.

“Uh, how can you have more than one ‘one weaknesses’?” Dust asked, tilting her head.

“Who’s Princess Celestia’s gynecologist?” I snapped, and Dust fell silent. “That’s what I thought,” I muttered, slinking in through the door, and actually aiming correctly this time.

The room was dark but cool. Much of the room’s space was consumed by large wooden storage crates and, in one corner, a proper table. The first set of boxes I saw had strange grooves carved into them that, to me, looked like the footprints of a spider that had had one too many of whatever it is that spiders have on a night out.

As Dust closed the door behind her, the light went out. A moment later and Cards lit the lamp above the poker table. With a soft fondness in her eyes, she brushed a hoof over the dusty table, letting go a wistful sigh.

“So, where’s the box?” I asked.

“Er, gimme a moment to find it,” Cards said, already looking over the crates. “Oh hey, look!” she muttered. “A metal baton. Didn’t know we had any of these. That’s a keeper.” A minute or so passed by as Dust and I leered creepily at Cards.

My ear twitched as I heard the distant, almost silent sound of running water. “Anypony else hear that? That watery sound?”

Cards looked over her shoulder at me. She was standing on her hinds, her forehooves pressed against one of the crates to give her more height. “The pipes around here are really, really loud. It’s probably nothing.”

Is anything in this town not falling apart? “Hmm... all the same... Lightning Dust, stay here and help out Cards if she needs any, and holler if there’s trouble. I’m going to go further into the building.”

“Sure thing, GB,” Dust chirped, smiling at me.

I followed the little hallway made of boxes until I reached a door. Careful not to slam any other body parts into any more malevolently inanimate objects today, I crept through the door. The hallway beyond was short, more of a large storage closet than a proper. Inside there was a door to my left and another to my right, with the watery sound coming from the rightmost one.

Wasting no time, I snaked through the doorway... and got a faceful of steam for my trouble. This room was hot, sweaty, humid, and filled with steam. Oh, and it was very bright. I rubbed my eyes as I tried to adjust, then noticed the other pony in the room with me.

I looked into the pink eyes of the middle-aged mare with a red-with-blonde-stripes mane who looked better than many mares half her age. From above her, hot and steamy water rained down, soaking both her and the bottle of soap by her hooves. Oh, I didn’t just walk in on what I think this is, did I? She opened her mouth, and I responded by forcefully clamping a hoof over her muzzle.

Yes, I totally did. “Don’t. Scream,” I whispered, my arm getting soaked by the shower. Down the rest of the tiled room were two other showerheads, a large open doorway leading out into a series of lockers. I glanced down at her wet, naked, vanilla-colored coat.

The naked mare’s eyes narrowed and became what were known in the Hurting and Killing People trade as “cold slits”, the idea presumably being to give your opponent the impression you’ve just lost your glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake. Why this is frightening is, as of yet, an unresolved problem.

They were nothing like the terrified, pissing-oneself eyes that Cards had given me when my hooves struck her. These were the eyes of a mare who would and could fight me. I reacted even before she managed to lift her hoof an inch.

With a single twist and a slippery push, I found myself atop the mare. She tried to scream as her head bounced off the shower drain, but my hoof muffled her shouts, even as I saw blood leak from the back of her head and leak down the drain. So there I was, fully clothed, pinning a naked, middle-aged mare beneath me, the shower soaking both of us with hot, steamy water. “Why isn’t anypony ever pleased to see me?” I asked. “I mean, you brutally traumatize one little mare, and suddenly you’re public enemy number one, you know?”

That’s when Cards walked in. “Hey, government boy, so I found the box and... did you turn on the... shower...?”

The mare and I looked up at Cards, though the mare’s head was upside down and bleeding. “Oh, hey there, Cards,” I greeted, and Cards just gaped.

Her eyes swiveled between the mare and me. “Oh my Celestia!” she cried out, charging me. “Mom!”

“Mom?” I asked as Cards rammed me in the chest. “Whoa!” I gasped as the little unicorn knocked me off kilter, and I fell to the ground. Just as quickly I rolled up to my hooves, flinging off droplets of water.

“Oh my goodness, are you okay?!” Cards demanded, kneeling down by the mare.

“I’m... I’m fine, Deputy Cards...” she grunted out, holding her bleeding head.

I blinked at Cards. “Hey!” I protested. “Get out of the shower; you’re getting my duster all wet.” I walked up and turned the shower off. “Seriously, do you not ever think of other ponies?”

Dust slid out from the hallway and into the room. “I heard something happen and I forgot to holler!” she said, looking at all of us. “Uh, what’d I miss?”

The mare staggered to her hooves, still holding one to her bleeding head. “Deputy Cards,” she hissed, “what is the meaning of this?”

Cards swallowed and saluted the mare. “Chief Blackout, Ma’am! I’m, um, sort of, uh... with this, er, gentlecolt. He’s that government boy—”

“What!?” Chief Blackout coughed, the blood pouring through her hoof.

“Mom, please...” Cards tried.

“That’s ‘Chief Blackout’ to you when I’m on duty, Deputy Cards!” She staggered forwards, and I offered her a side-neck chop. She collapsed to a ground, the blood from the back of her head slowly clotting.

Cards let out a shrill series of frantic questions as she dropped herself to the ground and grabbed the mare in her arms. “Mom! Mom!” she finally settled on when Blackout didn’t reply. The unicorn’s shouts mixed with sobbing gurgles as she looked up at me, her lap (but more importantly, my duster) covered with blood. “What did you do to her?!” she cried.

I rubbed my chin. “Well, I either killed her from cardiac arrest, or I knocked her out cold.” My gaze fell upon Dust, who met my gaze and promptly slipped away into the storeroom. I put a hoof to Blackout’s jugular. “Huh. I appear to have killed her. Cool.”

The little unicorn sputtered something, but I cut her off with a laugh. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. She’s just unconscious. You can tell from the way she’s bleeding; corpses, even fresh ones, don’t quite bleed like that.” I smiled at her. “Your mom’ll be fine, Cards. The real problem here is, who the hell built a storage room that can only be accessed through the showers?”

Blackout stirred and groaned.

“See?” I said. “If she’d been unconscious any longer, it would have indicated serious brain damage. Was almost worried there.”

Tears streaming down her face, Cards looked up into my smile. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she whimpered. “You’re making fun of me... Why? Does my pain somehow bring you some sick, sick sense of joy and accomplishment?”

“Well, no.”

“Then why?!”

I sighed. “Because it’s much healthier to laugh over things than whine or angst. Really, you should try to laugh more; you’re too serious.” I shifted my head. “So, that mare’s really your mom? She’s got a neat name, Blackout.”

Cards rubbed her eyes. “It’s a card game.”

“Huh?”

“Blackout, it’s the name of a card game.”

I blinked at her. “Your mother’s name is the name of a card game. And your name is... Cards?”

“Uh... Cards,” Blackout groaned. “Are you okay, sweetie?” She reached out her bloody hoof, putting it on Cards’ cheek.

“Yeah,” Cards sniffled. “Yeah, Mom, it’s me.”

“Do you think we could convince her to help us?” I asked. “I mean, even after I killed Glasses, possibly gave her a concussion when I walked in on her in the locker room shower, and traumatized her baby girl?”

“I... I don’t know,” Cards admitted.

I nodded my head and pulled out a series of cloth bandages. “Then we’ll have to restrain her so she can’t find your father and help lynch me. Plus, if she really took a concussion, she won’t be fun to talk with.” I knelt down and wrapped the bandages around her head, the white linens quickly soaking up with both blood and the water in her mane.

When I was done dressing her wound, Blackout looked up at me. “You... you’re the one who murdered Glasses?”

“I suppose that I am, Ma’am,” I said with a shrug. “But in my defense, he attacked me first, just like that orphanage I burned down. Self defense, you see. So that’s not technically murder, but it is a killing.” I looked to Cards. “Do you have any hoofcuffs? I need to keep my set for the kinky stuff.”

The little unicorn looked over at the lockers and nodded. “The one nearest the door has a pair in it.” She hesitated, then pulled out a key. “Here. It’s to my locker.”

I took the key and trotted over to the lockers. There weren’t many of them, really. A part of me wondered if they’d built the ladies’ lockers as an afterthought, which might help explain why there was a door leading into the showers. Seriously, whose idea was that? Whatever the case, I found the iron hoofcuffs and made my way back to the showers. I groaned, “I need to change into a less wet outfit,” as I slid up to Cards and her mom.

Ignoring Cards’ protests, I hefted her mother over my shoulder and carried her over to a metal bench that’d been welded to the floor. Cards followed behind me the whole time. In another moment Blackout was cuffed to the bench. “There—all better,” I chirped.

“Cards...” Blackout croaked. “Why are you working with that... that government boy?”

“I... Mom, please listen to me—there’s a good reason,” Cards choked. “He... he followed me home.”

“Oh, yes indeed,” I added. “I’m actually part dog on my father’s side.” Before anypony could say anything, I dropped to a more serious tone. “I’ll give you two a moment. If you can convince your mom that I’m the good guy, we’ll unlock her,” I said. “I’ve got to deal with Lightning Dust.”

I found the pegasus standing in the dingy hallway, leaning against the wall and taking deep breaths. She was facing away from me, muttering things. I caught a few words, like “cute”, “colt”, and “psychopony”, but most of it was unintelligible. She didn’t notice me standing behind her at first, so I cleared my throat.

Dust jumped, spinning to face me. “Oh hey, GB!” she stammered.

“See something you didn’t like?” I asked.

She darted her eyes away. “I... I... yeah, I did.”

I nodded. “The blood?”

Dust let out a mirthless chuckle. “I’ve probably seen more blood in my life than most, I’ll bet. But that’s what happens when you’re a little filly who’s bad at landings, that and a month in the hospital for a broken leg. Did not know I had that much blood in me back then.” She shook a hindleg. “Actually got me a lot of cuts, scrapes, and bruises as a filly. Guess I still do, huh? Never did know when to stop.” She paused, and I didn’t break her silence. “But back there? To that mare? That wasn’t an... an accidental sports injury. That was...”

If I have to deal with this problem EVERY time I have to harm a pony here, I’m going to slit my wrists. And then make sure to splash my blood all over Dust and Cards, because screw them.

“A combat injury?” I suggested, and she hesitated.

“...deliberate,” she finally said.

Her words hung in the air for a moment, collecting dust. Then I decided to break out my metaphorical feather duster and speak to Dust.

“What do you know of the world outside Equestria?”

Dust shrugged, using her wings for emphasis. “Not much, really. There’s an ocean one direction, ice and crystal to the north; and the west’s the uncolonized rest of the Equestrian continent, wherever that ends. Always wanted to be a settler out in the Wild West; it’d be awesome, don’t you think?”

I frowned. “So, I take it Equestrian schools don’t care much about the rest of the world?”

Again, she shrugged.

“Ever heard of a country called Teutschland?”

Dust shook her head.

“Do you know anything, anything at all, about the nations across the sea?”

“What is this, twenty questions?” she scoffed. “’Cause I suck at that game. Hard.”

I couldn’t help but sigh. “A part of me isn’t surprised, the other part of me is indignant.”

“Why?”

“Because apart from Teutschland, this world is a hell that wants to kill and rape you,” I said, and Dust just stared at me. “In these distant parts of the world, I’ve heard stallions bragging about their rapes, mares doing it to guys, boys to other boys, even fillies to other girls. I’m still a bit disbelieving that a female can commit such an act, but I guess the world works under the law of the jungle, you know? You’d almost think rape wasn’t wrong, the way those barbarians talk of it. Some of these ponies, zebras, griffons, and whatever will gladly murder you for coin just as easily. I’ve seen lands where everyone’s eating each other, raping and murdering each other, and often doing all three together.

“I mean, they talk about it like it were all some kind of trading card game: ‘Hey, dude, did you totally force yourself on that one girl over there? ‘Aw, bro, I don’t have that one yet. I’ll trade you two of those colts over there for that one.’ ‘Well, throw in your mom’s leg and we’ll call it a deal; I’m a mite bit peckish, you see.’ ‘Deal! ...Sucker.’ Meanwhile, I’m sitting over here, and I’m thinking, ‘Hello, a decent, good pony over here!’ And, of course, I need to go over and show them the meaning of justice with my sword and—” I fell silent as I saw Dust’s jaw unhinge and fall to the floor.

“I... that can’t be true... That’s too horrible to be true,” she whispered.

“Sadly, it is far too true,” I sighed. “But there is hope, for above this world of horror stands a beacon of hope, strength, and freedom.” I smiled, then spat, “Where Equestria and Princesses Celestia are content to live in splendid isolationism from the rest of the world, letting horrors exist and never lifting a hoof to help, and even seeming to willingly forget the rest of the world even exists”— my tone softened —“there are those who would stand up and shout, ‘No! I refuse to let these horrors stand!’ ”

“How... what?”

“Together,” I went on, “they come together and say, ‘Mein Name ist Legion, denn wir sind viele’. And to the forces of evil, those people are Legion, we are Legion, I am Legion.”

“Ley-gee-ohn?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Your language butchers the word and pronounces it ‘lee-jun’. Legion. Ergo, I am Legion.”

“Wait, ‘I’?”

You’re making it sound way too idealistic. But, hey, she seems to be buying it.

I proudly pounded a hoof over my breast. “I am one of those people, for I am a Teutscher, like my heroic forefathers before me. Simply put, it is not a road without bloodshed.”

“Bloodshed?”

“What is this, twenty questions?” I asked, poorly mimicking her voice.

“I do not sound like that!” she scoffed, and I smiled.

“That mare, Blackout, attacked me first, and I simply reacted. I just pushed her down and she banged her head. But I’m going to warn you right here, Miss Lightning Dust, that there will be worse things than that, more blood than hers. Much like one does not make an omelet without first breaking a few eggs, so too does one not save the day without breaking a few necks—so to speak. Because it’s dangerous to be right when your government is wrong, isn’t it, Ma’am?

“And so I ask you, Lightning Dust, if you are willing to accompany me that extra mile. If you are willing to see such things if it helps save countless innocent lives. If you can handle fighting in this gray area. If you are willing to stand up alongside me, ein teutscher Mann, a stallion from Teutschland, and fight against this dark conspiracy. If you’re willing to defend yourself to their deaths.”

“I...” she started, but said nothing more.

“We have a saying where I’m from: Anfangen ist leicht, beharren eine Kunst. To begin is easy, to persist is art. You’ve already begun by coming this far, so shall you persist? Tell me, Lightning Dust, will you persist, or will you wither away, and never help your countrymen, never get your story?”

She didn’t reply, just stood there, mulling everything over. Lightning Dust was so still that if anypony had walked by and seen her, they’d have probably thought that Dust had just had a massive stroke. And then Cards stumbled through the doorway.

“Chief Blackout didn’t want to talk,” she murmured, scratching her mane. Cards slithered by me and Dust, muttering, “I think she thinks I’ve betrayed everypony.”

Gott! This is why I should travel alone. Stupid Equestrians... Why won’t any of them listen to reason?

Oh, I see. What a strange use of the word “reason”. “Hi, I’m that government boy that murdered that one guy, left his body to rot, traumatized the daughter of the Chief and the Sheriff, beat up that doctor even though he attacked me first, but it’s all good because I’m the good guy, I promise.” And you wonder why she has trouble thinking you’re anything but a liar.

I jerked my head to the side, whispering harshly, “Shut up!”

“Huh?” Dust mumbled.

I opened the door behind Dust and slid past her, ending up in the male locker room. A quick change and a fresh towel later I was back in dry threads. In another moment I was standing in the hallway with Dust again. “Just think about it; you don’t have to answer now,” I said, and followed after Cards. “Actions speak louder than words, after all.”

The dark storage room seemed darker than ever, even with the lamp. It was not dark for the light but because of the mare sitting beneath the light. There was Cards, sitting at the far end of the poker table, her head in her hooves as she quietly sobbed, the light above her casting exaggerating shadows all over her body.

Sighing, I pulled up a chair across from her. I don’t want to comfort another shaken mare! Leave that to ponies who actually care. “How are you doing, Cards?”

She looked up at her, my wet hat on her head dripping. “You’re going to hurt my father, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“I’m running out of friends and family for your to hurt and bully!” she shouted. “And my father is actually out to get you, so... I dunno.” Cards sniffled, rubbing her eyes. “I just don’t want to see any other ponies hurt, government boy. I don’t!”

I saw Dust creep into the room, but she kept her distance from me. A thought made the arduous journey across my cold emptiness of my mind. “So, Cards. Strange name to have, no?”

“Huh?” the mare asked, holding up her head.

“Your mother has a card-related name, huh? Well, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that your grandmother had a card-related name too, right?”

She nodded. “Desmoche, that was her name. The, uh, the mares in my family are named after some sort of card-related term. It’s something of a tradition. And then my name is Cards, because creativity was never my mother’s strongpoint.”

I pulled out a deck of cards from my pocket, and the mare eyed me. “When I was a colt, my friends introduced me to cards. They showed me the game Einundzwanzig, the game whose Equestrian name is Blackjack.” I pulled the well-used cards out and shuffled them. When I was finished, I held the deck of cards out to her. “And can you guess what the first card the dealer dealt me was?”

“No.”

“The ace of spades.” I set a face-down card down in front of her. “I thought, ‘Wow, I must be lucky. The ace of the spades, the death card!’ Then the dealer gave me my second card.” I nodded at her, and she drew a card. The mare looked at her card, keeping it away from me. “The second card I was ever dealt was the black jack card itself.”

Cards stared down at her hand of cards, eyes wide. “And then what?”

“I won, hooves down. The next hand I got was also a blackjack, though with different ace plus a ten. One of my friend, a young mare, jokingly yelled at me, ‘What are you?!’” I laughed. “Later on in life, she was one of the players in the games of strip blackjack my friends somehow talked me into. If you lost a hand, you had to lose some clothings... Which was odd, being that most of my friends were girls. Er, nothing ever really came of it, I swear, just kids doing dumb, sexy things because our hormones were on the utter fritz.”

“Sounds like fun,” Cards muttered as I shuffled the deck again. I still couldn’t see what cards she’d drawn, and I didn’t ask for them back. “I never had any risqué fun when I was a filly.” She blinked and bit her lip. “N-not that I really wanted to. I mean, that’d just be improper for, uh, uh, a lady.”

Huh. So despite everypony being naked and with eveyone’s gentials just hanging out, there’s still a negative social stigma attached to girls actually doing sexual stuff? Wow. That’s just like Mr. Welch said.

I shrugged. “Back home, there was a saying: ‘The dice of God are always loaded.’ But I don’t think God plays dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

“What does that mean?” she asked, and I smiled.

“It means there’s no sense giving up now. It means that right now we’re sitting at this table, playing His game, Cards. If we cash in and leave now, the world falls out of our control, however lackluster and pathetic that control may be. If you stay with me and keep playing, we can change things for the good of all of us. I know your people don’t share my religion or beliefs, and so what I’m saying might not make too much sense, but the metaphor stands. And after all, it wouldn’t be worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.”

“Neat little story time we’re having here,” Dust chimed, taking a seat at the table. “But look, I hate to rush, but what are we doing now?”

“Mmm...” I hummed. “Cards, where’s the suit of armor you mentioned?”

The unicorn pointed to a large trunk to her right. “There. Problem is, it’s locked really tight, and I don’t know how to get in.”

I took out my knife and lockpick as I sauntered over to the trunk. Kneeling down at the trunk’s foot, I paused to look about it. Above the lock was the outline of mare with wings and a horn, a vague image of the sun rising behind her. ‘Royal Canterlot University’ was printed below it. Well, the Princess sure has an ego, I thought, examining the symbol.

Then I froze. The lock itself was unlike anything I’d ever seen before; it was just a hole that quickly grew narrowing the further it went in, no clearly visible means of opening it in sight. I prodded around in it with my knife and lockpick, but nothing came of that. “Cards, what kind of lock is this? It’s strange, new, and it therefore frightens me,” I asked, putting my tools away.

“A really, really expensive kind of magical lock,” Cards offered. “Only a unicorn can open it. They have to stick their horn in, then just use any bit of magic while thinking a very specific thought.”

“A lock only a unicorn can open?” I scoffed. “That’s racist. Also, a lock that needs magic? That’s heretical.” I hope whoever invented this gets the tip of their penis bitten off by a snapping turtle. Not because of the lock, but because they were trying to fornicate a snapping turtle, and sickos who do that deserve to be punished.

“Wait, you’ve got one of those locks here?” Dust asked. “I’ve heard of those, but I also heard that only a few were made. Too many complaints about them being unreliable, prone to never working, pegasi or earth ponies couldn’t use ’em. Oh, and there was that one poor buck who tried to use one and got his horn blown off by magical backlash.”

I suddenly had a new appreciation for the lock. An appreciation that said, “See that thing down there? If you have to stick a horn into it, get Cards to do it.”

Cards shrugged. “Maybe, I dunno. All I know is, the key isn’t physical, it’s a thought of some kind that you have to be thinking when you’re opening it, and that I have no idea where the key’d be. And no, I guarantee you it’s not anywhere in this building. I’ve... I’ve had to do maintenance duty here a few times for, uh, neglecting duty, and if the key were here, I’d’ve found it.”

Dust groaned. “Great. So we came here for nothing, hmm?” She threw her arms up, flaring her wings for effect. “What now?”

“I was so right! Those meanie guys are totally in my house! But it’s okay, ’cause I snuck into my house last night and got my diary and Mrs. Cuddles back!” a thought echoed.

“We’re going to the former residence and clinic of Doctor Dome,” I said. “I assume you know where that is, then, Cards?” I asked, and the unicorn nodded. “Good. Good.” I picked up my deck of cards.

The unicorn stood up too. She trudged over to me, staring down at her two cards. A distant look on her face, she held up her cards to me. With a quick flip she showed me what I’d dealt her, and I had to force down the gleam in my eye.

One card was the ace of the spades. The other was the black jack.

Author's Note

Footnote:

“Kain” rhymes with “pine”.

The religion of Teutschland is not Christianity; it is inspired by it, Islam, ancestor worship, plus Norse mythology and technology worship. But that bit of worldbuilding comes later. And, again, as Jericho said, “I was taught that no deity or faith is any better than any other”—I myself also takes this stance, so ignore the narrator’s bias. Love and tolerate, friends.

Chapter 6 — Justice

Chapter Six: Justice

“This is not a trial. This is a lynching. There is no law.”

“And that’s the place?” I asked, scratching an ear.

From our position at the bottom of the house’s hill, the two-story colonial house looked like a giant gravestone. The place had seen better days. Those better days were about a month ago, if the filly’s diary was to be trusted. Both stories had broken, dusty windows, and columns of moss hung from bits of the shingles. An insect droned past on its way to do whatever it was that insects did late in the afternoon. There was a big sign hanging above the door that once read “Doctor Dome’s Clinic & Pharmacy”, but so many letters had fallen—or, more likely, been torn off—that the sign now read “Doctor Harm”.

“Whenever I’d get hurt, I’d always end up here,” Card said, pawing a hoof at the moist grass.

Dust whistled. “Really? You went there? That place looks like it’s ninety-five percent tetanus.”

I looked around the dilapidated structure, peering into the shadows in the dark windows. A burgundy curtain on the second floor floated in an invisible breeze, even though the trees around us were all still. Reaching into my pack, I pulled out a pair of binoculars and stared at the curtain. “Was gibts?” I muttered.

“Well, it wasn’t always such a dump.” Card ran a hoof through her shortened mane. “It used to be a pretty nice place.”

“When? A hundred years ago?” Dust scoffed.

“I dunno; feels like it.”

“What I want to know is,” I chimed in, “how’s it legal to be both a clinic and a pharmacy. Did Doc Dome somehow have dual degrees?”

“I dunno,” Cards said.

“That your catchphrase?” Dust asked, cocking a brow. “‘I dunno’.”

Cards turned her red eyes to the smiling pegasus. “Well, maybe if you weren’t such a b—”

“Pardon me, ladies,” I interrupted, “but I think we’re being expected.” The girls turned their heads to me as I put away the binoculars. “There’s somebody in there. At least one. Expect two or three.”

“Wait. There are?” Cards asked, taking a step towards me.

I shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious? I think there’s a pony watching us from the rightmost second-story window. They absolutely suck at making curtains move. There’s no breeze at all right now, and yet I see a curtain moving.”

Dust shifted her weight. “Um, are they from the government?”

“Chief Blackout,” Cards offered, “forbade us from going near this place around the time the Doc’s family fled. I figured it had something to do with them government ponies, but...” She trailed off.

“Hmmm,” I hummed. “If they’ve any brains, they’ve also seen us, and they’re preparing a trap for us.” Turning my head to the left, I smiled at Cards. “Come, let’s spring it.”

“Have you gone crazy?” Dust scoffed, and I looked at her.

“It’s a possibility I haven’t ruled out yet.” I patted her shoulder, her wing twitching in response. The trees around us swayed, and the curtains stopped moving. “So, Dust, can you do a flyby and check if there are any ponies hanging out around this place?”

“Um, sure,” the pegasus replied, fluttering into the air. She flew around at a more breezy pace than she’d done at the Sheriff’s office.

“Are there other entrances to this house? Like, say, a backdoor?” I asked, and Cards gave me an affirmative. “Cool. That’s exactly what we won’t do. They’d expect that.”

Dust landed. “Didn’t see nopony at all, GB.”

I sauntered forwards up the hill, the mares following behind me. “Be prepared to scatter if they start shooting at us,” I cautioned. “I’m pretty sure Dust could avoid any arrows, but Cards and I would be in a jam. Blueberry flavor, if I’m not mistaken. That’s the worse flavor to get jammed in. Very deadly.”

Stepping onto the front porch with me, Dust asked, “What’s the plan, GB?”

“Don’t worry; I have a master plan,” I replied, standing before the door. “The Bardic Knock Spell.” The girls held their breath as I rose a hoof. I knocked on the door. “Hello? Hello? Anypony home?” I called out.

Card’s eyes literally popped out of her head, only to slam back in. She proceeded to spend about a minute rolling around the floor, screaming in pain. Or, at least, I imagined that she was. Truth was, she just gawked at me.

Dust’s jaw hung limp, and I figured her opened mouth would make an ideal nest for the Mouth Nester, a rare bird found on the Nekrischen Islands that had the rather unorthodox habit of making its nests in the mouths of dead things, but also had the tendency to nest in the mouths of people who slept with their mouths open. Those people were always in for a rude surprise when they woke up and the Mouth Nester, fearing for its eggs, pecked their eyes out. It was actually pretty funny to watch once you got past the whole part about it being cringingly horrible.

“What are you doing?” Cards hissed, just as a scratching sound came from the door.

One by one, somepony on the other side of the door opened a series of locks. The door creaked open as a green stallion in a fez peaked his head out. “Um, who are you—”

I slugged him in the jaw as I forced my way into the building. “I’m here to deliver the pizza... and pain!” I growled as he fell to the floor. Quick as I could, I stepped on his throat, putting just enough weight on him to stop him from screaming. The pegasus pony under my hoof wasn’t wearing anything, I noticed, and he looked so skinny that it was like he was malnourished.

The room I found myself in was a large den of sorts with multiple chairs. I instantly knew it was a waiting room, not because of the sign that said “Sick Room” but because—like all waiting rooms in the history of time—it smelled like impatience.

Dust and Cards slowly slinked through the door, still gaping. “How...?” they asked in unison, but stopped as they heard the other say it.

I just smiled. “I just used the ‘Bardic Knock Spell’. It gets them all the time.”

“How?” they both tried, repeating the same song and dance as last time.

“Simple. What kind of idiot would go up and knock on the door? None, that’s who. So when I knock on the door, the last thing they see coming is this idiot.”

“Jeepers,” a deep, throaty voice came from down the hall. “What was that? Are you okay? There’s a group of ponies coming here and...” The voice went silent as a large meaty hoof landed in the nearest doorway.

A stallion slid ungracefully into view and peered out at me. It was not difficult to surmise that this gigantic stallion had been the speaker. He was built in the way that one builds leather replicas of chickens: brown in color, hard despite the great deal of internal fluff, and generally unpleasant to look at because you’re afraid it’ll come to life and peck your eyes out. The suit into which the stallion’s body had been stuffed looked as if its only purpose in life was to demonstrate how difficult it was to get that sort of body into a suit. His face looked like a slapped ass. Something about his entire look felt familiar, like I’d seen something—something, not somepony—like him before.

“You,” the earth pony stallion growled in a voice that emerged from his mouth like a burly woodpecker.

“Holy hell, buddy,” I whistled. It wasn’t an actual whistle, because I’ve yet to meet the pony who could whistle out coherent sentences. “What kind of steroids have you been on? You’re a giant.” I glanced to the girls. “Dust, get ready to fight. Cards, pull out the baton.” The mares nodded and did as asked.

I looked back at the stallion, only to find him gone. The heavy sound of his hooffalls charged down the hallways. “Hey, get back here!” I barked, chasing after him. The dusty hallway become a blur as I charged after his sounds, only to have me end up in a waiting room at the other end of the house. Cards and Dust raced in after me, almost colliding with me.

“Where’d he go?” Dust demanded.

“Oh, he’s gone,” a suave voice said from a corner. We all turned to look at the stallion sitting in the corner, wearing shades, a stetson, and some sort of purple longcoat—an utter crime against fashion! He stood up and smiled. “And now you walk into the belly of the beast.”

“Um, who are you?” I asked, putting a telekinetic grip on my sword.

“I am Marty, Marty Stew,” he replied in a low voice, “the recon elite captain of this operation. I suspect you’ve heard of me before, that must be why you came, and I’ll tell you this: the stories they tell... are true.”

“Ah, so you can juggle,” I said, nodding my head. The girls shot me oblong looks.

“Born under the sign of the eternal warrior,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard me, “I carve my way through these dark times, searching for something. Maybe an answer, or a cause, or just a real reason to fight. Who knows?”

“That’s nice, but...”

“Abandoned by my parents, I was raised by wolves. But not just any wolves, demon wolves. They taught me their ways, and so now I wander this world as a half-wolf, half-demon, half-dragonkin warrior.”

I shifted my weight, accidentally bumping flanks with Dust. “Look, I’m pretty sure your math just added up to one-point-five—”

“Don’t use your fancy mathematics to muddy up the issue here! I carved a path of destruction through this world, destroying all those who would harm the weak, and all those with non-liberal ideas.”

“Hey!” I whined. “That’s my line. Er, except for the part about killing those with different opinions. And aren’t you currently picking on the weak—”

Stew laughed. “I am a master of all forms of combat, and pretty much everything else I try with pretty much no explanation as to how. It has not been an easy life, no. I am transgendered—twice!—and am now forced to walk this land a stallion. Yet in spite of all this, all mares I come across fall in love with me... for seemingly no reason. Probably my dashing good looks.”

“Okay, that’s stupid. And wouldn’t that mean you were a stallion in the first place?”

Cards poked me. “Shouldn’t you be, I dunno, murdering him or something?”

“I have been cursed,” Stew went on, “with absolutely no character flaws, too! Except for a few token ones like, uh, bipolarism, insomnia, depression—only the cool ones. I am now forced to wander this world with absolutely no character development in sight.” He paused just long enough to make me feel like I ought to say something, but then interrupted. “Oh, and I can speak to trees.”

“Are you making fun of me?” I accused. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you!”

Stew smiled. “I sense that you are wondering why I’m here.”

“No!”

“Well, strangers, in truth I’ve been tracking you for a... I don’t know, ’bout twenty minutes now. Your day of reckoning has arrived. So come, face the perfection that is—” his horn glowed gold as he pulled out an iron mace “—Marty Stew!” He began to sway his body, bending and unbending his knees and elbows as he broke out into an off-key song.

“Marty Stew, Marty Stew,

He’s a half-demon, half-wolf dragon king,

Marty Stew, Marty Stew...”

I slammed a hoof onto the floor and pulled out my sword. “N-no! You can’t sing—only I get to sing!”

At that exact moment I blinked, and at that exact moment I found myself crashing against the wall on the far side of the room. My sword clattered to the floor next to me, skittering under a chair. More inexplicably, there was this terrible pain in my ribs, like I’d just been punched by a large rhinoceros. I sputtered a cough, and hacked up a spatter of blood onto the dusty floor.

There, standing just where I’d been a few moments ago, was that gigantic stallion, clad in bits of armor plating. His limbs were covered in plate gear, with large metal rods attached to the steel gear, but the rest of him was unarmored. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the rods were each a sort of in-built bludgeoning weapon, and that being punched by any hooves wearing that gear would pretty much ruin your day.

“Down,” he growled at me. Ponies as big and powerful as him didn’t need verbs, apparently.

The stallion’s displeasure was communicated partly by the barking, hectoring quality of his voice and partly by generically nefarious look of his armor and weapons. Whoever had designed that armor clearly hadn’t been instructed to beat around the bush. “Make it evil,” he’d probably been told, I imagined. “Make it haves lots of spikes and black pointy thingies and also pictures of fire to make to go faster! Make sure that whomever is on the wrong end of it is mince-meat!”

I had the distinct feeling of being at its wrong end.

The stallion’s eyes darted feverishly about the room and then settled back onto me, like a pair of flies distracted from their favorite piece of month-old meat. “Nice distraction, White Tongue.”

Formerly known as ‘Marty Stew’, White Tongue bowed his head. “Well, they were dumb enough to listen, y’know? I told you my attempted career as a literary critic would come in handy one day, didn’t I? So, which ones do you want?”

Taking hard, sharp breaths, I leaned against the wall and forced myself to my hooves. My ribs screamed out in a hot, wet pain as my right leg sang them a splendid chorus. This wasn’t just a minor fracture or a number of individually inconsequential flesh wounds; this was almost certainly a broken rib... or two... or three. Of course, that was ignoring whatever was wrong with my leg and the not unfamiliar feeling of severe hemorrhaging brought about via blunt force trauma.

Dust and Cards, I saw, had backed away from the stallions, and the two were now holding their ground against White Tongue’s leers. The liar snorted a laugh. “Know what, Boulder?”

I tested my leg and took a step. Suppressing a scream, I collapsed back against the wall. As I laid there on the ground, a shaky thought slithered across my mind. I put my focus into opening my bag and levitated a syringe out. Wrong syringe, dammit! a thought growled. This is the morphine... but it’ll have to do.

“What would that be, White Tongue?” the giant now known as Boulder asked. It was a fitting name.

Extending my left arm out, I pulled the cap off the needle. The syringe looked to have about two milligrams of morphine in it. I held the syringe as steady as I could as I threaded the inch-long needle into my most prominent vein. A few seconds later as I pulled the empty needle out, tossing it aside. The pain continued to burn as I continued to writhe on the ground, forcing back every last urge to shout.

The unicorn stallion trotted over to me. “Hey now, no drugs,” he chuckled, grabbing my bags in his magic. Tongue tossed them across the room, though not before kicking me in square in the ribs. I shouted as the pain tore my ribs in half, and the stallion trotted back over to where he was.

Boulder looked over at his associate. “What was that about?”

Tongue shrugged. “The idiot was trying to do something, so I took away his stuff. He probably isn’t getting back up. You sure did a number on ’im.”

“I try my best,” Boulder snickered as he looked over at the girls. “Y’know, I’m thinkin’ that these two ladies are going to find out why ponies ain’t supposed to pry into other ponies’ business, hmm?”

“Don’t you dare, you creeps!” Dust snarled. Cards pathetically waved her baton in a show of support for the pegasus.

“What?” Tongue chuckled. “You think a down-on-her-luck reporter and the town’s worst deputy are somehow gonna stop us?” He took a step towards them. “’Cause lemme tell you what’s what: Boulder here and I ain’t evil.”

“Liar!” Cards said with a hoofstamp. “You’ve been making all of our lives a living hell for the last two years!”

“Now see here, girl,” Tongue went on, “we’re a couple of intelligent, caring guys that you’d probably quite like if you met socially.”

“Great,” Dust groaned. “We’re about to get killed by a bunch of retards.”

White Tongue smiled and lowered his voice. “Here’s how it’s gonna work, and it’s going to be very intelligent, quite interesting, and humane: either you give yourselves up now and let us beat you up a bit, though not very much, of course, because we’re firmly opposed to needless violence—”

Boulder let out a snarl. “Or we’ll play a game of ‘loves me, loves me not’ with your limbs.” Whenever he talked, it looked as though the muscles on either side of his mouth were clambering over each other to get out of the way.

“You wouldn’t do that!” Cards cried, knees shaking.

“Oh yes, we would, wouldn’t we?” the giant replied.

“Oh yes, we’d have to,” White Tongue chimed in. “Wanna know why?”

“Why?” Dust asked, a hard expression on her face. It softened for the briefest of moments as she glanced at me.

Boulder smiled a horrible smile that would have turned a mare lesser than Dust into stone, carved her into a smart little statue, and then sold the statue for a pretty penny to some rich guy. Then he sighed, his smile dying as he said in a somber voice, “We don’t do this because we’re evil. We do this because the alternative to us harming you here is worse than death. Please forgive us, ladies.”

“He’s right, ” Tongue added, all traces of humor gone from his voice. “Sleepy Oaks is under quarantine for a reason. A good reason. And by coming here, reporter girl and strange buck in the duster, you have become infected. We don’t know exactly why the report came here, but to you, sir,” he went on, looking at me, “we had completely wiped Sleepys Oaks off the train lines; we truly have no idea how or why a train brought you to this town, and we deeply apologize for this failure on our part.” He sighed. “Trust us when I say that we’ve tried everything we can to prevent the spread of this illness.”

Illness? I thought. There’s no way there’s any sort of infection in this town. Everypony’s so healthy!

The big bastard nodded. “And we’ve done such terrible things to try to keep Equestria safe here that even if the Elements of Harmony were predisposed to help us, they’d first crucify us for the evils we’ve committed trying to keep this kingdom safe.”

“With all peaceful methods exhausted, this has proven itself to be the only viable and least painful way to protect the realm.” White Tongue bowed his head. “Now, let battle be commenced.”

I watched from the floor as the two stallion converged on each other’s position, then stalked up to the mares. Dust whispered something into Cards’ ear, and the little unicorn nodded. A second passed. Two seconds. Three. The pain within me wasn’t giving in. Four. Five.

“Go!” Dust shouted as she jumped into the air, wings pumping hard. She kicked off the wall and rocketed herself at White Tongue. Tongue didn’t even have the time to blink before Dust smashed full force into his face. The two of them crashed to the floor, rolling end-over-end until they hit the row of chairs lining the wall.

With a grunt, Tongue bucked Dust in the ribs and shoved her off. “Bloody hell!” he whinnied, then spat something to the floor. “The bitch knocked out a tooth!”

I looked over at the other stallion. Boulder jerked his head in Tongue’s direction just as a baton smacked across the back of his neck. He shouted, flailing his arm out in the attacker’s direction and hitting thin air.

“Oh Celestia, I hit him!” Cards cheered as she jumped away from Boulder’s awkward flails. “I actually hit him!”

How long’s it been since I took the morphine? A minute? Two? Three? I wondered as I felt the throb of pain die down by the slightest of margins.

“Yeah, nice shot,” Boulder said, raising an arm to Cards. “My turn.” He threw out a massive punch with enough force to probably impale the little unicorn.

“Eep!” Cards yelped as she threw herself to the ground and rolled away. His blow struck the wooden floor and broke through it. In a moment, he was stuck as he tried to free himself, only for Cards to let out a cute little warcry and charge. Maybe it was just me, but I never found female warcries anywhere as threatening as a deep, throaty male one. Cards freely landed baton blow after baton blow to his neck. A heavy, meaty blow to the throat later and Boulder collapsed, gasping for breath.

“Ha! Not so tough now, are you?!” Cards barked.

Dust yelped. I jerked my head in her direction and saw the blood flowing from her nose as she clutched it. Tongue smiled a bloody, one-tooth-missing smile at the pegasus. “You stupid girl,” he hissed. “You have no idea who you’re messing with, no idea the stakes of the game we play. You just waltz in here and think you’re gonna save the world, is that it?”

The pegasus grunted hard as she threw a punch at him. Tongue ducked his head out of the way and grabbed Dust’s hoof. “Let me go!” she howled, jerking her whole body. Her wings began to flutter hard. In another moment the unicorn tackled, and then Dust was pinned to the ground, her wings beating uselessly against the ground.

“If it’s any consolation, I’m sorry,” White Tongue said in a soft voice, pulling a knife out from his coat. “This really wasn’t what momma raised her colt to be.”

Dust’s eyes went wide. “Um, help! GB? Cards? Somepony!”

A blur rammed into White Tongue, knocking him off Dust and into the nearby chairs. Cards jumped in place, looking at the pegasus. “Woo! Did you see that? Did you see that? I’m kickin’ ass! We’re so gonna arrest them and—”

A knife stabbed her in the chest. The deputy mare gasped and flinched backwards as the knife came again. And again. White Tongue jumped to his hooves, the knife clenched hard in his magic. Gritting his teeth, he rammed her again with the blade. And again. And again. Presumably, he did it because nothing livens up a party quite like multiple stab wounds.

“Really wish I didn’t have to do that,” Tongue snarled as Cards fell to the ground. He jerked his attention to Dust, who was just staring up at him. “Now, reporter girl, I’m sorry that had to happen, but it’s either me or you.” He stepped over her body. “And to be honest, I need this job more than you need your life.”

The pegasus gritted her teeth and grunted. Her leg swung upwards. White Tongue yelped just as Boulder let out a growl. My eyes went to the giant as he wrenched his arm free from the ground and stood up. The armor over the arm did not come up with him, only the raw flesh and fur; it remained buried in the floor. As he stood, something was off about him. His neck was too... flaccid? He held it high, but it didn’t quite move like a proper neck should.

“Boulder, could use a hoof here!” White Tongue cried out in an unnaturally high-pitched voice. Then he squealed. “Celestia’s blood! How are you alive?”

I looked over and saw Cards stumbling up into a stand. She was holding a hoof over her stab wounds, a disbelieving stare on her face as she looked at the wound. Or, rather, as she looked at the unperforated duster, then to Tongue’s bloodless dagger. “I... don’t know,” she sputtered, and then spun around.

“Hey, little girl,” Boulder said, smiling as he raised his still-armored leg. “Au revoir.”

You didn’t roll your R’s at all! a voice inside my head shrieked with rage.

“Look out!” Dust shouted as the earth pony readied up a massive punch. But the deputy mare was way ahead of the pegasus. Cards jumped out of the way... and tripped on the tail of her—my duster.

Cards hit the ground hard, grunting as the hat flew off her head and slid over to my corner of the room. Her face in the ground and her rump sticking high into the air, a gleam slashed across Boulder’s eye. He turned his arm to the side and brought it down hard on her butt, spanking her with what looked like enough force to guarantee she wouldn’t be sitting well for a week solid, to say nothing of how nightmarish it would make using the bathroom for that week.

The deputy mare shrieked like a little girl as she tumbled across the floor. She ended up mere feet away from me, furiously rubbing her hindquarters. “Owie, owie, owie!” she cried out, tears in her scrunched-up eyes.

“Cards,” I moaned, grabbing my hat. An eyelid popped open, a teary red eye staring into my face. “Check pocket... above where your baton is... red vial. Drink.”

“Wha’?” she whimpered.

“Drink,” I said in a harsher tone. I grabbed my hat off the floor and put it on.

Cards nodded, still rubbing her backside. To my amazement, she opened the right pocket on the first attempt. Her magic slid into it and pulled out a small vial filled with a red serum. She looked at me for approval, and I nodded. The mare hesitated for a second, then popped the vial’s little cork and poured the liquid into her mouth.

“What... did I just drink?” she coughed.

I forced a smile. “Tiny, tiny healing poultice. Not too helpful for most wounds... might help you...”

“But it’s the wrong color,” Cards whispered, and I inclined my head. “W-why aren’t I dead? Why didn’t the knife kill me?”

My smile went from forced to legitimate. “I don’t just wear the duster because I look good in it.”

“Don’t touch me!” Dust snarled in the background.

“Now, just play it easy, dollface,” White Tongue cooed. “Just come here and—” He let out a blood-curdling shriek. “My ear! My motherfucking ear!” Tongue wailed.

“Cards, go!” I urged, turning my gaze to the fight.

White Tongue was holding his right ear, a torrent of red staining his fur as he screamed. Dust stood there, nostrils flaring and panting hard. And then I saw the disembodied ear clenched in her quivering teeth, and the deep gash running across her shoulder. Dust spat the ear out at him, even spitting Tongue’s own blood into his face, and growled, “Don’t. Touch. Me!”

“Holy Celestia, Tongue!” Boulder roared.

Dust slugged the unicorn in the face, and he stumbled backwards. He twisted around, still screaming bloody murder. And then he shut up. In fact, the whole room went silent. Everypony stared at White Tongue, all staring at the steel blade sticking deep into his breast.

Holding my body up against the wall, I smiled up at the bloody unicorn. He just stared at me, his jaw hanging wide. His eyes went from me, then to the sword, and then back to me. The blade was exceptionally deep within his body, his own body combined with my thrust having helped the deed.

“Now then,” I said, struggling to stay on my hooves, “do you see that metal thing in your chest?”

He nodded.

“Good. See, judging by the fact that you’re still alive, this sword’s probably the only thing keeping your internal organs in place. I can even feel the beat of your four-chambered heart against the weapon’s tip. If I took the weapon out, you’d die. And here’s the deal: you have five seconds to convince me to keep the sword in there, giving you just a slight chance of not dying.”

He squeaked in terror.

“Tell me, Mister Marty Stew, whom do you serve?”

He hesitated, shivered, and then finally muttered something. “The-the one pony…”

I cocked a brow. “The one pony who?”

“The one pony in this… nation willing… willing to do what must be done to protect the realm,” he croaked.

“Speak me this pony’s name,” I ordered.

“Never!” he hissed.

“Speak it or die, cur,” I said with a harsh finality.

“You’re a motherfucking psycho...!” he whimpered. The room was so still that I was sure everyone could hear his whispers.

“No,” I replied, lowering my voice, “I’m a fuckmothering hero. I killed a lot of people to get that title.” Grabbing the hilt with a hoof, I gave the weapon a slight wiggle. “I’ll admit, I don’t quite understand the Equestrian religious philosophy, or if you even have one that I’d understand. If you did, then I’m guessing the Princesses would be your deities, yeah?” I shook my head and chuckled. “Well, in that case... you better pray to your damned heathen goddesses, because you’ll get no mercy from my God. And do you know why?”

“Why...?” he whispered.

“Because He offers no forgiveness to one such as you who has forgotten the face of his father! But more importantly—that outfit you’re wearing is a sin against fashion.”

With a jerk of my hoof, I wrenched the sword out of his body. His was on the ground in an instant, probably dead even before that. I wasted no time wiping the blood off my blade using his atrocious coat and then sheathing the blade. “There’s a moral or two to this story,” I said to nopony in particular. “One is that you don’t wear such nasty outfits. The second is that you do not hurt my friends and associates.”

“I’ll kill you!” Boulder bellowed, charging full speed at me.

“Oh, hell,” I groaned as I realized there was no way I was going to dodge him. Why the hell did you sheathe your sword, you idiot?!

“Hey, you big bastard!” Cards called out. The mare, practically half his size in every way, charged at him. She raised her baton and swung it like a baseball bat. “Payback’s a bitch—and so am I!”

Wherever Cards had been aiming became irrelevant as Boulder’s unarmored leg collided with her, knocking her blow off course. But the metal baton slammed into his throat. Without warning, the stallion uttered a horrible gurgling choke as his limbs went limp. Cards was knocked to the side as the stallion crumpled into a heap. A stallion’s neck didn’t bend like that, I knew.

Lightning Dust let out a single sob as she collapsed to her knees, blood running from her nose and the gash on her shoulder. Cards laid on her back, panting heavy and hard. White Tongue’s body sat before me, a huge hole in his chest. And Boulder was... a little bent out of shape.

Gritting my teeth, I limped over to the fallen pegasus. As strong as she was, the mare couldn’t hold back all her sobs. I sat down next to her, leaning my back against the wall, trying to ignore the raging inferno of pain still living in my leg and ribs. “Hey now,” I cooed, putting a hoof on Dust’s shoulder. “Don’t cry. It’s all over.”

The pegasus looked at me with teary eyes. They were not the eager eyes she had earlier, nor the strong eyes of Chief Blackout; they were more like the terrified eyes that Cards had had only a few hours ago. She hesitated for a moment, then buried her face in my chest, bawling.

Why can’t people ever say, “Oh cool, we just killed some evil ponies. Champagne, anypony?”

Because these Equestrians probably aren’t used to the whole killing business, don’t you think? Might as well play along and act compassionate.

I hugged the pegasus, letting her cry. “How much does it hurt?”

“A lot,” she whimpered.

“Have you eaten recently?”

“What?” she sniffled.

“Have you eaten recently? Is there still food in your stomach?”

“I... yeah, I guess. Wh-why?”

I looked over at my bags. There were just barely within reach. Reaching out with my magic, I tugged on a strap, pulling them nearer to me until I was able to properly grab them. I pulled out a bottled filled halfway to the top with a healing serum. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

Dust grabbed the potion, hesitated, and downed it in a single swig. She fought back her tears, shaking as the potion affected her. The blood stopped flowing, and she stopped shaking. Then, looking up at me and my offered smile, she hugged me.

I noticed Cards shambling over to us. “I think I knocked him unconscious,” she murmured. “And why does she get comforted when she’s crying, but all you do for me is yell?” She sat down next to me, opposite Dust.

“I was under the impression you didn’t want me to touch you,” I replied.

“Yeah, I don’t. Doesn’t meant I don’t want the chance to say ‘Don’t touch me!’ and bite you...”

I chuckled. “That was dark.”

“I... yeah, it kinda was... Ugh, I need a drink and a long, hard nap.”

“You know,” I said, pointing at Boulder’s body, “if you want to make sure he’ll stay down, you’ve got to beat him right.”

“How’s that go?” Cards asked. Apparently remembering the bottle of Bucking Bronco was in the duster, she slid out the bottle. She took a pull of it and sighed.

I smiled. “You’re supposed to keep beating him after he falls, yelling ‘Stop resisting!’ until he’s practically dead. ”

She frowned. “How can you crack jokes at a time like this?”

“What? You can make jokes but I can’t? You know, if I didn’t make jokes, I’d be so terribly boring. So come on—you’re supposed to become ‘police brutality cop’ and save the world... one incident of police brutality at a time.”

“But I’m not a killer like you, government boy.”

The stupid girl doesn’t realize it yet, does she?

“You keep telling yourself that, Cards,” I said, grabbing a tissue from a tissue box that had somehow wound up by my hooves. I wiped away the tears that had rolled onto Dust’s neck. A few tissues later and I’d helped clean Dust’s pretty face of blood.

“Thanks,” Dust sniffled. “I can still taste it, you know? That awful, awful taste.” She shivered. “I... I just...” She freed herself from my hug, a blush on her face.

The three of us sat there for what felt like ever, shoulder-to-shoulder as we surveyed the destruction. I knew it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes at most, because my pain finally died down. The morphine had taken its sweet time and had finally kicked into effect.

Taking a deep breath, I reached into my bag. I pulled out a titanic needle, an intraosseous needle, the syringe at the end of it filled with that familiar red liquid. Both mares saw it, and both mares gasped. I pulled off the needle’s cap with my magic, holding the actual syringe with a hoof.

“What is that?” Dust asked.

“A syringe,” I replied, holding it above my leg.

“What for?”

“’Nen intraossären Zugang,” I said. “I’m damn sure Boulder broke my leg, so I’m going to inject myself directly into the bone marrow. Besides, a needle through the bone hurts like you wouldn’t believe, and right now I’m hopped up on morphine. This might be the only time I can stomach the pain and use me the shot.”

Rubbing my leg with a hoof, I found where the fractures weakened the bone the most. Before anypony could say anything, I stabbed myself with the needle, digging through bone fracture. The mares both flinched from the wound as I grabbed the screw-top of the needle and began to drill into the bone. Even with the dose of morphine, I couldn’t help but scream.

Gritting my teeth and continuing to drill into the bone, I growled a prayer:

“Vater unser

der Du bist im Himmel,

Geheiligt werde Dein Name.

Dein Reich komme.

Dein Wille geschehe.

Wie im Himmel, so auch auf Erden—!”

I felt the needle pierce into the marrow. Panting hard against my broken ribs, I injected the healing serum directly into the bone. Just as soon as the contents where in, I grabbed the corkscrew-like top and drilled out. Between grunts and gasp for breath, I continued the prayer, anything to distract myself from the hole in my bone.

“Unser täglich Brot gib uns heute.

Und vergib uns unsere Schuld.

Wie auch wir vergeben unsern Schuldigern.

Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung,

Sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen.

Denn Dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit!”

The needle was out. It was finally out. I tossed the bloody, dotted-with-bits-of-my-own-bone needle onto a chair. My body collapsed back against the wall as I growled in pain, grunting to keep the agony at bay as I felt the serum begin to heal my broken bone. But as the bone slowly reassembled itself, I realized that I had to move the leg to make it work as efficiently as possible. When leg bones move, they help pump the blood in your extremities, I knew; that’s why if you stood at attention for long enough without moving, you’d pass out. And as the healing potion eventually seeped out of the bone and into the rest of my leg, I’d need that pumping ability to clean up everything.

So I flexed the leg, the bone still not healed. I fought down the urge to put a hoof in my mouth and bite as I pumped and flexed the leg. Soon—I wasn’t sure how long—the pain died down in my leg and ribs. I couldn’t imagine how horrible the pain would have been without the morphine circulating within me. And to that end, I didn’t want to imagine.

Somehow, I realized, I wound up splayed on the floor. Looking up, I saw both mares staring down at me. Dust was gnawing on her hoof, and Cards was glancing between me and Boulder. I smiled. “I think we won.” Then my face grew serious. “For a moment there, I didn’t think we were going to survive that.”

Dust brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Yeah, I... neither did I.”

I swallowed. “If that kind of thing ever happens again, and you honestly think we’re going to die, and I’m incapacitated, go into my bag.”

“Huh?”

“In my bag there are two weapons, a pair unlike any other weapons on this Earth. They were crafted by the Hand Gottes, given to me by an angel.” I grabbed her hoof. She didn’t resist as I took her hoof and slid it over to my right bag. “They are powerful, but limited in use. That’s why I never use them: I’m always convinced there’ll be a more pertinent time to use them later. They’re weapons of utter last resort. But if I can’t help you, if you’re going to die, and if you can’t find any other option, use them. ”

The pegasus hesitated. “What do they look like?”

“Sort of like the letter P if you put it on its side.” A moment went by, and then I added, “Just point the skinny end at the bad guys, and then think of it like a crossbow.” Dust didn’t reply to that, just stood there. Slowly, she withdrew her hoof from my grasp.

Cards took a breath. “You said that being unconscious for more than five seconds probably meant brain damage, right?” she asked, and I nodded. “Then... what does ten minutes unconscious mean?”

With a grunt I shambled to my hooves. I rubbed my newly healed leg. A jerk of the leg later and I managed to pop several joints, eliciting a pleasant snapping sound that made both mares flinch. “That means he’s dead,” I said in a matter-of-fact tone.

The unicorn’s face went white. “That’s.... that’s not true. He can’t be dead!”

I pointed at the earther’s body. “Tell me, does a pony’s neck bend like that?”

“I... I...” She tried to stand, only to collapse to the ground. “No, that’s... No!”

Shaking my head, I sauntered over to the corpse and knelt down. I rubbed his neck and windpipe. “Yep. It appears that you smashed his windpipe when you hit him.” I touched at his spinal column. “What’s more, you decapitated him.”

“But his head’s still on his body!”

I sighed. “Let me state that better: you internally decapitated him. This head is no longer attached to his spine, but the flesh and muscles still are.” I shrugged. “Ever see a pony get hanged? That’s how they’re supposed to die: the weight of their own body tears their head from their neck.”

“I... I...!”

Touching his body, I found a pocket on his suit. In it was a wallet with ten bits (which I pocketed) and a... a picture? I stared at the picture and put the mental pieces together. “And to be honest, I need this job more than you need your life,” Tongue had said. “This really wasn’t what Momma raised her colt to be.” I turned around and held the photo out to Cards.

“See that?” I asked.

“N-not from this far away,” the Cards murmured, staring at the body.

I walked over to Cards and showed her. Smiling back at Cards from the photo were two foals, a little filly and a colt; they were hugging Boulder’s huge arms. The stallion smiled an honest, happy-to-be-alive smile at the camera. I noticed that there was no mare in the photo at all, and that got me thinking.

“What’s that?” Dust asked, running a hoof through her mane.

“It’s a family photo, I’d think,” I said. “Notice anything odd about it?”

Cards sputtered something utterly incomprehensible. She panted hard, pressing a hoof over her breast.

“Where’s Mom?” Dust asked, tilting her head.

“How much are you willing to bet this guy was a single father?” I asked, pulling out the Bits from a pocket. “I’m willing to bet ten Bits. You?”

My heart froze in my chest, and I dropped the photo, though I did re-pocket the ten Bits. “Scheiße!” I barked, jumping up and running for the doorway.

“What?!” Dust gasped.

“We forgot that one agent from the door!” I shouted back, tearing through the hallway. As I practically dove into the waiting room by the entrance, I found the pegasus stallion standing there, a pensive look on his face. “Freeze!” I snarled, and he didn’t move.

“They weren’t bad ponies, Tongue and Boulder,” he said. “And you really don’t know what you’re dealing with here, you so-called ‘government boy’.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I scoffed. I pulled out my sword just as Lightning Dust scrambled into the room. “So make me understand what I’m up against.”

He shook his head.

I pointed the sword at him. “Okay, let’s try that again. What happened here?”

“I can’t. That is a question about the times of days gone by, no?”

“Excuse me?”

“How can I tell,” the stallion said, “that the past isn’t merely an illusion??”

“Do you answer all questions like this?” I asked.

“I can only say that I’m probably not a rapist,” he said quickly. “More than that I cannot say.”

“That’s stupid. You’re stupid,” I accused. “And who are you, even?”

He shrugged. “What’s the use in giving a name to a bundle of vague sensory perceptions? Boulder and White Tongue just called me ‘Jeepers’. Don’t know why. I helped them clean the place up, made it look dirty from the outside. Important business, you see.”

“Uh... can you at all help me?”

Jeepers inclined his head. “I’m useless to you. Not that I know anything, mind you.” The stallion hesitated. “There’s a room upstairs. Used to be the old doctor’s study, now it’s our sort of command center. You’ll find things there. I wish I could help you more.”

“Do you not want to work with this... conspiracy?” Dust asked.

He hesitated. “There’s no easy answer. They pay good, and the money is... money’s money.”

“And that means?” I prodded.

The stallion glanced to the side. “Boulder and White Tongue found me in a ditch by the side of the road. I couldn’t remember my name, and they were so kind as to help me.”

“Are we having two or three different conversations here?” I asked, rubbing my cheek.

Jeepers sighed. “Look here, so-called government boy—do your business and leave me be. I’ll just do as the butler always does: tidy up.” He tightened his black fez and tried to step forwards, but I wouldn’t let him. “The least I could do those two good ponies is bury them.”

I noticed a piece of rope lying on a nearby table. A part of me jousted with the idea of knocking him to the ground and tying him up, but I held that part of me down. “Stay here,” I ordered, pointing at the ground. “Leave this room, Jeepers, and I’ll make sure you find your way back into that ditch.” I looked over his naked body. Barring taped to his underside, there were only two place he could’ve been hiding a weapon. I grabbed his hat, shook it about, and put it back on his head. No weapon. That left only one place left, and I really didn’t feel like searching there.

“We clear?” I asked, and he nodded. I backed out of the room, almost knocking into Dust as I entered the hallway. Turning my head, I saw Cards stumbling through the hallway, gasping for breath as tears streamed down her face.

“No... no... no...” she begged the air around her. Cards took a swig from the Bucking Bronco as she ambled forwards. “I’m not a killer... I’m not a killer...” the mare sobbed.

I walked up to her and grabbed the bottle. “Give it to me,” I said, and she grunted.

“No! It’s mine! I want it!” she snarled, fighting me for the bottle.

“No,” I said with finality, jerking the bottle from her hooves.

Cards looked at me, her lips quivering. “I’m not like you,” she whispered, and collapsed to the ground. Tears streamed from her face and unto the wooden floor.

Setting the bottle off to the side, I sat down next to her. “What’s wrong, Cards?” I asked, and she didn’t reply. “Are you scared? Afraid?” I went to put a hoof on her shoulder, but stopped when I recalled her desire to bite me. Lightning Dust was standing in the nearby doorway, watching us.

Cards looked up at me, still crying. “Afraid?” She sniffled. “I’m hanging out with a murderer who killed the only friend I ever had—I’m fucking helping him! I ate cheesecake with him, Celestiadammit! And now... now I’ve... Boulder... I...”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. That’s not what you’d be afraid of. So I’ll be more specific.” She looked down at the floor, watching the tears drip onto the wood. “Are you afraid for your mortal soul?”

Cards sniffled. “What?”

I sighed. “The pony is a social creature. That is why we’ve been able to form societies held together by complex, intricate cultures. We instinctually seek the company of others. That’s part of the reason why a pony left to his or her own for long enough will eventually go insane. And you, Cards, have just killed—a mortal sin in most all cultures, one way or the other.

“In the faith of my homeland, you see, there are a set of tenets that ought be followed. They define the basics of what’s right and what’s wrong. And the sixth tenet of the faith is ‘you shall not murder’. It does not say ‘you shall not kill’. I mean, yes, you could interchange those two things sometimes, but to murder and to kill are two different concepts.

“What you did back there was a killing, yes. It was not a murder. Murder is wrong. Killing is just a fact of life in this world we live in. The faith makes the distinction quite clearly. The faith teaches that there is no shame in taking somebody’s life for the right reasons.” I glanced up at Dust, her pensive eyes staring at me. “I think I can guess that this is beyond your comfort zones, eh, girls?”

“No...” Cards whispered. “No, there is no difference between murder and killing. Both are wrong and horrendous! I... you can’t... we can’t...”

“Do Equestrians believe in the concept of Hell?” I asked.

“Huh?” the unicorn asked, tilting her head.

“Do you believe in Hell? I’ve seen you use the phrase ‘the hell’, which I’ve since tried to imitate, which implies you have something with the word. Our word is die Hölle. Yours is Hell. Do you have one, that place where bad ponies go when they die called Hell?”

“Hell is an actual place?”

“Ah, so you don’t. And yet... why do you seem so distraught by your perceived sin, Cards?” I asked.

“Because ponies shouldn’t kill other ponies!” she shouted, burying her face in her hooves.

“Yes, I’ve come to understand this is the Equestrian point of view,” I said. “To you, it’s all wrong. To me, there’s a very fine, very distinguished line between what’s wrong and what I must do to protect the ones I care about.”

Dust spoke up. “Does, does that mean that we’re the ones you care about? A-at least in this case.”

I gave the pegasus a look. “I’d be lying if I said I’d want any harm to come to you ladies. That, of course, could just be my culture speaking, but I’d like to think it’s because I’m just a nice guy who doesn’t want to see nice girls get hurt by bad ponies.”

The pegasus, rubbed her shoulder. “I , uh, see.”

“It’s the kind of thing I’ve done my whole life, really,” I chuckled, “helping ponies, stopping bad ponies, and so forth. It’s just the thing you do in lieu of a hobby in Teutschland.”

“Your nation sounds... strange,” Dust remarked, glancing at the pony in the other room.

I smiled. “Ma’am, you don’t know the half of it, like how strange our government is. You might get a headache if I tried to explain to you the role of Mister Pendergast.”

“Mister Pendergast?”

I sighed a ‘here goes’ kind of sigh. “Also known as King Pendergast, but don’t say it to his face. If you called King Pendergast ‘King Pendergast’ to his face, that would be considered an insult; it implies he’s somehow inherently better than you, which would imply you’re lower than him, which would mean a whole slew of things that throw our whole system out of order. If you ever meet him, you should call him ‘Mister Pendergast’ in Equestrian, ‘Herr Pendergast’ in Teutsch; otherwise, when speaking of him in the third person, you’re free to refer to him as King.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t get me started on how convoluted that whole thing gets—how Teutschland doesn’t technically have a king because we’re a constitutional republic, but the king is the ‘König der Teutschen’, the King of the Teutschen, which is somehow a different thing despite Mister Pendergast being the de facto Oberkommandierender. I don’t have time to explain it to you, really.

“Look, the moral of that whole story is that, well, everyone is equal in Teutschland.” I shook my head. “Just rest assured we Teutsche are the only reason you can sleep soundly at night; we defeat, we kill, the monsters that want to hurt you.” I adjusted my hat. “As the only Teutscher in this half of the planet, I guess that job falls to me. The strong do what they can; the weak suffer as they must. But if the strong are righteous, the weak need not suffer, for the strong provide.”

Cards grunted. I looked over to see her curled into a ball on the floor, a drip of drool on her lips. Her eyes were closed, a cute little snore escaping her lips. Dust pointed down at her, “Did she just...?”

“Yeah, poor thing,” I muttered, picking Cards up. “The girl’s day has probably been a literal hell for her. I think she just finally collapsed from it all. And, to be honest, I can’t blame her.”

“Wait. What are you doing to her?” Dust asked.

“I’m hefting her over my shoulder so I can carry her, Miss Dust,” I said, tossing Cards onto my back.

“Okay, but why?”

“You expect me to just leave an emotionally traumatized mare all alone down here?”

“And what about that other guy. Jeepers, right?” She pointed over her shoulder. “What about him?”

“What about him?”

Dust looked over her shoulder and froze. “He’s gone.”

“What?”

“I said, he’s gone!”

I pushed past Dust and entered the room. Sure enough, no Jeepers. No matter how much I searched, I couldn’t find him. I didn’t think to actually check the door until I’d scrounged the rest of the room. “Scheiße!” I hissed. “Ten Mark says he opened the door and strolled away.”

“Mark?” She shook her head. “Nevermind that. I’m sure I would have heard him leave.”

“Apparently not,” I sighed. The mare on my back gurgled something. “Quiet, you,” I said. In response, Cards groaned and wrapped her arms over my shoulder, her face snuggling up to my neck. I shook my head and wandered into the hallway.

“What now?” Dust asked.

“Upstairs. I get the feeling that things are about to get worse. We see if there’s any information in here, and then we’re going to leg it.” I made my way through the hallway and up the stairs. On the second floor, which looked very clean and proper, I poked through the rooms until I found the study. Dust made her way in behind me.

“Hey,” she said in a quiet voice.

“Hmm?” I hummed.

“When Cards said that she was hanging out with the stallion who killed her only friend, what did that mean?”

I sighed as I looked at the large desk near the window. “My father used to tell me that there were three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth. It would be pointless to tell you, really—just know that I’m willing to defend myself, even if the attacker is your friend.”

“I...” she tried, but fell silent.

I opened up a large drawer and found one of those gutted records. After putting it upon the dark, wooden desk, I found the play button and hit it. The voice that came out was soft and had a vaguely arrogant tone that made me want to smash his head against a birdbath.

“Listen up, boys. You’ve been dispatched to this little town to make sure it stays put, and to prevent anypony from getting hurt. A local couple’s already gone missing when they went into the swamp, our effort to keep them out of it earlier failed hard.”

He sighed. “We’re going to have to do everything we can to keep the peasants here safe. If that means having to ruin their lives to ensure they still have lives, so be it. Keep them safe. Keep the people from knowing. They must never know what we had and still have to do for them, and in exchange we’ll keep your loved ones in good health. You are authorized to use any means you see necessary save for outright murder to do this.

“And remember: without the you-know-what, anypony going too far into the swamp will be killed by the entropic fields. If, for some unfathomable reason, you need the thing, contact me; I’ll see if I can arrange it. I wish you two well—” he hesitated, then added “—and pray that, in the end, the Princess—no, that the Princesses forgive us for keeping this nation safe.”

The recording clicked off. Then I noticed a symbol carved into the gutted record player. It depicted a crossed pair of violins behind the proud head of a mighty elk. The crest of some royal house, I was sure. I glanced over to Dust, who was just staring at me. “Something up?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I... I know that voice.”

“Do tell.”

“That... I heard it a few years back when I was in Songnam; it’s the voice of Duke Elkington, Duke of Marcia. But—” she hesitated “—why would Duke Elkington be involved with this? He’s a good pony, always holding public feasts and parties for everyone. He’s literally the most down-to-earth and nicest of all the nobles.”

“Because he’s an aristocrat; being evil is their only pastime, aside from wenching, fathering bastards, and generally being jerks.” I paused. “And Songnam. What’s that?”

“Er, that’s the famous ‘Song City’, where Duke Elkington rules from.” She ran a hoof through her mane. “It’s known for its public parties, music and dancing, and generally just being a fun place. Heck, the town mayor is actually elected by a musical tournament. The most popular musician is elected mayor.”

That’s a horrible way to elect somebody. I nodded. “And where’s it located?”

“Uh... it’s not too, too far away from here, I guess.” She gestured over a shoulder. “But what about those entropic fields in that swamp? You heard that, right? Dark magic?”

I looked over the nearest desk. Aside from ten scattered Bits, which I pocketed, there was nothing more of interest. I trotted over to the other desk. On it were two photos, a faded black-and-white of a relatively pretty mare, the other of two smiling children. This was Boulder’s desk, I was sure.

Poking through one drawer landed me with a nifty feather pen. That was a keeper. Another drawer held five Bits. Also mine. The last one held a few envelopes, two addressed to Boulder, two to White Tongue, and one addressed to an unknown address. The last one, I noticed, was an unsent letter, the other four were received ones.

As I put the letter onto the desk, I found that they’d been hiding a cookbook with a bookmark. I set the book onto the desk and flipped to the bookmarked page. ‘Marty Stew’ the page’s recipe declared. “Huh,” I mumbled, looking at the organic, all-vegetarian ingredients. “Yuck. No, thanks.” I put the book back. That’s when I saw a wrapped chocolate bar sitting in a dark corner of the drawer. I pulled it out and offered it to Dust. “You like chocolate?”

“Chocolate? What about that dark magic!?”

“So, does that mean you don’t want?”

Dust snatched it out of my hoof and put it in her bag. “Of course I want it, don’t be ridiculous. I freakin’ love chocolate,” she grumbled, and I smirked.

“Figured. Girls love chocolate” I waggled a hoof at her. “And before you accuse me of sexism, I’ll have you know that it is a statistically validated stereotype.” Putting the hoof down, I tossed the five letters into my bag; I could snoop through the mail of dead ponies later.

She took a breath. “And dark magic? Tell me please that there’s no such thing, right?”

I rubbed my chin. “Well, I’ve been around the world, and I’ve seen some things. It’s become pointedly clear to me that this world is really, really big. And in this big, big, really big world of ours, nothing is impossible.” I shrugged. “Though from my point of view, most all magic above simple levitation is ‘dark magic’, at least as you’d probably understand it; that’s just a cultural and religious belief amongst my people. So, you’ve got to understand that your definition of ‘dark magic’ and my definition of ‘dark magic’ are two totally different concepts, I’d wager.”

“Wait. What? That’s crazy. Magic’s just magic; there’s nothing dangerous about it, at least nothing like that.”

“No, it’s logical.” I sighed. “Look, it would be wrong of me to push my morals and beliefs upon you, and not a little bit preachy and annoying, I’d wager. Although I am pretty sure the only reason Equestrians can use magic so freely is because my countrymen are out there, exterminating those forces of darkness with extreme prejudice before they can make their way across the ocean and to Equestria.” I looked at her. “You are aware of the old fairy tale about Nightmare Moon, right?”

She nodded.

“She was corrupted by these nightmarish forces that we fight every day back home in the Reich. Because we fight and exterminate them, Equestrians can rest easy at night, even if you don’t know anything of the blood we shed for people like you.” I paused, then added, “Er, the Reich is just another name for Teutschland.”

Dust didn’t reply.

“So, personal beliefs aside, it’s clear to me what I’ve got to do now: journey to Songnam and speak with Duke Elkington. If there’s dark magic afoot, and if innocents are being harmed, then I’ve got to help out.” I did a quick search of the room, but found nothing else of interest. “So, are you down with coming with me, Miss Lightning Dust, Ace Reporter?”

“I...”

“It’s okay if you say no, ma’am,” I said with a warm smile. “I shouldn’t expect you to want to see what other things are here; we are already so far beyond your comfort zone.”

Dust sighed, lowering her head. “And I get the distinct feeling that I’m in too deep to give up... that if I just walked away now, some seedy government types would come knocking on my front door. And then that’s the last anypony ever sees of Lightning Dust.”

Cards muttered something in her sleep, her horn poking into the back of my neck. I pushed her horn aside. “So, you’ll come with me?”

The pegasus hesitated, and then—

There was a shout from outside. Cards still on my back, I trotted over to the window to see what it was, but the window was too fogged up to see out off. I tried to rub the window, but the fog was on the outside, and so my efforts did me nothing. In a moment of clarity, I grabbed the gutted record player, realizing I could use it as incriminating evidence against Duke Elkington should ever the need arise; it found its way into a bag. I weaved my way out of the room and into an adjacent room, and its window was in the same state.

“The hell...?” I muttered, trotting down the stairs.

“What’s going on?” Dust asked, jogging alongside me.

“I don’t know,” I replied, coming to the front door. I tried the front door and found it wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t locked, just stuck. I tried to push it open and balance Cards at the same time, but found I could only do one or the other.

“Uh, here—I got it,” Dust offered. I stepped back and let her work. She pushed and rammed her shoulder against the door. When that didn’t work, she gritted her teeth, stepped back, and jumped into the air. Of course, this technique worked; she smashed through the door, and went rolling to the ground.

I chased after her. “Miss Dust, are you...” The words died on my lips as I gazed out at the seething mob of ponies before the house. Some were carrying torches, some were dressed like deputies and carried batons, some had rakes, other pitchforks, and one strange mare was carrying a rolling pin. Even with the setting sun above, I could make out a few faces: Chief Blackout, that buck from the bar, Doc Dome and his family, and the pegasus known as Jeepers. Dust was lying at the foot of the porch, rubbing her head and plucking out splinters.

“Um... hello,” I said. “I’m totally the good guy, here, I swear.” Cards moaned and rolled off my back. “Uh, I don’t know what this might look like to you, but it’s probably not it. If we’d just all sit down and have a nice cup of tea—”

“That’s him,” Jeepers said calmly, pointing a hoof at me. “That’s the buck that done locked me up in that house all this time, and was gonna do the same to those two ladies.”

A large stallion took the reins of the mob as he stepped to its head. He was wearing a silver star badge, a stetson, and a set of the local police fatigues. His black mane looked oddly gray in the evening light. “So, you’re that government boy, huh?”

“Yeah, he is, Sheriff,” Doc Dome chimed. Behind him, the crowd murmured murderously.

I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Why the hell does nopony ever want to sit down and talk? Do you know just how many wars and deaths could have been avoided if people just talked and worked out their differences and such? Neither do I, but probably at least one.”

“Wait, wha’?” Dust stammered, looking over the mob. “What’s all this?”

“Don’t worry, Ma’am,” Sheriff Strong said, adjusting his hat. “We’ve got this covered; this is justice.”

Cards rolled over again, putting her belly to the sky. I was sort of wishing I’d had the good sense to remove her... my duster from her after she passed out. I had the feeling it’d come in handy soon. “So,” I said as diplomatically as possible when you were probably about to get attacked by an angry mob, “can we please just sit down and work out this misunderstanding? I really, really don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“A pity,” Sheriff Strong sneered, “’cause we want to hurt you.”

“Of course you do,” I sighed as the Chief Blackout pointed her baton at me.

“Get ’im!” the Chief shouted, and the entire mob charged.

“I am so going to die,” I huffed, reaching for my sword.

“Wait. What?” Dust asked, stumbling to her hooves.

I made the fatal mistake of glancing at the bumbling pegasus just as a baton—a metal one, I was sure—smacked me upside the jaw. Maybe I still could’ve grabbed my sword and fought back, but I just stood there as another one hit me just above the eye. Then I saw Chief Blackout grab my face and shove my head into the porch’s wooden floor.

“That’s for earlier,” she hissed, then spat on me.

“Wait, no! What are you—” Dust tried, only to be silenced by a deputy.

“Ma’am, you’re safe now. We got the bastard,” he said, putting a hoof on her shoulder.

“Hey, hey, there ya go,” I heard the Sheriff say in a low, soft voice. Cards moaned, but Sheriff Strong cooed, “Shoosh, shoosh, shoosh—Daddy’s got ya. Daddy’s got ya.”

I glanced up and saw him cradling Cards in his arms. Chief Blackout flashed him a venomous look, and he shot her a harsher one. She held the look as he picked his daughter up and hefted her over his back. That’s about the time I realized that I was being tied up, and about the time that the Chief kicked my head.

“Where are you taking him?! Hey! Hey!” Dust shouted, but nopony listened to her.

I think I would have been in a lot worse pain if I hadn’t been on the morphine. Mmm... morphine. The crowd began to roar with approval as they picked my body up and hefted me with them, their shouts drowning out any and all of Dust’s protests. As if they were a single tidal wave of flesh, fur, and hatred, the mob surged around me, taking turns smashing and hitting me as I was carried through them.

They carried me down hill. They carried me into town. They carried me into the town square. They carried me to the gallows.

Gallows. Fantastic. Those were new, I was sure. Probably hastily constructed, and the wood was still a bit splintery as I was tossed onto its deck. A rather grim rope hung from a large wooden beam over a trapdoor. New or otherwise, its purpose was unmistakable.

The mob stepped back to get a good view of me, the sunset casting an unearthly glow of malice over the crowd. Chief Blackout climbed up and looked down at me. “So, this is what we’ve come to?” she said, shaking her head. Then she smiled. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I like how you have a moral thing against murder,” I said as if discussing the weather, “yet the ponies here are all but shouting for my blood. Screams a bit of hypocrisy, no?”

She kicked me. “Mind your place, dog!”

“I am. As it happens to be, that place would be by your hooves. Tied up. About to buy the farm,” I said.

“Shut the hell up, or I’ll hang you by more than just your hooves!”

I blinked. “Wait. You weren’t going to do—I’ll be good! I’ll be good!”

A cold, calculating look crossed her face as she looked at me. “Where did you think I was going to hang you by?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The arms. Maybe the legs. Something that’d make me very uncomfortable.”

“Ever see a pony get hanged? That’s how they’re supposed to die: the weight of their own body tears their head from their neck,” I recalled myself saying only minutes ago.

The crowd began to chant. “Hang him! Hang him!”

Her cold look morphed into something wholly unholy. “What about your neck?”

“What good would that do, Ma’am?” I asked, trying to shrug. “I mean, yeah, if you want to be remembered as that one really, really evil mare that was later arrested and tried for murder, by all means.”

She hesitated. Then she grabbed the rope. “I’ll give the rope some slack. You won’t strangle to death, just hang there.”

“That’s taking an artistic license with biology and how the neck works!” I protested, struggling against my bonds. “I get that you probably didn’t care for equine anatomy in biology class, but this isn’t justice! This is m—”

“Shut up,” she snarled, kicking me in the gut. As I gasped for breath, she put the noose around my neck. She grabbed me and forced me to my hooves, only to drag me to the middle of the trapdoor. “This is justice, pain and simple. You hurt us, we’ll hurt you back plenty... and with interest.”

Some unseen pony hoisted the rope up, tightening it so that I had no chance of simply running. I looked out into the crowd and into their dark, hateful expressions. “I’m on your side, people!” I yelled. “The pegasus who turned me in? He was working with them!”

“Shove a sock in it!” a mare yelled, throwing a stick at me. Now that I understood a bit more about the common sock and its strange relation to the Equestrians, I really didn’t want to think about the implications of that stock sock remark.

Then I saw Cards, standing shakily besides her father. In no time at all, I located Lightning Dust standing in the front rows of the mob, her jaw gaping. She looked like she’d just seen a ghost, and that ghost had tried hitting on her, and it had been mildly successful; yet her eyes were as if she were staring straight into a solar eclipse, awed by its beauty, blinded by the light, and paralyzed by its majesty. I suddenly calmed down. Of course they weren’t going to be able to hang me, I knew. At the very last, most dramatic second, Cards or Dust were bound to stand up and scream “No!” and come to my aide. They would certainly explain things, and then engulf this whole town in a wave of awkwardness, whereupon I would be released to go as I pleased.

That was certainly going to happen.

So I smiled warmly, expecting my rescue any second now. They messed with the rope around my neck, and I just stood there, idly smiling. They prepared to release the trapdoor, and I simply smiled. This is going to be so hilariously awesome, I eagerly thought, trying not to laugh as I imagined looks there were going to be on everypony’s faces when it happened.

It was going to be awesome.

I was going to be saved.

To think otherwise was silly.

I wondered if it would be Dust or Cards. I even looked at them, trying to figure out which one would dramatically come to their senses first. One voice in my head had a Bit on Cards, another had three on Dust.

This was going to be good. The only thing missing was a heavy downpour plus the clap of thunder. But at least it was dark enough to still look cool. I looked down at Dust and smiled. She had wings, so maybe she’d fly up here and—

The trapdoor creaked and swung away. The rope tightened as it jerked my neck nearly to the snapping point. Gravity pulled me down, but the noose held me up. I choked for air, swallowing only broken, uneven gulps. I tried to exhale, but all the came out was sick, wet gurgle.

“Holy hell!” I tried to shout, but failed as the words became so much coughing. The rope had been poorly tied; the fall hadn’t internally decapitated me, but I was choking. Hard. I reached my hooves up and clawed at the noose, only to remember that my hooves were still tied and bound.

Reality check. I was being hanged. My neck was unbroken, and the pain I felt on my neck (probably because of morphine) was too terribly unbearable. Cards and Dust were just watching, looking too shocked to act. Four minutes. I had at least four minutes to live. It took anywhere between four to eight minutes to strangle a pony to death, which is why strangulation is the worst, most time-consuming way too kill a pony. So, given elapsed time. I had perhaps three-and-a-half minutes to live. Good to know. It was always so nice when you could count down the seconds till you died.

Think, damn you, think! a voice encouraged.

I willed myself to try stay as calm as possible, even over the approving roar of the crowd. Doc Dome, I saw, was shielding his daughter’s eyes from me. Trying to gulp down air through my tight throat, I tried to think.

“Hey,” Chief Blackout snickered, “how’s it hangin’?”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you were clever?” I choked, not even sure if my words were coming out as words. “Because they were lying! And if you must now, I’m hanging slightly to the left.”

I needed to cut the rope. I needed to it it faster, before they could stop me. I needed something good. I was going to die. Think. Think. Think. I needed to—needed to—needed to—There is one option.

My bags. I still had my bags! The idiots had tied them to me! I had all of my things still. I tried to think. What did I have that could help—You have them, you know. Don’t you think this is one of those times when you have no other choice?

No, no, I could get myself out of here without them. A minute. A minute had passed. Lieb’ Gott im Himmel, I’m going to die. Hard. And like a dog.

Use them. Trust me.

“No,” I gurgled. How could I even reach into my bag? I groped and prodded my body with my telekinesis. An elated burst of hope hit me as I found where they’d bound my body. The rope had been hastily done and wasn’t well made at all. It came off me easily enough, only shaving a minute off my countdown to strangulation. I was starting to see black spots dance across my vision, the corners of my eyes already getting fuzzy.

“Hey, get the ropes back on him!” the Sheriff called out. Immediately, a pair of ponies brought the ropes up from the ground and to the gallows’ deck.

I reached into my bags, trying to grab something—anything—that might help me. I grabbed it. A sizable metal object intricately crafted by the will of an angel and of God Himself. My magic caressed it and its brother. I felt ropes around me.

Now. Or. Never...

I swallowed my paranoia and fear of a more pressing matter tomorrow and pulled it out. Really, the only thing that could have possibly made things any better would’ve been picking up chicks at the abortion clinic. Assuming those were a thing in Equestria. Best not think about that... or think about how that thought guaranteed me a cozy spot in Hell.

“Now!” I howled.

A click, a tap, a squeeze.

Fire. A light that would have disfigured hell. A sound so ferocious and angry it captured the imagination—seduced and destroyed it. It was as if Adonai Himself were bellowing with all His godly rage at the world. The beam holding my rope exploded into wooden shrapnel, and I dropped to the ground, the noose still around my neck. A piece of the gallows hit some poor stallion on the head; he didn’t get back up after that.

And there I was, lying on the cold, hard dirt. I panted for my life; the crowd went silent, just staring at me. Slowly, coughing and choking for air, I rose to my hooves. I cocked back a lever on the device as I read the inscription engraved into the metal and wood on the weapon’s side: “Καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει.” As I flipped it over and put it in my bag, I read the half of the inscription carved into the weapon’s other side: “Καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.” Put together, it meant: “And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

Pulling the rope off my neck, I drew out my sword, another tool the idiots had forgotten to take off my body. The closest pony to me was Sheriff Strong. I pointed my sword at him and shouted, “Enough is enough, you blithering idiots!”

The crowd just stared at me. Sheriff Strong attempted to back away, but I stayed almost on top of him. “N-now hold on just a minute,” he tried.

“Yes. Exactly. A minute. Hold onto it. Please do.” I smiled a mirthless, toothy grin at him. “See, if you’d just done this in the first place, there’d be a lot fewer hurt feelings. Instead, you acted out of thoughtless emotion.” I poked his breast with my sword. “These are your people, Sheriff Strong. That psycho mare up there is your wife. I’d like to think you’re the leader here, yes?”

He nodded. “I...”

I spied Jeepers standing to my side, his expression utterly blank. With a swing of my sword to the side, I nicked his neck. It was nowhere near enough to kill him, but it was enough to send him clutching for his throat and terrify the crowd. Predictably, the mob seethed away from the body. “Is there a doctor in the audience?” I laughed, eying Doc Dome. Slowly, the Doc ambled out of the crowd and to Jeepers, trying his best to stop bleeding. He’d be successful, I knew, and Jeepers would live on with only a neat little scar to show for it.

A part of me contemplated disemboweling Jeepers with the sword on the grounds that “it’d be really, really fun—and a great way to get rid of some stress”. Sadly, the better angels of my nature got the best of me, and I turned my psychotic grin back to Sheriff Strong. “So, Sheriff,” I glowered, bringing my sword back towards him, “here’s how—”

“Government boy!” a mare’s voice cried out. I froze as Cards staggered in front of her father, panting hard and looking sick as she put herself between me and the Sheriff.

“Oh, what’s up, Cards? Thought you were passed out,” I said, shrugging as nonchalantly as a recently hung stallion could.

“Please, please,” she begged, “don’t hurt my father. Please!”

“Cards, sweetie, don’t,” Sheriff Strong murmured, putting a hoof on her shoulder.

“No!” she shouted. “I’ve been nothing but a failure all these years! I couldn’t help Glasses, couldn’t help Mom, couldn’t help anypony ever! But today I’m, I’m standing up for something...” She turned her fiery eyes to me. “You are not gonna hurt my dad,” she growled. If it were anypony else, it might have been intimidating. As it was, I just broke out laughing.

“I wasn’t going to hurt him, Cards,” I snickered, trying to get a hold on myself. “I was going to tell him something: I’m the good guy.”

She blinked. “Huh-bu-wha’?”

My smile went down a few notches on the psych-o-meter. I rose my sword up, pointing it at the heavens. I shouted out in the most inspirational way I could manage, “Who I am doesn’t matter! All that matters is that you people and I are on the same side. I came to this town from across the world because a divine being guided me here, and also because I got lost, but never mind that. I am here to end this government conspiracy once and for all. I’ll kill all those who’ve been hurting you.

“For too long have you people been oppressed. For too long have you ponies not stood up for yourselves. You need to organize, because you—yes, you—are the strong ones here. If you refuse to play ball with those who’d bully you, then you’d come to see that you are legion, you are stronger.” I sheathed my sword. “I’m not here to hurt you, no; I’m here to help you. And besides, you couldn’t hurt me even if you really, really tried.” Liar... “Ich bin ein Mann aus Stahl! Ein Teutscher, das bin ich!”

The crowd didn’t reply. Many of them stared at me. Others stared at Cards. A few stared at Doc Dome.

I glanced over at Lightning Dust, still silently standing at the forefront of the crowd. “Oh, and might I be so kind as to thank you for standing up to the misinformed mob and helping me, Miss Dust? You were oh so helpful in pretty much the same way hemorrhoids aren’t.” I affixed Cards with an acid look. “Oh, and I’d like my duster back now. I was fine with lending it to you earlier, but now I feel that it’d do me a world of good again.”

Slowly, Cards undressed. She handed me the duster. I thanked her and took it. A moment later and I was fully equipped again. I walked into the crowd. They split away from me as I sauntered past, their faces expressing most every emotion short of happiness.

“I-I-I,” Dust sputtered, “I didn’t know what they were doing or... and... I didn’t want to believe it, I—”

“You sure do have yourself a way with creative problem solving, don’t you?” I remarked back at her. “Because were that you up there in my stead, I promise you that I’d have cut through every one of these ponies to save your life. You only watched and gaped. I think we both know how this ends.”

Lightning Dust stood frozen and stared at me as I went. I didn’t think about how much my neck throbbed with fresh bruises and skin-layer hemorrhages as I walked alone through the crowd and out of the central plaza. I didn’t think about Cards as I walked down the town’s dirt streets. I didn’t think about Lightning Dust as I reached the town’s border. As I stopped by a large rock to catch my breath, I didn’t think about any of it. The only thing on my mind then was just what I’d ask Duke Elkington when I met him, and just how much force it’d require before he answered those questions. And the answers were “I don’t know” and “as much as I can get away with”, respectively.

I sat down on a large nearby rock, and soon I was lying on my back. Rubbing my bruised neck, I muttered, “In Nomine Patris, et Prophetae, et Spiritus Machinae. Amen.” As much as it physically pained me to acknowledge it, I was at a loss. I was all alone again, and that meant I once again had total freedom of action. And so too was I all alone again, nopony to offer me alternate viewpoints, nopony to help me out when I didn’t know the locale, nopony to talk with but the imaginary voices in my head.

Think... So, I had to get to Songnam? How was I to get there? Think... What did I need right now? A map or a local guide. Think... Where would I find either of those? Think... Oh, can you tell me, can you tell me how to get to Songnam Street? I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. Could just give up. Now, there was a suddenly appealing thought. I could just let these Equestrians tear themselves apart, laughing as Duke Elkington pulled some overly elaborate scheme that ended with him doing something evil. All the while, I’d be in Canterlot, loitering around and pretending to write an ethnography about the people of Equestria. At least that was a plan with an ending I could count on. But this? What in God’s name was I doing out here?

I hoofed at the letter in my pocket, frowning. Of course, if I just left the situation as it was, the bad guys would win. My frown deepened as I pondered just how badly things could spiral if I didn’t offer Equestria the services which it needed. But it wasn’t as if they were Teutsche, wasn’t as if Equestria collapsing would really harm my countrymen. So long as I didn’t actively help Elkington, it wasn’t as if I’d face any punishment.

Besides, there was a metaphorical brick wall in front of me, and I hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring a ladder. Songnam was who-knew how far away, and I was in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I could do a random sidequest while I waited for something interesting to happen, one that was less convoluted than... seriously, what ever was I doing? What was my goal in this endeavor? Expose the conspiracy? Hunt down and execute its members? And why even do it, really, other than because “my guardian angel thought it’d be a good idea”?

Why?

Why...?

Because it was all I knew how to do anymore. It was all there was, the only option, the only rational decision, the best way to occupy my time. It was because I just had to keep trying to do good while making the world a better place simply out of a reflexive drive to push forward. Because the opposite was to just sit around and be a normal pony, and that idea could go fornicate itself by repeatedly opening and closing a spiky umbrella in the anus—and do so while I inappropriately yodeled off in the background.

And my guardian angel knew well that fact, didn’t he? You had to appreciate that kind of manipulation, and I had to take pointers. All the angel had to do was give me an origami swan pointing me in the right direction; I would see what I wanted and obey his will without ever once doing anything out of the ordinary for me. I got what I wanted, he got whatever he wanted. It was... oddly symbiotic.

I snickered. There, my obligatory internal conflict done and done, just like any proper hero. That was total proof that I was clearly the hero of this quest. Only heroes had mental issues and then got over them. And since heroes never lost, I was sure to win at whatever it was that I was doing. I rolled off the rock. “Now then, to find a way to get to Songam,” I said with a smirk.

My ear twitched as I heard the feminine voice from up the road, from the direction of the town. Swearing under my breath, I dove behind the rock. Peeking through the bushes that bordered the rock, I saw a little mare shambling down the road, two stuffed bags slung over her back. The whites of her eyes were red, a fresh-looking bruise resting on a cheek. Her black-with-red-stripes mane looked just as ruffled as the rest of her body did. Walking alongside the little mare was another mare, an opal-coated pegasus with bright orange eyes. The way the two walked looked as if they were leaning on each other for support.

“Stop,” Cards muttered, looking at the rock. “Stop here. I need to catch my breath.”

Lightning Dust nodded, sitting herself down on the rock. Shifting myself silently, I noted a large cut across Dust’s back that certainly wasn’t there before, as well as the disheveled state of her feathers. “Gotcha,” Dust sighed.

I laid down on my side and pressed myself against the back of the rock as Cards also sighed. The two were silent for what felt like hours. Then, Cards asked, “What do we do now? Because I don’t know, and I don’t want to go back there.”

Dust put a hoof on her ruffled wing. “We should have helped GB,” she said darkly. “It was my fault that happened, my fault he almost died, my fault we’ve got to do this ourselves.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Card replied. “We can do this ourselves, Lightning Dust.” She let out a mirthless chuckle. “All we gotta do is figure out what to do, and we’re set. We don’t need him, and wishin’ for his help won’t help us none.” Cards was silent for a moment. “So, what do we do now?”

The pegasus shifted herself. “Cards, I’m a reporter. It’s my job to investigate and uncover the truth. GB said something about going to Songnam, and I... suppose that’s our best shot as well. Don’t suppose you know a way there, do you?”

“I... yeah, a boat. There’s a place not too far away with one, and maybe we can get a ride from there,” Cards replied, and that piqued my interest. “Wait, why Songnam?”

Lightning Dust explained to her the gist of my plan. Cards didn’t ask any questions. Afterwards, Dust asked, “But what if GB’s in Songnam when we get there?”

“Look, that government boy... we can do without him, Dust, and so what if we found him?” Cards replied. “Dust, if you’re willing to work with me, I’d be willing to work with you. Together, I’m sure we’d be able to save Sleepy Oaks and get you that story.”

The wind picked up, swaying the many trees by the rock. I took the time to slowly, quietly, stand up. Standing behind the girls, they didn’t notice me. Really, I couldn’t think of why I was trying to hide myself other than because it was sort of fun.

“And you’re sure we couldn’t just, say, try to tell Princess Celestia what’s going on here?” Dust probed, and Cards glanced at her.

“Trust me, it wouldn’t work. We’ve tried to do it, but never can,” Cards replied. “There’s a lot to that, but... look, we’ve tried it, and it hasn’t worked.”

“And so we’ve gotta do it ourselves.” Dust sighed long and hard. She looked at her hooves, at Cards, at the sky, at the forest, at Cards again, and then just finally at the ground. “This is my fault,” she said so quietly.

“Stop saying that,” Cards said in a tone bordering weakly on commanding.

“Look, I don’t care what you think, but GB’s words won’t leave my head. He would have helped me, but I didn’t... I was too scared , shocked, and stunned to do anything but stare. Now he’s gone, and like it or not, I’m pretty sure he’d be infinitely helpful to us. He’s the only one of us who knows how to swing a sword, at least, and where we’re going, I’m pretty sure a buck with a blade would be handy.”

Cards looked around—never once checking behind herself—and swallowed. “S-somepony once told me if I ever wanted to deal with my great guilt, I had to fight for something,” she said, and Dust gave her attention to Cards. “He said I’d never be able to get rid of the guilt, but if I could make the world better for other ponies, I’d have some semblance of solace. He told me I could never make it right, but I could at least make it better.”

She licked her lips and sighed. “Dust, until a few hours ago, I really didn’t have anything to live for. I had a job I was no good at, barely any income, was a social outcast, and had only one friend ever in the whole wide world.” The mare rubbed her eyes. “Now... I have something to live for, a small sliver of hope in an otherwise pointless existence.”

“What?” Dust asked, inclining her head.

Cards hesitated. “A drive to give meaning to the death of my best friend. It’s the only thing left in my pathetic, wretched existence. He died because I made a mistake, died because I was an idiot. With him dead, I truly had nothing worthwhile in the world. And I... I can’t live with the idea that he died for nothing.” She shook her head and said, “I cannot.”

Dust was silent, so Cards went on. “But if his death could mean something, could lead me saving Sleepy Oaks and everypony within it, then maybe I could sleep at night.”

“Glasses,” Lightning Dust muttered, and Cards’ eyes widened. “You mentioned him earlier, and said that GB killed him.”

Cards shook. “That government boy swung the sword, but it was my actions that put the sword at Glasses’ neck. If I hadn’t made a dumb choice, a stupid, foalish attempt to make something of my life, he’d still be alive. But he’s not, and it’s my fault. I hate that government boy with every fiber of my being, but I knew that he... he was the only one willing to help me, to allow me to give Glasses’ death meaning.” She gave Dust a dark expression. “And if had to make a deal with the murderous devil himself to do that,” she said, gritting her teeth, “so be it.”

“Murderous devil?” I interjected in a high-pitched tone. The girls shrieked and flailed to the ground. “I beg to differ!”

“You!” they both gasped.

“Yes, I am he and you are they, yet we are us,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “And it’s not murder when a stallion thrice your muscle mass is charging you—his purpose about as far away from ‘hugs and kisses’ as a bottle of scorpions taken anally was from being a good idea.”

“How long have you been standing there?” Dust gasped.

I hopped onto the rock. “Eh, about long enough to hear everything you said. I mean, really, you had to come to this rock?”

“Uh...” Cards droned.

“The universe likes it some coincidences, doesn’t it?” I chuckled.

“What do you want from us?” Dust asked, then gulped.

I hopped down off the rock, and the girls nearly stumbled over themselves as they backed away from me. That got me thinking, and a dark grin spread over my face. So I spoke in a deep voice, punctuating every new syllable by dramatically stepping towards the girls: “Wie gehts euch, Frauen?” I stopped walking. “Mir gehts gut.”

“What are you saying!?” Cards demanded, her eyes wide.

My smile went from demented to openly friendly. It was hard to stay so serious when I wanted to laugh so hard. “Cards,” I said, “I don’t mind you, and you don’t like me—I get that. Really, I do. But that doesn’t mean you get to spread lies about me. Also, when you say ‘devil’, are you referring to a specific being, like to dem Teufel, or just a word?”

Dust inclined her head. “A... a devil is just, like, a mean pony and stuff. I guess there are a few, um, phrases with the word in it.”

“Ah, so to you it’s like Hell: just a word with no actual religious significance,” I said, putting a hoof to my chin. “Your whole theology is screwy to me, but it’s your theology and I won’t question it.”

She took a breath. “What do you want from us, GB?”

I shrugged. “See, I have a problem: I want to get to Songnam, but I don’t have the first clue how to get there. Cards here seems to be the only pony here who knows how to get there. This is most problematic because I don’t quite trust you, but as chance would have it, I find myself in need of assistance.”

Dust hesitated, looking between me and Cards. “You... want us to help you?”

“That’s one way of putting it, yes. We both have the sames goals, if different methods.” I adjusted my collar. “Now, I trust you as far as I can throw you—wait. If I got high enough and threw Lightning Dust, couldn’t she just spread her wings and glide about, which would mean that I could actually throw her very, very far? And if I threw Cards off a high enough place, she’d just tumble down and die a horrible, if hilarious, death. And then Dust could keep flying around and yell, ‘Enjoy gravity, loser!’”

They just stared at me.

“Come to think, this whole scenario could suck the metal off doorknobs. Hmmm.” I shook my head and sighed, “Nihil novi sub sole.”

“Wha...?” they both tried.

“Um, it means ‘nothing new under the sun’. It’s just a phrase we have back in the Reich. Point is, I’d rather not work with ponies who wouldn’t help me if I were being lynched, and yet I appear to need to work with such ponies if I want a chance of getting any farther in my quest.”

“I’m sorry, okay?!” Dust blurted out. “I got scared and froze! What more do you want from me!?”

I nodded. “I know; I heard you two talking,” I replied, and Dust blinked hard. “Still doesn’t change that neither your nor Cards tried to help, although it makes it easier to excuse. Cards was in the same boat, right?” I asked, and said mare weakly nodded. “So, I suppose I’m not so much angry as I am just really disappointed in you two. Still, we have the same goals now, and it is my chagrin to say that I think I need your help.”

Dust swallowed. “An alliance of convenience?”

Again, I nodded. “Cards wants to give Glasses’ death meaning. You want to get the story of a lifetime, one guaranteed to shake this nation to the core and make your entire career. Me? I have this pathological need to keep going, a reflexive instinct to push forwards and fight evil. Each one of us has a different reason, but the same goal. This is merely a means to an end. We would be comrades of necessity.” I licked my lips. “I highly doubt the ponies that reddened themselves with Discord’s blood would have been seen breaking bread together afterwards. In fact, I know they didn’t, but they had the same goal in mind beforehand.”

The girls all exchanged glances.

I looked at Cards and said in the silkiest voice I could muster, “You made a deal with the devil once before, care you to make another one?”

Cards looked at me long and hard. She took a breath. “Do I have the choice?”

“Yes, you do,” I said with a nod. “While I still don’t trust you wholeheartedly, if you would be my confederates, my sisters-in-arms, then I would help you achieve your goals as best as I can. So the choice is: win or lose.”

“Which one are you?” she hesitantly asked.

“That depends on whom you ask. If your name is Duke Elkingon or otherwise you fight for evil, I am you lose. If we were confederates, I am you win.”

Dust swallowed and held her hoof out. “I’ll work with you if it means getting that, uh, story.” We shook on it. “I promise you, GB, I’ll stand by you as you’d stand by me.”

I nodded. “And as shall I be by yours, Miss Lightning Dust.” But if you betray me again...

Cards looked at the ground. “After you left, GB, that pegasus guy riled the crowd up again and...” She bit her lip hard. “He convinced them you were lying, and that by helping you, I had betrayed everyone I loved. Dust and I raced to my house and I grabbed everything of mine I could into these two bags.” Did that include her socks? “But then... then...” Cards teared up. “She helped me get out of there, and now I don’t have anything left in the world.”

“I understand what you mean, probably more than you’d think,” I replied.

She took a breath, sighed, looked at her hooves, and said, “And if I have to make a deal with the devil, let it be with the devil who can get results.” Cards offered me a hoof. “I don’t like you, government boy. In fact, I hate you. But if you can promise me what I want, what choice do I have?” We shook on it, Dust nodded as we did.

“There,” I said. “We’ve all made a pact. Like it or not, we’re all in this together, my confederates.” I took a breath, rubbing my eyes. “And Cards would you know anywhere we could spend the night? Somewhere where they wouldn’t bother us about what happened back in town?”

Cards hesitated, then nodded.

“Good. Because tomorrow, my dear lady, we’re all going to Songnam, and you all look like you need to sleep, or else you’ll all die of exhaustion. We can formalize this plan when you two aren’t about to keel over dead.”

Author's Note

Footnote:

Well, that was a chapter. I tried to keep this short, but I have this problem with writing too much. And yet we’re still in “Act One” of Jericho, though.

Did you know that while writing the morphine scene, I actually conducted a real interview with a trained nurse to make sure the information about morphine I presented was 100% medically accurate? That interview also helped me to write the scene where White Tongue was stabbed, which was medically accurate. Ditto for the scene where I hanged the narrator. Expect realism, because reality likes to make people suffer!

Your thoughts, opinions, and especially constructive criticisms are beyond welcome!

Chapter 7 — Bump

Chapter Seven: Bump

“Oh, this is me being brave! I wanna be brave at home, locked in my closet, with my teddy bear!”

“...that the Princesses forgive us for keeping this nation safe,” the recording crackled, then died down. Cards didn’t reply, just stared off into the trees that surrounded the road.

“So there you have it,” I said. “That’s everything we know so far, and that’s the plan. Aside from a few letters from and to White Tongue and Boulder, we didn’t find anything else of note while you were asleep. Any questions?”

Dust, standing off to the side, let out a yawn while arching her back and spreading her wings. When she caught me looking, she flashed a smile and flexed her wings. She pulled out her chocolate bar and took a nibble.

The unicorn pawed at the dirt road, refusing to look me in the eyes. “Maybe one,” Cards said. “Duke Elkington didn’t sound evil in that recording. I mean, if anything, he sounded a bit worried. What if... what if we’re all wrong here? What if he’s actually doing a good thing, but just is, like, really bad at it?”

I reached to the side and grabbed a lone leaf from a bush. Leaf in hoof, I offered it to Cards. “What color is this?”

“Um, green?”

“Very good,” I said, dropping it. “Do you know what color it wasn’t?”

“Mauve?” Dust suggested, munching on her chocolate.

“Okay, yes, but that wasn’t what I was aiming for.” I shook my head. “The leaf was neither black nor white.”

Cards inclined her head. “What does that mean?”

“We live in a marvelously colorful world, not one of just black and white, though it often seems to boil down into being gray. The fact is, people don’t do bad things just because. If you’re expecting to know who the bad and good guys are just by looking at them from a distance, you’re going to be sadly mistaken. After all, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.”

Cards didn’t reply.

“But enough being dramatic, Cards!” I said with a smile. “Now, where was this place you were taking us to? I’m a mite bit on the tired side.”

She pointed down the road. “Just a little that ways. I’ll–I’ll lead the way, okay?”

“Suits me just fine,” I chirped.

Lightning Dust, having eaten half of the bar, slid up next to me. “She seems to be doing well enough.” She licked a bit of chocolate off her lips as I looked back at her.

“And you’re taking this all in stride, a real trooper.” I followed after Cards, and Dust kept next to me.

“Yeah, I guess am I, ain’t I?” Dust replied. A bird flew overhead as she asked, “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You had a leg and several ribs broken, then you drilled a terrifying needle into your leg.” She shivered. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I hate needles. Not afraid of them, just hate them. Then, to top it all off, you got hanged. I mean, actually, really hanged.”

“And you didn’t try to stop them,” I said coldly, looking ahead. When Dust didn’t say anything else, I fiddled with my bags, poking and prodding with a certain object I had in there. I levitated out two earbuds and put them in my ears. A flick later and the sounds of familiar, thoroughly-enjoyable music filled my head. After the first song, I was actively humming the tunes.

Dust poked my shoulder. I glanced at her and saw her lips moving, but heard nothing. I pulled out the earbuds, then I could hear her. “...in your ears?”

“Say again?”

She ran a hoof through her mane. “Those things in your ears. What are they?”

“Mister Welch called them ‘earbuds’, so I guess that’s what they are, Miss Dust.” I went to put them back in my ears, but then she asked a question.

“What do they do?”

“Equestria lacks them?” I asked. Up ahead of us, Cards hesitated, then turned left and went that way. Of course, Dust and I followed her. “How queer.”

With a wing Dust pulled out her chocolate bar again and nibbled at it. “Well, what does it do?”

“It lets me listen to music without bothering anyone else,” I said, and Dust inclined her head. “I have them hooked up to a record player in my bag, and so as they play, the sound is played through the earbuds and not the speakers.”

“You have a record player in your bag?” she asked incredulously. “How?”

I hit pause on the record player and pulled it out. “See? You’d be surprised to see just how much I can fit in my bags.”

Dust took a huge bite out of her chocolate bar and munched. As she finished it, she threw it off into a bush. Before she could finish chewing, I sighed, “Somewhere, Dust, a buffalo is crying.” I trotted back and grabbed the wrapper, stuffing it into a pocket.

“Huh?” she mare questioned through a mouthful.

“Nevermind, dear girl,” I replied. “Never you mind.”

She swallowed. “Well, like I was saying, that’s not a record player. It’s too... compact.”

“Well, maybe Equestrian ones are just too big,” I scoffed.

“Would you two stop talking?” Cards called back. “Because we’re here. Look!”

I turned and saw the large farmhouse Cards was gesturing out at. A blink later and I was looking back. The forest that had lined the trail, it seemed, had been cut down here to make room for a farmhouse and the dark field beyond.

Dust whistled. “Wow. What a dump.”

“Why do you have to always be so damn negative?” Cards asked, frowning.

“Because lightning is positively charged,” Dust said with a shrug. “Thought I’d mix things up a little.”

I’m pretty sure that the only kind of lightning that’s positively charged is the kind that shoots upwards—ooh, that’s clever... I think. I facehoofed. “Ladies, that’s all well and fine, but can you stop bickering like an old married couple and get back to the matter at hand: namely, whose house is this?”

Cards nodded. “Farmer Agri. Used to live here with his wife, Cola, but she passed away not too long ago. Agri and Cola made a nice team. Grew some pretty good produce, too. I haven’t seen Agri in a while, but that’s probably because he’s waiting for the crops to ripen, y’know?”

Looking out into the fields, I asked, “And what did he grow?”

“Grapes. There’s a distillery in town, too.”

A branch to my left jostled. I looked over to it and paused. There, sitting on a branch and eying me, was a strange green bird with a yellow head, red face, and white beak. I’d seen it before, but where? Where? Recognition hit me as I recalled the painting Lyra had in her kitchen of herself as a filly, a small parrot on her head.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the bird.

“Hmm?” Dust hummed, looking over at it. Her voice went flat. “Oh, it’s one of those.”

“What is it?” I insisted on asking.

Dust sighed. “It’s a Marolina Parakeet, just an annoying pest.”

Cards spoke up. “I knew a filly in town who had a cat, but her cat ate a Marolina Parakeet and died. Apparently, those birds are poisonous, so don’t lick them.”

Dust and I turned our heads to Cards. “Why would you lick a bird?” Dust asked.

“Uh-dunno,” Cards said, turning back to the house. “So. Are we just gonna knock? I mean, Agri should be fine with it. He’s a friend of my father’s, so...”

“Why are there no lights on in the house?” I asked, but nopony heard me. The two mares just ambled their way to the door. Sighing to myself, I followed them. “Hey, can I knock on the door?”

Cards shot me a suspicious look. “You’re not going to punch him, are you?”

“No,” I replied, pawing at the dirt.

“No,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

My ears drooped. “What? Why? Did you want me to punch him? If so, I’ll break his jaw for you, no questions asked.”

She jerked a hoof up at me and shook her head. “No! N-n-no! No need for that! I just think he’d respond better to a familiar face, don’t you?” I gave a hesitant nod, and she sighed. “Okay, good.”

As Cards knocked on the door, I backed away from the girls. “Um, hello? Mister Agri? Are you home? It’s Cards, Sheriff Strong’s daughter.”

The parakeet squawked harshly. I glanced back, only to see a bundle of colorful feathers where the bird had been. That wasn’t unsettling in the least bit. Nope. As I looked over as Cards, I saw her sigh.

“Nada.” She tried the door itself and found it locked. “Any ideas?”

“One,” I muttered with a faint smile, sauntering over to the door. “Please move,” I said, and Cards did. I knelt down and took out a lockpick and knife.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Dust asked.

“Well, what would you expect a roguish type to be doing, hmm?” Tick, tack, tock. The surprisingly rusty lock opened up, the door coming next. Putting my tools away, I stepped into the first room, a rather dusty den. “Knock knock und klopf klopf, Mister Agri!” I called out. “I’m a burglar; I swear I’m not here to sell you a subscription to some really girly magazine!”

“What are you doing?!” Cards hissed.

I chuckled, gesturing around the room. “He’s not home.”

“How do you know that?”

“Did you see the vineyard out there? It looks abandoned. There are no lights on, he won’t reply to any knocks, and so I conclude that he’s not home.”

“Well, maybe he’s just been sick and so can’t go out there to work, huh?”

“Then we’ll explain that you came to check up on him, and found the door open.”

“But you just said you were a burglar!”

I sighed. “We were simply trying to get his attention via humor.”

“He has a dog, you know! A big, mean one!” She stamped her hooves.

“So where it is? Wait. No. Now that I’ve said that, the dog’s gonna just wander in here and attack us, right?” I glanced expectantly at a random doorway. “Huh. What do you know? No dog. That caught me off guard.”

Dust snickered, elbowing the unicorn in the chest. “Cards, I think he’s making fun of you.”

“Well, thinking is the greatest torture in the world for most people,” I replied, shrugging.

Cards sighed, hanging her head. “I hate you ponies.” She pointed through a random doorway. “Look, the kitchen’s in there. You two sit tight and I’ll go look for Mister Agri, okay?”

“Awful brave of you, Cards,” I commented.

“I need some alone time to rethink my life,” she said. When Dust and I didn’t move, Cards closed the front door for us and again pointed to the kitchen. “Well, go on, you. I’m going to search around the place, okay?”

“That’s a dumb idea,” I declared, inclining my head. “It’s a well-known fact that it’d be bad form to split up. So here’s what we’ll do: we’ll search the house together, thereby ensuring nothing bad happens to any of us. Are we clear?”

Cards groaned, looked like she was about to fight, but just lowered her ears. “Oh, what’s the use? Fine. But we’re going to check the bedroom first, alright?”

So we did. Dust and I followed Cards down a hallway and up a set of stairs. Slowly, Cards opened the bedroom door. “Hello?” she whispered. “Anypony here? It’s me, Cards, the Sheriff’s daughter.” The door opened fully, and Cards stepped into the dark room. “Hello? Sir? Mister Agri?”

“Nopony’s home,” I said, peering at the dark bed. By the bedside was a large lamp on a nightstand. I went over to it, took out a match, and lit it up. In the light, the room looked abandoned. A fresh, very thin layer of dust covered everything. A very stupid part of me wanted to ask Dust if she saw anyone she knew, but even I knew that was a dumb pun.

Cards looked around the room. “But this is where he’d be! I don’t get it.”

I opened up the nightstand and poked around. There was a black-and-white photo of a young earth pony couple sitting by the riverside; it had been placed face-down. Next to it was a small book titled “The Fruit of Wrath”, with many of its pages dog-eared and with a single bookmark in it. I opened it up to the bookmarked page, the very last page, and read a note written in the margins: “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this depression and its effects. Also, are these gills?”

Back the book went, though not before I read the synopsis on the back. Apparently, it took place nigh a century ago, during a great depression caused by the disappearance of what little foreign trade Equestria had. I didn’t read much more than that because I stopped to think about that time nigh a century ago.

If memory served, and if I was correctly converting from Equestrian methods of dating to those used in the Reich, that was six years after King Viktor Pendergast took the throne. So at that time, under the leadership of King Viktor, Teutschland was single-handedly waging a war on three continents against Nippön and the white legions of the so-called “Good Stallion”, Waltharius. Whatever the reasons, the war must have had an adverse effect on Equestria. It was strange to think that the same event which ruined the Equestrian economy had helped turn Teutschland into the unrivaled superpower it was today. I made a mental note to ask Cards or Dust about it. Maybe they could help me connect the pieces of this puzzle?

“Huh. It’s locked,” Cards grunted, jostling me out of my thoughts. I turned to see the mare fumbling with the door to what looked like a bathroom. “You find anything, government boy?”

I shook my head. “Can’t say that I have.”

“Great,” the unicorn groaned, her ears limp. She ran a hoof through her mane. “So, I’ve started to think that maybe he’s not here.”

Lightning Dust ambled into the room. “Yeah, so I just peeked through the rest of the house. Nopony’s home.”

“You ran off without us?” I said with a frown. “What did I tell you about that? You’re lucky that no incredibly contrived circumstances arose that caused us a problem and killed you.” I spotted a small wastebasket by the floor. It was empty, so I disposed of Dust’s candy wrapper.

Dust waved me off with a hoof. “You read too many horror stories, GB.”

“All stories have at least a grain of truth in them. That’s especially true of history books. Those only have a grain of truth.”

“Right,” she said flatly. “So, know what that means?”

“What?” Cards and I asked at once.

“I call bed!” Dust shouted, leaping onto the farmer’s bed. She hit it hard, bouncing and rolling as the bedframe slammed against the wall. Giggling, she rolled around the bed, crossing her arms behind her head as she looked out at us. “So, anypony want to share the bed?” she snickered.

Rubbing my nose, I sighed. “Think I’ll take me the floor.”

“Fine. Suit yourself,” she laughed. “So, Cards, how ’bout you?”

|— ☩ —|

With a solitary grunt, I opened my eyes. It was still dark. After nearly half a minute of mental self-encouragement, I managed to stand up and get off the floor. Dust was lying in the center of the king-sized bed, her limbs splayed out. On the other side of the room, sleeping on a loveseat, was Cards.

“Mmmugh...” the little mare moaned, kicking a leg into the air. “On your knees... bark like a dog.”

The hell is she dreaming about? I looked at the locked bathroom door, the call of nature growling. Rubbing the back of my neck, I pulled out my lockpicking tools and went to work. Tick, tack, tock. The lock clicked, and I put my tools away in one of the bags I’d taken off and put on the floor.

Opening the door, I came face-to-face with a bony pony. I subdued a gasp as I realized that he—at least, I thought it was a he—wasn’t looking at me. The stallion’s head just happened to be aimed in my direction. He didn’t move as I whispered a standard Equestrian greeting.

I blinked, blinked again, and then saw what it really was. I pulled out a match and closed the door behind me. “What’s all this, then?” I asked the pale skeleton. His bony smile was his only response. Then again, skulls always looked like they were smiling at me. I liked to think that it was because they were in a better place. That was a good rationale to give yourself whenever you came across any unmarked mass graves filled with children.

As I inspected him closer, I found that his skull had, somehow, been shoved into a fishbowl. Unable to find any signs of bodily trauma, I had to assume that this poor stallion had drowned. Somepony, probably the stallion when he was still alive, had written “I am a fish!” several times on the bathroom mirror.

“I wonder if that’s really how you died. Was it some kind of autoerotic asphyxiation, perhaps?” I muttered to the stallion, looking around. “Come to think of it, when I first entered your house, I thought my ability to see colors had been damaged somehow, because everything in this house is just so brown. And if someone lived in a house like this, they’d die of sadness.” I regarded the skeleton. “Mister Agri, were you happy? If you’d been alive, we could have painted your walls to help you ignore the voices in your head. It worked for me back home, except that it didn’t.” On the sink and next to the toothbrush was a note. I picked it up and read it.

To whom it may concern,

I have locked myself in the bathroom. I was born to be a seapony, and I can see that now. Unless somepony can prove to me inconclusively that I am not a fish, I’m just going to stay here and swim!

Sincerely, Former Farmer Agri, now a fish.

P.S. And to that fucker—you know who you are—fuck you to death!

“Well, that explains everything,” I said, smiling at the corpse. “Thanks for leaving such a conclusive letter that explained this ridiculous circumstance to me.” Sighing, I shook my head. “Equestrians are stupid, let me tell you.” A thought occurred to me, and I checked the tap. Nothing came out, although the match finally died. “Great. You didn’t pay your water bills, did you? Or maybe you have a well I need to pump. I swear, the dead are so inconsiderable.”

I exited the bathroom, closing the door behind me. “Now, if I were a water pump, where would I be?”

Cards rolled onto her side. “Good doggie, GB. Bark.”

My attention crept onto Cards. Was she dreaming really creepy dreams about me? Oh God! Grimacing, I trotted over to her. “Hey. Hey,” I hissed. “Wake up and stop dreaming about me—it’s freaking me out.”

“Mwuh?” Cards groaned, rolling over. “Government boy?” She wiped a sliver of drool off her lips. “What’s... what’s wrong?”

“You know this place, right?”

“Ugh, I guess. I mean, haven’t been here since I was a filly.”

“Good. Where’s the water pump? Assuming he has one.”

She rubbed her eyes. “Why do you want that?”

I affixed her with a hard look. “Because I just found a dead body in the bathroom that’s been staring at us through the wall and realized that I’d like a glass of water.”

Cards blinked. “Oh, okay.” She closed her eyes and rolled back over.

Realization in three... two... one... Oh, dammit, girl! You made me look uncool—

“Wait. What?!” Lightning Dust cried out.

Her? Wow. Didn’t see that coming. I turned to see Dust sitting up in bed, panting and sweating. “Something up?

“Did you just say there was a dead body in the bathroom?”

“Yep.” I still would really enjoy using the restroom. “Why are you sweating?”

She glanced to the curtain drawn over the nearest window. “’Cause.” Her wing twitched. “Did you hear that?” she gasped, pressing her back against the wall.

“Hear what?” I asked, tilting my head. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a fear of the dark.”

“No!” she whispered harshly. “I am not afraid of the dark!” Somewhere in the background, Cards was snoring.

I grinned. “Because, you know, I’m the silent ‘who’ in the dark when you whisper ‘who’s there’?”

“That’s not funny—”

“I know you’re in there,” came a soft, melodious voice from outside the window.

My blood ran cold as a chill went down my spine. Slowly, as if the mere act of moving my eyes would give me away, I looked at Lightning Dust. She sat frozen, her wings flared out as she stared ahead. “What the hell?” I mouthed at her, but she refused to so much as blink.

I noticed a thin stream of light tapering in through the window from where the curtain didn’t close completely. Was that the moon? Or something else? With infinite care I crept across the room, trying to get to my bags.

“I can see into your bedroom,” the voice came again, so soft that a rational part of me said I was just imagining it. Of all the times to get haunted, it had to happen when I needed to use the bathroom? “I’m at your window and I know you can hear me,” it said with more force.

Dust continued to stay absolutely still as I grabbed my sword. A shadow crossed the stream of light coming through the window. I jerked my head to the other window, the one nearest me and held out my sword.

“I’m at your bedroom window,” the voice whispered from its new window. So close to me, it sounded almost childlike. “I know you can hear me—I can see into the room, can see you looking at me but not seeing! Come, take a look, pull back the curtains, have a peek. I’m here at your window.”

It’s not my bedroom! I saw Dust finally move, but only enough to lay down and pull her covers to her chin. A suicidal wave of stupid boiled up from my gut and into my mouth. “No,” I growled, “you’re not at my bedroom window—I’m at your bedroom window.”

“Come, come, little pony, come take a peek,” it hissed.

“Come, come, little voice, come take a peek,” I dared back at it, holding my sword steady. As far as good ideas went, this was up there with kickboxing against grizzly bears and playing drinking games with bleach. In spite of that, the game went on: the voice would taunt me on and on, I would taunt it back, each of us daring the other to take a look, to open the curtains, to open the window. My heart was in my throat the whole time.

Suddenly Cards began to stir. “Government boy, Dust, would you two shut up?!” she groaned.

The voice fell silent as large whooshing noise came from outside the window. A second later and something landed on the roof. It clawed around at the roof, skittering and ambling around. I held my sword up to the sounds, but it kept moving. The roof creaked one way, I aimed the blade that way. It creaked from another side of the roof, I pointed it there, too.

“No, don’t,” Dust whispered, staring at me.

I glanced at her just as the thing outside scratched at the roof. Something heavy—like a thick door—squealed as the sound of clawing got closer and closer. A dark realization hit me: the house must have had an attic. It had been walking around on the roof. Now the sound was closer. Now it was inside the house.

The roof, no, the attic floor above me creaked as something heavy lurched about. I pointed my sword at it, but the sounds came and went in erratic locations. Then the noise stopped. Just stopped in the middle of a clawing.

I looked over at Dust, and she looked at me. “I... I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Sorry for...?” I tried, only for my ear to twitch as the thing moved again. I followed the sound with my eyes, and realized the sound was slowly, so slowly inching its way across the attic to Lightning Dust.

Biting my lip, I crept as silent as possible to the bed. With a silent hop I got on top of the bed, shaking Lightning Dust around. I reached up and put a hoof on the ceiling, feeling it. The ceiling felt weak, easy to penetrate.

“Wha...?” Dust whimpered, staring at me.

Scrape. Scratch. Scrape. Scratch. Skitter. Skitter. Scrape.

I felt the ceiling above me push against my hoof. Whatever it was, it was directly above me. Taking a deep breath, I raised my sword. “Bad monster!” I thrust straight upwards through the ceiling, the blade penetrating hilt-deep through it. “I’ll have none of that from you!” I felt the steel pierced into something soft and fleshy.

A demonic, wolf-life roar shook the very foundation of the house. The soft, fleshy thing jerked and spasmed, trying to jump off the blade. A crooked smile on my face, I put a hoof on the sword and manually tore it out of the thing. For a brief second I saw a part of it through the new hole in the ceiling, saw the massive four-fingered hand of dark blue, and the steak-knife-like black claws on each finger.

I only saw that hand because it was coming straight for me through the hole. There was no time to duck, to jump away, or flee as the hand grabbed for my face. At the last possible second it vanished. No, it didn’t retract or change course, it literally vanished. It was as if it had never existed in the first place. I looked at my sword; there was no blood on it.

What the hell had I just stabbed?

“Yes, just like that...” Cards muttered.

I looked over at the sleeping Cards. As I was about to shout her awake, she rolled over, and something clanked against the wooden floor. Frowning, I hopped off the bed and to Cards’ chair, Dust watching me the whole while. “Dot dot dot, question mark?” I mumbled at the white talisman lying at the foot of the loveseat. “Well, this looks like a trap.”

After spinning around, I walked into the bathroom and checked the body. There was certainly no horn on the farmer’s head. Glancing side to side, I grabbed the farmer’s leg bone and, with a jerk, tore it from the corpse. His body crumbled into a desecrated pile as I left the bathroom.

Dust gasped when she saw me and whispered, “What is that?”

I sighed. “Well, I just stole the leg bone from the dead body in the closet, thereby preventing him from coming back from the dead in three days, proclaiming himself the messiah. It was bad enough when Waltharius tried it; I’m in no mood to fight an army of demons for the rest of the century, understand?”

She merely inclined her head. As I got back to Cards, I used the bone to pick up the white object. I took out a packet of matches and tossed them at Dust. “Girl, light the lamp. Please.” In a moment she complied, and the room was filled with a fiery light.

Narrowing my eyes, I studied the white object. “It’s a talisman,” I finally concluded.

“A what?”

“But what does it do?” I looked down at Cards, then held the talisman over her head. Immediately, the mare began to mumble. Puzzled, I took it away from her, and she stopped. I repeated the experiment thrice more before concluding, “It’s some sort of charm to make ponies speak in their sleep.”

A shadow crossed the little light from where the one window didn’t close fully. “I can see into the room, pegasus. I know you’re sitting on the bed. I know you’re afraid. Come, let’s meet face to face... Lightning Dust.”

Sonofa—I dropped the talisman on Cards’ head and hurled the leg bone through the window like a javelin. The bone went past the curtains and smashed through the glass, followed by the sound of a large thing grunting in pain. I jerked my attention to the pegasus and demanded, “How does it know your name?”

She didn’t reply, so I grabbed up my sword and charged for the window. Of course, all that ended with was me ramming into the windowsill and bruising my shoulder. As it turned out, throwing a bone through a window does not, in fact, disintegrate the window and let you charge through them. Grunting with pain but trying to keep my cool, I flung the curtains opened and gazed out at the dark vineyard. There was no strange monster. I raced over to the other window and threw the curtains open. Again, no strange beasts.

“I don’t wanna play fair,” Cards muttered; “you look fine on your knees, boy.”

“Is she okay?” Dust asked, pointing at the unicorn.

“Yeah, probably not,” I said, walking over and taking the talisman off her.

The curtains closed, and I glanced over to see Dust closing the other set. She looked back at me. “I don’t want that, that... thing to look at me, okay, GB?”

“Why did that thing know your name?” I asked in a calm voice.

Dust swallowed. “I don’t know why it knew my name.”

I took a heavy step towards her, slashing a crooked smile across my muzzle. “You’re lying, Miss Lightning Dust. You know something about this thing, don’t you? That’s why you’re so scared, isn’t it?”

“I’m not scared of it!” she snapped. “There’s a difference between being afraid and being cautious, GB.”

“Yes, there is,” I glowered, and Dust backed away from me. “Now, girl, I’ll ask you again: why did it know your name?”

Dust backed into the wall. She swallowed as she looked up at me. “Because, because, because,” she sputtered, “because this isn’t th-the first time I’ve seen it—well, no, I’ve never seen it, but I’ve sorta came across it before.”

“When?” I said, my voice edging below freezing.

“The other night! I–I was staying in a B&B over in Sleepy Oaks, and this happened to me, okay?!” She stamped a hoof. “I don’t know why it’s following me!”

I inclined my head. “Hazard a guess.”

“What?”

“Hazard yourself a guess and tell me why it’s following you.”

“But I don’t...” She trailed off. Dust glanced over to the window, and asked, “Can I tell you from the bed?” I nodded, and she dashed over to the bed. Dust took a long, hard breath. She looked at me, looked at the windows, looked at Cards, looked back at me, and sighed. “Have you ever heard of the Wonderbolts?”

I shook my head.

She ran a hoof down her face, biting her lip. “Well, the Wonderbolts are kinda, like, the best fliers in all Equestria. They only let the best of the best’s bestest best join them, y’know? But even then, sometimes even being the very best doesn’t guarantee you a spot.” She hesitated, staring down into her lap. “My family’s not exactly the wealthiest one, okay? I mean, my father was a cloudmill worker, and my mother was the full-time stay-at-home type. Kinda hard to get anywhere with that kinda life, y’know?”

I think I know where this is going. But if she wastes my time and tells me her whole life story... I nodded. “And you struck up a deal with the the wrong crowd that somehow involved the Wonderbolts, right?”

Dust shook her head. “No, that’s the thing: I actually just impressed enough that I got a letter in the mail one day, inviting me to Wonderbolt Academy. I am pretty awesome that like.” She took a breath and looked off to the side. “Best of times, worst of times sort of deal, see? Because of... reasons I’d rather not get into, they unfairly kicked me out. I mean, the hell was I supposed to do? The point was to do your best, not coddle up to...” She shook her head. “Look, after that, I was kinda screwed. You spend your whole life working for something, and then when you get it, some psycho bitch comes along and ruins it all.” Dust gritted her teeth.

“And that’s when you got indebted to the wrong crowd?”

She frowned. “No, that never happened. See, I managed to get a job at the Cloudsdale Post, and even made a few friends after I managed to conquer my depression. Then one day my friend wrote this really, really strange story about weird shit going on out west. My editor got it, seemingly approved of it, but then gave it to me to get rid of. So, of course, being the clever mare I am, I kept it. Next day, my friend doesn’t show up for work. A few days later, her boyfriend comes to me and asks for help. Turns out that my friend went missing. One thing lead to another and another and next thing you know, I take a week’s vacation and come to Sleepy Oaks, the last place she was before coming to the Post with her story.”

“How long ago did your friend disappear?”

“Few weeks ago. Why?”

Hmm... that might sync up with that body they recovered in the swamp. Wonder if they’re the same pony. “Oh, just curious. And what about the monster itself?” I asked.

“I told you that. It showed up, and I didn’t get any sleep that night. Never entered the room, just stayed at my window. Maybe it’s related to the government conspiracy?”

I rubbed my arm. “And you never thought to tell anypony about it?”

“Who’d believe me? Besides, before I really could say anything, I ran across you.”

“Is that why you looked like such a wreck bad at the malt shop? You hadn’t gotten any sleep?”

She nodded. “I thought maybe someone was trying to just scare me away. The town seemed to really hate me, y’know? So I told myself it was just a nightmare, told myself not to think about, and that if I was very, very lucky, Princess Luna’d come in my dreams and help me get rid of it.”

Princess Luna getting rid of bad dreams? Now that sounds like the stuff of prayers! I took a breath and pawed at the ground. “Princess Luna enters dreams, now?”

Dust shifted her positions on the bed. “So they say. I don’t know anypony who’s had it happen, and, personally, I think it’s just some story out of Canterlot. I mean, then again—”

“Teutscher,” a soft, childlike voice whispered from the window. Dust buried herself under the covers. I turned to face the voice, again raising my sword. “Pendergast,” it said, and my heart skipped a beat.

“You know I’m a Teutscher?” I asked.

“Pendergast,” the voice said from the other window.

I spun to face it. “A Teutscher.”

“Pendergast. Teutscher. Same thing,” it whispered from the hole in the ceiling. The voice went back to the first window. “Come and open the window, pony, come and see the gifts I have for you. Come and see. I’m at your bedroom window, and I can see you! Take a peek; open the curtains and see me too.”

Every sound suddenly died. There was silence. Only silence. A minute, two, maybe three or more passed. I wasn’t counting, just waiting.

“Olly olly oxen free?” I probed.

“I’m at your bedroom window still,” it replied. Then, from the ceiling, “I can see you ponies through the ceiling. Come on, open the window. Come on, shine a light through the hole.”

Nopony spoke. The voice went away.

I grabbed the white talisman out from my pocket and tossed it across the room. It hit the unbroken window with a pang, and immediately the voice said from that window, “I see what you’re doing, pony. I can see into the bedroom through the window.”

A strange thought popped into my mind. I crept across the room to my bags and pulled out Duke Elkington’s gutted record. Putting it by the window, I set it to play. “Listen up, boys. You’ve been dispatched to this little town...” As it played, I motioned for Dust to stay silent.

“I can hear you two speaking,” the voice insisted. “You can’t get rid of me,. You can’t outsmart me. I can hear every word you say. So come on, take a peek outside. Look out the window. I can see into the bedroom and hear your every word!”

Dust looked at me, and I smiled. She hissed, “What are you doing?”

“I know you can hear me! You can’t ignore me! I’m here, and I just wanna see your pretty pony faces. Come on, ponies. Come, open up the window and let us have a look,” the voice said, getting louder and louder, now approaching conversational levels. “You only have two choices: take a peek, or sit there and rot!”

“Taking a third option, Miss Dust,” I replied.

At that precise moment, Cards apparently thought it’d be a great idea to wake up, screaming, flail around, and fall onto the floor. “Celestia—what—I—ahhh!”

The gutted player continued to pontificate its message, and the voice continued to speak. I took it and put it over by the other window, and a shadow crossed the light again. “Look how close you are,” the voice almost snickered. “I know you want to see me. I know you want to see as I see you.”

I got it! I think I know what’s going on!

“Oh Celestia, what is that noise!?” Cards yelped, rolling around the floor. “Whoa!” she grunted as I picked her up and tossed her onto the bed. The mare bounced across and collided with Dust. With any luck, that would be distraction enough, if my theory was correct. If the theory was wrong, well, I’d die horribly, painfully, and probably end up a victim of necrophilia—and that was being optimistic!

Making sure my duster was on tight, my hat secure, and my blade ready, I charged out of the room. Behind me, Dust shouted, “GB! Where are you going?! GB! If that thing comes in here and kills me, I’ll strangle you to death!” Her forceful tone most certainly didn’t make the rope burns around my neck hurt.

With a few quick motions, I barreled (okay, tripped on a rug and rolled down pathetically but unharmed) down the stairs and (after jumping back to my hooves) bounded for the front door. I still have to goto the bathroom!

I rammed into the door, cursed as I once again bruised my shoulder, then unlocked it. This time, I actually managed to tear out of the house and took in a deep breath of cool Equestrian air. From back in the house came a shrill, girly shriek. Possibly from Dust, but more likely from Cards. I ran to the back of the house.

There was a leg bone lying in the grass, but there was no strange figure standing outside the windows or on the roof. By the edge of the vineyard was a room-sized shack with a light coming from under the door. “Got you,” I panted with a smirk.

A pant, a skip, and a jump later and I was at the shack. I tested the door, found it unlocked, and rushed in with my sword raised. There, just standing there with a dead expression on her face, was a unicorn mare. Her eyes were a pure white, no irises or blood vessels or anything. Her ribs were nearly sticking out of her white fur. But what really caught my eye was her raised arm: it was studded and impaled with bits of metal, and a purple amulet was nailed into her hoof. The glow was coming from both her horn and, more strongly, from the gem.

I smirked. “Excuse me, Miss, where’s the fruit aisle? I can’t seem to find it.” The scrawny mare just looked at me, her arm still held up. “Ah, so it’s one of those pick-the-fruit-yourself places!” I swung my sword at her arm. She didn’t scream or even seem to notice when the weapon tore into her arm. A second later and her twisted, impaled arm was on the ground. I blinked in surprise. “How the hell did I cut your arm—what’s wrong with your arm bone!” I gasped.

As I looked into what was left of her arm, one thing I didn’t see was the white of any bone. I knew there was no way my weapon could have chopped off a limb, at least not with just a single strike and with me as its wielder. Her arm, though, was less an arm and more a sack of coagulated, blood-like jelly. “You don’t belong in phylum chordata!” I hissed. “But at least you won’t be casting any sort of illusion spells on me any time soon. Filthy mage.”

She collapsed into a heap on the ground. I stabbed the corpse with my sword, and sure enough, I found bones. Even in her arms and legs there were bones, just not the one arm. Looking up from the corpse, I saw the wooden chair in the middle of the room’s stone floor. There was a large desk on one end of the room, and several shelves packed with junk around the room.

I looked back at the corpse and spied something on the floor behind her flicker in the moonlight. I almost bent over the corpse to look at it, but thought better of it. Instead, I repeatedly stabbed the mare through the brain in case she was a zombie. Then I bent over her body and tried to find what had flickered.

As I shifted my weight, the moonlight poured over my shoulder and hit the object again. It was a thin, shiny string. I reached out with a hoof and plucked it, feeling the touch of several others. Following the strings, I found that they all lead to various parts of the mare’s body. It was as if she was a puppet. And if she was a puppet, who was the puppeteer?

Before trying to answer that question, I instead picked that moment to try to remove the purple amulet from her hoof. I sheathed my sword and then, using my crowbar... no, wait. My crowbar was back in one of my bags, which were both back in the bedroom. I am a stupid pony. Frowning, I took out my knife and tediously pried it from her hoof. It jumped out and hit me in the face, and I stumbled backwards in surprise.

Rubbing my face and muttering Teutsche curses to myself, I picked the amulet up. I smelled of magic and sorcery. Felt like it, too. Probably some kind of enchanted talisman like that white one back in the bedroom. If there was any way to pin down exactly what it did, it would probably take some sort of wizard, which I, as a Teutscher, was far from. Still, that didn’t stop me from speculating. I figured the spell matrices enchanted into the thing helped create extremely realistic illusions—

“Ah, so you actually managed to track me down,” a smooth male voice with a northern accent said from behind me.

“What?” I asked. Before I could turn around, a thin wire wrapped around my neck, and I let out a guttural choke, dropping my knife.

“Now, now, government boy, it’s too bad you were too late,” the stallion cooed. “I would like to thank you for taking so much time standing still. Really gives one the opportunity to pick his moment, chap.” I choked more, instinctively grabbing for my neck. “Why, my dear boy,” he chuckled, feathertips stroking my neck, “there’s no need to struggle.”

I gurgled as I twisted my head and body around, trying to face my attacker. With the jerk of a leg, I kicked him somewhere—the ribs, I suspected. The stallion made a tsking noise as he put a hoof on the back of my knee and pressed downwards, forcing me to my knees. Cards would probably get a kick out of this, a little voice suggested as I gasped for breath. And at the very least, unless he breaks your neck, you’ve got a minute or two to struggle.

“Hey, buddy!” Lightning Dust shouted. “Fuck you!” With the swoop of wings and a furious grunt, my assailant was knocked to the ground. I gasped for breath as the mare landed in from of me, sliding to a halt.

“Damn,” I said, “you actually bothered to save me—”

She smacked me across the face. “The hell is wrong with you, you idiot bastard?!”

“Ow!” I yelped, rubbing my face. “What was that for?”

“You don’t just leave a girl on her own to fend off monster!”

“I thought you were a big, tough girl and could fend for yourself!” I retorted.

“I am, can, could, and did!” she spat, sticking her nose into the air. “It’s just bad form on your part.”

“Really, you two?” Cards groaned, trotting into the room. “You’re really gonna do this now?”

I blinked, then pulled out my sword. “Scheiße, you’re right.” Turning to where I’d assumed the stallion had fallen, a hoof uppercut my jaw.

“Solar-flaring fuck the what?!” Dust blurted out as I caught myself. The emaciated white mare rose to her hooves, smiling a mouthful of steel shards, her eyes still blank. Her horn lit up with a sickly green color as she picked my knife up from the floor. She put the blade in her teeth, and I flinched as I imagined the bitemarks in the weapon’s grip. As she released the knife from her magical grip, she reached for the purple amulet.

But I couldn’t pay attention to that once I saw the stallion standing in the middle of the room. Despite the black business suit, matching fedora, and monocle, I recognized the green-coated basted: Jeepers, his wings outstretched, bits of the air between him and the emaciated mare flickering in the light. He twitched a wing, and the mare adjusted her stance, exactly like how a puppet master controls his pawns.

“Well, look who’s made a comeback,” I commented, readying my blade.

“Don’t call it a ‘comeback’,” he said with a smug grin. “After all, I’ve been here for a matter of years, Johnny Foreigner.” Jeepers twitched his wings and swung a hoof. Without delay, the emaciated mare lunged at me, twisting her head around to stab me.

“I am in no mood!” Dust barked, and bucked the mare’s head off. And by ‘head off’, I mean that the mare’s head sailed from her shoulder and collided with a shelf, knocking it over. Cards gaped as the headless mare stumbled and then caught herself. On the other hoof, Dust screamed and jumped away from the mare.

The strings! I jumped to the side and awkwardly flailed my sword around in the air behind the headless chick as if I were irresponsibly trying to kill a fly. It was that same kind of irresponsibility that once lead to me inventing ‘negligent regicide’ during this one game I played when I was a colt, but I tried not to think about that too hard as I heard the sound of taut string snapping. It was the kind of sound that’d make a pianist weep, but whetted my appetite for victory and Jeeper’s blood. The emaciated, headless mare collapsed to the ground; her body never once bled.

“Bloody hell,” Jeeper muttered as Cards, Dust, and I turned our attention to him. He adjusted his hat. Though it was dark, I was sure I could see stitches on his neck from where I’d slashed him. Doc Dome worked fast, apparently. “Well, I don’t suppose you’re willing to just call this even, are you?”

I shook my head, tightening my hat. “I’m afraid not, Jeepers. See, I am most interested to know who it is you work for, what they’re doing, why, and then how I can destroy them. But, more importantly...” I lowered my voice to a throaty, serpentine hiss. “You are a bastard and I resent your very soul! I hope you get an erection lasting longer than four hours!” Everypony but Dust paused and looked at me. “Er, that’s a reference to a thing in Teutschl—know what? No, I’m not explaining it. But let me tell it, it is something you do not want. It’s just that horrible, and would making a fitting punishment for you, Jeepers. Want a better one? Okay, let me think.”

Dust poked me. “Did I... did I just buck a mare’s head off?”

Jeepers scoffed, adjusting his monocle. “She wasn’t alive to begin with, you dumb tart.”

“What did you call me?!” Dust snarled, all hints of guilt gone.

Why is he even wearing a monocle to begin with? That’s the real question here... Unless maybe it’s enchanted. God, I hate magi. As my mind was monologuing, Cards took up a position to my left. With Dust on my right, we had ourselves a power trio. For added benefit, I was pretty sure all of us were crazy.

The stallion smiled. “I called you a tart. A harlot. A wench. A strumpet. A tramp. A slut. A whore. A floozy. A scarlet. After all, a proper lady doesn’t go wandering out with strange stallions from foreign lands, if he’s actually what he says. Need I say more, Miss Bitch?”

I don’t like how he’s suddenly gotten so cocky. “I got one!” I chirped. “Jeepers, may a swarm of rats ejaculate on you! While we’re at it, may you have a hundred relatives, and may they all give you socks on your birthday! And with regards to your unmentionable external male organ, I have it on reliable information that it is not worth mentioning, so much so that I don’t even see the point in not skinning it into an egg roll, which I will then proceed to feed to those spent rats from earlier. That’s right. I’m going to feed your stuffed-with-rice-and-shrimp dick to sexually aroused rats!” Everypony just stared at me the longest time. Seriously, all of them. Even Jeepers gaped at me.

“What the hell?” Cards asked in a high-pitched voice.

“Yeah, I’m kinda with her on this one,” Dust added.

“Don’t judge me,” I snapped, “I was being clever. It was more creative than every insult I’ve heard so far in your country.”

“I throw in my opinion with that pegasus harlot there,” Jeepers added, and Dust’s eye twitched, “though it was.... something else.”

“GB?” Dust growled.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“You know how to hurt ponies, right?”

“So I’d like to think.”

Dust took a breath. “Good. Because I seriously want to break this guy’s knees. But if you have something more creative, I’m open to ideas.”

“Not the only the thing you’re open for,” Jeepers snickered.

The reporter’s eye twitched. “Okay. That’s it. I’m going to kill him myself.”

“Um,” I said, “is that in the metaphorical sense, or the literal kind?” Why the hell is Jeepers taunting her when he can’t... possibly... hurt her... I tilted my head at Jeepers and his twisted, daring, ‘I know I’m winning’ grin. Oh, Scheiße.

“I’ll tell you when I figure it out,” she hissed. Dust jumped into the air, her wings beating hard as she gritted her teeth. “Be right back!” she yelled, tearing through the air.

“Dust, no!” I shouted. “It’s an obvious trap!”

“Wha’?” the mare sputtered, twisting her wings to slow down. Jeepers, on the other hoof, smiled and flexed his wings. Dust collided with something invisible in the air, screamed, and froze in the air. She struggled and twisted, but her body wouldn’t fall to the ground. That’s when I saw the shimmers of wire-light around her body, and attached to bits of Jeeper’s body. It was as if Lightning Dust were caught in a spiderweb.

“Oh my goodness,” Cards gasped, “are you okay?”

“I’m peachy,” Dust spat back, twisting and rolling around in the wires.

I sighed, rubbing my forehead. “You just had to do that, huh? I mean, what’s wrong with being a ‘slut’? Who is he to judge you for how you choose live your life, anyways? It’s your body, your rules.”

“I’m in no mood for a lecture, GB!”

Jeepers waved his hooves and wings, and Dust’s body spun around until she was facing me, her limbs splayed out. “A pity you slowed down when you did, Miss Dust. Had you hit the wires fast enough, I might have caused you some serious damage. But, alas, you are but a fly caught in my web.” He stepped up and grabbed her neck, somehow not pulling on any of the wires. “Wouldn’t it have been such a shame to lose such a pretty face as hers, hmm?”

“Don’t touch me, you sick, disgusting pervert!” Dust growled, struggling uselessly against the wires.

The stallion smiled at her, then me. “So, I’ve got your girlfriend now, Johnny Foreigner. If you want her to live till sunrise, you’ll be a good colt, won’t you? Good. Tell me, please, are you really a foreigner?”

I nodded.

“Liar,” he hissed, and the wires holding Dust pulled on her limbs. “I don’t believe you, not for a second. There’s no way a foreigner from such an... exotic land as you claim could enter Equestria without being noticed by the likes of my employers. And judging by your accent, I’d say you were from... Mare Orleans? I’ll admit, it’s hard to determine. Perhaps a noble gone quixotic? Judging from your lack of any slang terms, you sound almost upper-class, and are most certainly mad, like all of you Southerners.”

Huh. Does that mean Equestria has issues with sectionalism? Keen.

He stroked Dust’s cheek. “So, I’ll ask it another way, and you’re going to answer me truthfully, or I’m going to do... heh... terrible things to your girlfriend here.” Dust let out a single whimper as he caressed her wing. “Tell me, from where are—what are you doing?”

“Hmm?” I hummed, looking from the cards I’d spread across the floor. “Oh, I’m playing solitaire,” I chirped.

“What?!” everypony gasped.

I shrugged. “Well, you were taking so long with your monologue that I got bored and was going to play a card game. Hey, does anypony else feel slightly awkward when talking about anything card-related now that there’s a girl named Cards here?” At that, Dust jerked around and swore at me. A lot.

Jeepers tightened the strings, and Dust choked off. “You can’t play solitaire! What the hell’s wrong with you! I’ve got the lovely reporter and am threatening to do horrible things to her!”

“Like?” I prodded.

“Like strangle her, cut her, tear her limbs off with the wires, garrote her,” he growled. “I might even violate her?” Despite the wires, Dust managed to utter a pathetic whimper. “I’m the one in control here, and if you don’t play along, I will do those things to her!”

“Even the rape part?” I asked, looking down at my cards.

“Especially the rape part! To death, even! I’ll make you watch as I violate your—”

“Neat,” I said, nodding at him. I sat down on the ground, looking over my cards. “Let me know when you’re done with that, okay, Jeepers?” I looked over at Cards. “Hey, I just realized that I do not know how to play this game,” I chuckled warmly, ignoring her deathly grimace. “Do you? And can you teach me? I think we’ve got time to waste.”

“Uh...” Cards droned.

Jeepers stamped a hoof. “Are you mocking me?!”

I put a hoof to my breast. “Who, me? Oh, no, no, no, no—” I broke out in a snicker. “Yeah.”

“You can’t make fun of me!” he fumed, his face red. “I’m going to slice her, dice her, and violate her in front of you!”

“Mmm-hmm,” I hummed, nodding pensively at him.

“Do you have any idea just who you’re messing with, Southerner?! I’m the one in control here! I’m the one holding the girl! I’m the one in power, and you’re the one who’s going to die! Here! Tonight! And I’ll kill that other tart while I’m at it, too! I’ll make you watch as I do unspeakable things to their bodies and, and, and—”

I threw my head back and laughed. “You know, that would be intimidating if you were... oh, how can I put this in no uncertain terms? Ah, yes, I know. It’d be intimidating if you were actually intimidating.”

“Are you suggesting I’m not intimidating?!” he snarled.

“I’m sorry, did I st-st-st-stutter? I directly told you in a way that couldn’t possibly be misinterpreted that you weren’t the least bit intimidating,” I calmly replied. He bared his teeth at me and growled. “Let me spell it out for you, okay?”

Jeepers gritted his teeth, his eyes jumping from Dust to me. I could see he was trying to think, but I doubted he was doing any good. So I picked up and put back my deck of cards before standing up. “See, you’re assuming I actually care about the mare,” I said, gesturing at Dust. Her eyes went wide as she tried to scream against the wire around her throat. “I mean, I’ve known her for, what, a few hours? That isn’t nearly enough time for me to care about anypony. I can’t fathom why you think I’d be willing to risk life and limb for a chick who’s essentially a stranger to me.”

I turned around and trotted out of the shack. “I could just walk away now and not give it a second thought. I’m only sticking around because I just don’t like you, Jeepers. Think about it: what would I lose if Lightning Dust were to die? At worst, I’d be mildly inconvenienced without a set of flying eyes to help me out, but nothing I couldn’t manage without. Plus, she’s an Equestrian, which already sort of makes her worth less to me than if she were a Teutsche.”

The stallion’s eye twitched, Dusts eye looked watery, Cards gaped at me, and I smiled. “So, Jeepers, make your move.” I walked back into the shack. “I’m waiting.”

He only growled at me, clenching and unclenching his jaw. As he continued to do nothing, he even ground his teeth. Jeepers looked from me, to Cards, to the headless, then to Dust. His eyes darted to the opposite edges of the wall, the two places I’d figured that his wires had been anchored around, judging by the way Dust was held up by them. Looking back at me, Jeepers smiled. “I think I’ve got an idea of how to deal with you, you arrogant rat,” he chuckled.

Cards glanced at me as I replied, “Oh, that so? Do enlighten me. I’m getting rather bored just sitting here.”

“Yes, yes,” he snickered. Jeepers flexed with wings and jumped into the air. With the sound of rapidly grinding ropes, Dust plummeted to the ground with a thunk, and the stallion charged at me. “How’d you like to be up in a bind?!”

“Think fast, captain!” I laughed, and a bottle of Bucking Bronco hit him in the face. Screaming like a little girl, he clutched at his face and dropped to the ground. He rolled across the floor up to my hooves. Smiling, I casually clipped his wings with my sword. I was not gentle. That served the dual purpose of preventing him from flying and also destroying his ability to use his garrote wires.

Still smiling, I rolled him onto his back and stepped onto his neck. Then, with a single, quick motion, I slugged him in the nose, knocking him unconscious. He regained consciousness within seconds, disoriented, as I used his own wires to tie him to the chair at the center of the room. Letting out a satisfied sigh, I surveyed the scene of my victory, even though a part of me felt it had been more anticlimactic than I’d’ve liked.

Dust was curled up into a ball, her legs crossed as she quietly sobbed on the floor. Rolling my eyes, I sauntered over to her and knelt down. “Hey there, Lightning Dust. He’s dealt with, you’re fine.”

She punched me in the chest. “Get away from me!” she cried, tears in her eyes. “You don’t care about me! Don’t even pretend like you do! I heard what you said!”

I laughed. “Oh, wait. You actually think I was being...?” I shook my head. “You don’t really think that I was telling the truth, do you?”

Dust looked up at me with big, sad eyes. “I...”

A warm smile on my face, I told her, “I was pretty much just trying to infuriate him into attacking me, the same thing he did to you.” I rubbed the back of my head. “I guess I really, really overdid it, huh? People used to tell me I should have been in drama club, though I never actually joined it. I mean, what kind of monster would I be if I didn’t care about you, huh?”

An honest one?

The pegasus gave me a long, long look, staring deep into my eyes as if searching for even the vaguest hint of mistruth. It was that kind of soul-piercing look that always seemed to make me thirsty. I didn’t feel she looked convinced enough, which meant that I had to go on.

“See,” I said, trying to ignore her look, “I was trying to convince Jeepers that he wasn’t in control, despite the fact that he was in complete and utter control and knew it. I had to convince him that you were nothing, and thus that he had nothing, when the fact was he had me by the genitals, so to speak.”

He had her by the genitals too! Woo!

That’s just horrible and you should feel horrible. “Understand?” I asked. “I threw everything I had at him, hoping he’d try to make a move, and if he moved away from you, then I could win. Against all odds, it worked. I lied to him for you, Miss Lightning Dust.” Why the hell do these ponies need to keep having emotional trouble? I don’t have a degree in psychology!

She looked away from me. “But you sounded so... honest.”

I sighed, not an irritated sigh, more of sad, understanding one. “I would never truly abandon you like that, Dust. I might lie and tell you I would if it’d help me trick idiots like Jeepers, but never would I do it. Partly because I’d rather not have your death on my conscience, partly because of... well, back in Teutschland, we have a saying: Blut ist dicker als Wasser. You have this phrase word-for-word, but your meaning is strange. The saying means ‘blood is thicker than water’. Do you know what that means?”

Lightning Dust hesitated. “Family is more important than other things, things like friends.” The girl frowned. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Well, it has to do with both you and Cards equally,” I said, and the Cards glanced at me. “In Teutschland, that phrase does not mean that at all. The Reich, unlike Equestria, is not a land built off powerful aristocracies, is not a land whose aristocrats value family and their noble blood above all else, at least that is how I’ve come to understand how Equestria must be. Stop me if I’m wrong.” She didn’t stop me. “Most nations, you see, come into being by some great coming-together of their people, like Equestria was, or otherwise through some great revolutionary event. But Teutschland? No, it was borne at the blood-soaked end of a blade. And whereas most states possess an army, it would be perhaps more accurate to say that Teutschland is an army that happens to own a state.”

“But what does that have to do with me,” she insisted.

I smiled. “I’m getting to that. See, Teutschland was formed on the bonds of the military, bonds of the state, bonds of the king. So to us, the phrase ‘blood is thicker than water’ means that those whom you shed and spill blood with are more important than anything else. Water, you see, refers to ‘water of the womb’. Family is nigh nothing compared to that bond. Miss Lightning Dust, both you and Cards have spilt and shed blood with me, willingly or otherwise. To a Teutschen like me, there is no stronger bond. Whether or not you see me the same ways doesn’t matter, for I see you two as such.”

I like how you didn’t mention how that philosophy was a bit shaky when it came to non-Teutsche. What was it that former Chancellor De Gaulle once said? Oh, yes. “Teutschland has no friends, only interests.”

Dust looked at me with the same air as a mare trying to convert Equestrian feet into Teutsche meters in her head while her house burned down. “Do you really mean that?”

“Do you believe in me?” I countered. She didn’t reply. “Because I fear you’ll never truly believe me. See, Miss Lightning Dust, I know you don’t trust me, and you know I don’t trust you, either. But you didn’t run when Boulder broke my leg and ribs. And mere moments ago you charged down here and saved my life, despite on both occasions there being perhaps more logic to doing the exact opposite. You spilt blood both times for me. If that isn’t enough at least to build the basics foundation of what might one day resemble something akin to but not entirely trust, I don’t know what is. I’m willing to give you that. Are you willing to give that, too?”

The seconds ticked away like eons as she looked at me, as if hunting for just the barest hint of mistruth. Finally, the mare nodded. “I... I am, GB.”

“I’m an honest guy, but if you put me in a corner and threaten people, well, the gloves go off.”

She sniffled. “It’s just that he... Jeepers—” Dust buried her face in her hooves. “I felt his breath on my neck, and those... horrible, horrible hooves groping me!” She took a breath and looked at me. Her eyes were puffy and red, her face looked splotchy, and there were specks of dirt on her cheeks; that said, I couldn’t help but think that she looked really damn cute. She inched towards me. “Before today, I hadn’t cried since I was a filly. Even when they kicked me out of the Wonderbolts, I didn’t cry, I just froze up for what felt like months.” She rubbed her eyes. “Today, twice. I don’t like it, GB. I don’t! And when you said that you didn’t care, I... I don’t know.” Dust looked up at me almost... expectantly?

Did she want me to say something proud and heroic, like, “Don’t worry, Dust, I’ll never let you cry ever again”? To add to that, there was a nagging feeling in the back of my head that I was supposed to say something protective like that. But I knew exactly what was causing that feeling: her tears. For some reason, a mare’s tears contained some kind of pheromone that reduced a stallion’s testosterone levels, generally lowered his sexual arousal, made him less aggressive, and triggered a biological impulse to protect. Being that I was a male of the species Equus sapiens, the tears of the female of my species were having an effect on me. Stupid girls, perfectly evolved to mess with me.

So I did the only thing I could: I gave her the most reassuring smile that I could muster. “As it stands, Miss Lightning Dust, I’m going to make sure Jeepers gets what’s coming to him.” I stood up and held out a hoof to her. “Need a hoof?” Hey, look. You’re helping her up again for the second time today, assuming it’s not past midnight. I blame Lyra.

Dust accepted the hoof and I helped her up. She took a breath and looked up at me. “Thanks, GB. It’s—” she hesitated, looking at Jeepers “—it’s been a long, long day, and I think I’ve had several firsts today.” She looked to the side as Jeepers groaned as he struggled against the bonds.

“This thing is strange,” Card said. I’d practically forgotten she was still here, she’d been so quiet. She was holding that strange amulet up in the moonlight. Cards pulled the white talisman out of her bags, comparing the two things. “I think they’re both magical.”

I nodded. “So I thought. The white one appears to make people talk in their sleep, and the black one... I suspect it conjures up illusions of some sort. That thing that was haunting us up in the house? Not real, it only responded to sounds, though that doesn’t answer the question of that thing I was sure I stabbed, nor what I saw. This thing is a damn scary charm, the kind that’d need one hell of a mage to make. Let’s ask.” I walked up to Jeepers, still grunting against his bonds. “What are they for, Jeepers?”

“Sod off!” the stallion spat.

I introduced him most kindly to the back of my hoof. “Try that again. Mind you, I’m being polite because I am in the presence of two ladies. Don’t make me kindly request that they stand outside.” Cards put a hoof to her ear, a grim look on her face. “What purpose do those serve?”

“You don’t know who or what you’re dealing with!” he hissed.

“Your words are as as empty as your future,” I snarled back, grabbing his chin. “What does the black charm do?” Jeepers gritted his teeth, and I frowned as I observed his dental work. “What’s wrong with your teeth?” I asked, puzzled.

Dust stumbled to her hooves, almost knocking into me. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with his—oh my stars, is he what I think he is!?”

“What do you think he is?”

“He has fangs! He’s a vampire!?” She put a hoof over her breast, panting. “But that’s impossible! Vampires are a myth!”

I shrugged. “Well, if vampires weren’t real, you wouldn’t recognize one, would you?”

“I... I... what?”

“Regardless of how big and scary and full of impossible things the world is, I don’t think this one is real,” I said, poking his fangs with a hoof. “They appear to be made of plaster or something.”

“Are you saying vampires are real?” Dust asked, glancing over her shoulder. Jeepers growled, but nopony was paying attention.

“Well, I’m saying that I’m not really afraid of them. After all, once you’re cured, it can’t affect you ever again.” I shrugged. “This guy’s just a creep with a fetish for a monster he heard about in his story books.”

Dust gave me a lost look. “Are, are you saying you are... were a... vampire?”

I glanced over my shoulder and laughed. Then I went back to Jeepers, and something on his person caught my eye. There, peeking out from a suit pocket, was a folded strip of paper. When the stallion saw what I was looking at, he did his best to pretend like he didn’t care. Curious, I reached in and extracted the paper, and that got him to start squirming around like an epileptic gopher. I unfolded and read it.

—Don’t use this damn thing yourself, it’ll drain you practically to death.

—To use it, put it on the poppet and have the poppet use the thing. (POPPET, not puppet.) Its life isn’t.

—Uses: Shortwave broadcasts, creating aural, visual, and mechanoreceptive hallucinations. Doesn’t last for long, but can be used for psychological harassment.

—Notes: We’ve entrusted you with this prototype, it’s the only one if its kind, and we cannot make any more without this one. Lose it and you’re dead. Toodles!

I looked back at the stallion. “Wow. You kept this in your pocket? Really? Are you positively retarded?” I shook my head. “Was it so hard to remember how to use it? Are you just incompetent? And for that matter, who in the right mind would entrust something so precious and unique to a peon like you? Who is your manager and when can I speak to him?”

He merely looked mortified. I stamped a hoof. “Really, who’s your equally incompetent boss?” Stuffing the letter into a pocket, I waited. “Nothing? Do we need to have some fun interrogating you? Because I’m down with that idea. Here, we’ll even start out small: what was that poppet and how did you control her?”

“Piss off,” he replied, less forceful than a competent pony would have sounded.

“Seems like we’re going to have to do this with force. So, Mister Jeepers, how do you want this to end? The easy way? Or the hard way? Oh, please, please, please tell me the hard way! To clarify, I mean ‘hard way’ for you, since it’s the easy and fun way for me. Hell, I’ll even compose you a ballad or poem as I’m doing it. What say you?”

“You couldn’t comprehend who I work for and why I do this,” he said, admirably feigning confidence. “If you kill me, that’s it. You’re done.”

“Something wicked this way comes, Mister Jeepers, something in the night!” I singsonged, grabbing my knife off the floor, where it had apparently fallen. “Fright. I can see it well in your peepers, Mister Jeepers. So tell me what I want to know.” I put the knife to his carotid artery “Wouldn’t want to end the show—such an awful way to go.”

He swallowed. “You’re making a huge mistake, government boy.”

I dropped the singsong. “What was that skinny mare with the steel in her mouth, and how’d you puppeteer her?” He didn’t reply, so I grabbed one of his wing joints and bent it. “Tell me, please. She looks like some kind of homunculus, and that’s the kind of thing you find in the realm of witchcraft.”

Jeepers swallowed. “I–I’m not too sure, they didn’t tell me when she was given to me a while back, just that she was capable of using magic where I could not! My special talent is using puppets, and those strings are magical, so go figure how I used her! Okay? Okay? Let the wing go!”

That was easy enough. Time for round two. I released his wing. “Good boy. Now, how long have you really been working for them? I highly doubt you were just ‘found’ by Boulder and White Tongue.”

“Year and a half,” he admitted, looking down at the ground.

“Interesting. So, what do they know about me?”

“Probably everything,” he snickered. “Your mother, father, siblings, date of birth, location of birth, doctor who delivered you, and any other records you have. I don’t care what lies about some fairytale ‘Teutschland’ you spin those two ladies, because the facts are—”

I got my face real close to his. While I might not have known how Equestrians defined personal space, I was sure I was violating his. “Alles nur Lügen, mein Herr. Wirklich kam ich aus dem Reiche. Also sag mir die Wahrheit,” I growled, gutturally rolling all my R’s, especially the R’s that weren’t usually pronounced. My voice was far deeper than it was when I spoke Equestrian, mostly for effect, but also because a part of my Equestrian accent involved speaking in a higher pitch. “Die Wahrheit. Gib sie mir.”

“Wha’?”

“Eben komm zu dir!” I snarled, offering him a playdate with the back of my hoof. “Frag dich: ‘Werde ich das Trauma überstehn?’ Dein Herz schlägt schneller, weil die Angst dich in Kauf nimmt. Du musst nur verstehen: wir ernten, was wir säen. Du säst doch den Tod.” I let out a dark chuckle. “Du bist des Wahnsinns! Du bist des Todes! Du musst des Todes sterben!”

“The hell are you saying?! It’s freaking me out!” he screamed.

I grinned. “Teutsch. It ist ze—” I put a hoof over my mouth. “Teutsch. It is the language of my people. I was saying quite simply that you are insane, that you’re a dead stallion, and that you’ll surely die. What I didn’t get to,” I said with that same grin, “was how I was going to be the hero that ended you, and the question of just how painful your death would be. I know you don’t know anything about me or my people, and that’s fine by me. I’m not sorry, either. Es tut mir nicht leid.” I reaffirmed the knife over his carotid artery. “So I’ll ask nicely one last time for some answers before I start randomly cutting things and trying to make you squawk.”

“Government boy,” Cards whispered, and I jerked my head to look at her. “Please, don’t.” She was rubbing her ear. “Don’t do that. We’re supposed to be better than them, right? We are the good guys, right?”

I regarded her for a long time, knife still to Jeepers throat. “Say, Cards, could you go find that water pump for me? I still really, really need to use the bathroom. Dust, could you go with her.”

The little unicorn hesitated. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Dust gave the mare an unsure look as she gnawed on a hoof. “Please, government boy, you don’t have to do this. This isn’t what good guys are supposed to do. That’s what you are and I are, right?”

My eyes remained fixed to hers, unmoving and hard.

She swallowed. “You told me that we had to do good to make up for our wrongs. I might be paraphrasing, but that’s what you said. If you, if you did what I think... what I know you’re going to do, and I didn’t do anything to stop you, how could I live with myself?”

“You could force my hoof,” I offered, “and make me kick you out. No guilt there, right?”

“No,” she said. Her tone was sterner. Annoying. It was very annoying. You did not talk back to me when I was saving the world!

Maybe she’s right. Don’t crucify me here, I’m just throwing it out there. Reputation is everything to us. Look at what happened when we didn’t have a good one back in Sleepy Oaks, they lynched you. If Cards and Dust are to be traveling with you, they themselves are going to have to see you as a hero. Antihero works too, just so long they have high opinions of you. Long term plans, “government boy”, long term plans.

I sighed, sheathing the knife. “Way to go, Cards. I had him going there! Why the hay did you have to believe my scary but ultimately spineless threats? See, now you threw me off my game, and we’re back to square one with Jeepers.” I glanced at the stallion and whispered, “Don’t worry, you can ‘cut yourself shaving’ later, okay?” He squirmed, but I looked back at Cards. “Of course we’re the good guys, Cards, don’t be ridiculous.”

Cards inclined her head. “Wait, what?”

“Look, Cards, torture itself really doesn’t work. It’s the threat of torture that gets ponies to talk.”

“Wait, how do you know that?’ she pointed out, narrowing an eye.

“Cards, don’t ask stupid questions,” Dust said harshly. “He probably read it somewhere. Right?”

I chuckled. “Dust is actually accurate. I read it somewhere, not sure where, but it was one of those odd tidbits that I have trouble ever forgetting. Point is, up until you tried to stand up for him, he was believing that I was actually going to do it, and that meant he was going to talk. Way to go, Cards, way to go.”

She just tilted her head the other direction, her jaw opened. A certain bird that nested in mouths would have found her a perfect host. “Really?”

“Of course!” I snapped. “What kind of monster do you take me for?”

Her expression went dark. “Glasses.”

“Are you still on that?” I said in an annoyed tone. Cards bit her lip and nodded. “Okay, so now that the metaphorical cat is out of the metaphorical bag, what are we going to do with Jeepers?”

“Let him go?” Cards suggested in a weak voice, and Dust scoffed.

“Where do you think he’d go,” she asked, “Trottingham?”

I spoke up. “I’d make the suggestion that he’d go back to his superiors. It’s clear from what I gleaned from him that they don’t know the first thing about me. Speaking of whom, Jeepers has been being a really good sport about being tied up. Do you think we should, say, give him a lollipop for being such a good sport?” I looked at the stallion, who just sat there, leering creepily at me. A thought later and I pulled my knife back out. Forcing his jaw open, I jammed the blade into his left (my right) fang and fidgeted around with it. The girls gasped, but in a moment I’d pulled the tooth out and was examining it, ignoring Jeepers’ screams of pain.

“Quit being such a baby,” I groaned, then slugged Jeepers in the face. He didn’t lose consciousness from that, and so I groaned louder. I turned to Cards. “Cards, give me your socks.”

She blinked, her cheeks flushing. “I—wha’?” Dust gave the unicorn a peculiar, ‘don’t look at me’ look.

Then I noticed Cards wasn’t carrying her bags. “Great,” I sighed. Putting Jeepers’ tooth in a pocket, I fished around the room till I found a dirty, dirty rag. With my fancy new rag, I shoved it in the screaming stallion’s bloody mouth; he gagged, but I was at least almost entirely unsure that he wouldn’t not choke to undeath on it.

I looked over the tooth. It was indeed made of a strange kind of hard plaster which surrounded the original tooth. “Hey, why are you wearing a monocle?” I asked, and Jeepers screamed through the rag, tears in his eyes. “Don’t worry ladies, I speak rag-in-mouth. Always knew those classes would come in handy.” Again, Jeepers screamed. “He says he’s wearing a monocle because he’s training it to like being wherever it’s put.” I frowned. “That is at once both clever and idiotic.”

“His tooth,” Cards stated, looking at me with what I could only assume was horror. “You said you weren’t going to hurt him!”

I frowned. “No, I didn’t. You’re putting words into my mouth. Stop it.”

She stamped her hooves. “But you said—”

“That I wasn’t going to torture him, and I meant that,” I said sternly. “But I got the hunch that he was hiding something in his tooth; cutting it out was the only way to get it.” I looked down at the tooth. “Hey, look at this. There is something in here.” With my knife I dug into the tooth. Pulling it out caused the plaster to crumble off the tooth. I stared at the little pill I’d salvaged from the mess. “This isn’t what I think it is, is it?”

“What is it?” Dust hesitantly asked.

I held it up for her. “I think it’s a suicide pill of some kind. Hey, Jeepers, why is there a—” I grunted as the green pegasus leapt from the chair and tackled me. In a burst of hindsight, I realized why Jeepers had been being so silent before I tore his tooth out, and it was probably the reason he was now tackling me to the ground. Of course, the angle I fell forced the brunt of the damage onto my poor, poor shoulder.

“GB!” Dust gasped.

Keeping a grip on the knife in favor of holding the tooth, I tried to defend myself. He got off a punch to my forehead, and then he gasped in pain as the knife pierced his chest. Grunting and shoving him off, Dust rushed to my side.

“Oh my goodness, are you okay?!” she asked, almost tripping over her words.

“Bloody hell,” Jeepers groaned, holding a hoof over his stab wound. “None of you are going to get away with this.”

I rolled to my hooves. “I’m fine, ladies.” Swapping my knife for my sword, I approached the stallion.

Cards stared in horror at the stallion as he lurched forwards and extended his wings. He jumped, flapped, and fell back to the ground. When he saw his wings, really saw them, he screamed. “My wings! You monster, what did you do to my wings!?” He collapsed onto the ground, screaming and shouting about his wings, almost forgetting the knife wound. As he clutched as his ultimately useless wings, I saw Dust grit her teeth and scrunch up her own wings.

“Thus,” I said darkly to Jeepers, “is your fate, one befitting of he who harms the innocent.” I shook my head and growled, “You have forgotten the face of your father.”

“We have to help him!” Cards insisted. “Government boy, you’ve got healing stuff, right? Right? Give him one, he needs it!” I merely stared at her. Her menstruating heart was not bleeding enough for two. “Please! We can’t just let him die.” I did nothing. “Don’t do this, government boy, this is cruel! Dust, you have you agree with me! Tell him it’s wrong, that we should help!”

We looked at Dust. The pegasus blinked at us, her jaw moving but nothing coming out. She looked at Cards, Jeepers, and then, with a hesitant slowness, at me. I met her look and instantly knew what was going through her mind. She wanted to let him die, to let him suffer for what he almost did to her, even though she knew it was wrong. The look in her eyes was that of a conflicted pony, one who, for the first time, held the power to determine who lived and who died. Judging from her dark expression and silence, it was not a power she had ever wanted. I knew I could have easily taken away that power from her, that she probably wanted me to make the choice for her, but I couldn’t quite resist the temptation to know what she’d do.

She never gave a response. It didn’t take long for Jeepers to die. With him went my best chance for getting the answers I wanted. More importantly, I was now free to finally use the bathroom.

|— ☩ —|

We buried Jeepers in a shallow grave behind the shack because Cards had insisted on it. It took me nearly half an hour to convince her to calm down after Jeepers died, time which could have been spent sleeping. Now back in the farmer’s bedroom (bathroom door closed in the hopes that Cards wouldn’t remember there was a dead body in there and thus make me bury him, too), we looked over our options.

“We need to get moving by morning,” I asserted. “I think Jeepers was here before us, so I don’t really feel safe sticking around when I know that others might know Jeepers was here.”

Cards looked up at me from the loveseat. “Government boy, what were in those letters?”

I blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

“You said you got a few letters from Doc Dome’s clinic. What was in them?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I pulled all five out. “Care to read them? Well, at least hold onto them till it’s bright enough to read?” She nodded, and I handed them to her. Cards muttered a thanks as I asked Dust if she had any ideas.

“None,” she replied, shaking her head. Dust, despite having her back up against the wall, covered most of herself up with the bed’s blanket.

Cards licked her lips. “Not too far from here is a captain who owns a ferryboat. He lives outside town and only occasionally comes in by boat to buy stuff. I think he makes his living shuttling ponies up and down the Songnam River, at least during tourist season. He takes his boat through the little local rivers and makes it to the big river. If we’re not too late, he might still be there, and maybe we could get a ride to the city.”

“Too late? Too late for what?” I asked, and they both just looked at me.

“Oh, of course you don’t know.” Dust forced a smile. “In a few days or so, Lollapalooza’s gonna start.” She proceeded to spend about a minute trying to teach me how to properly say Lollapalooza. “It’s a weeklong street party celebrating music, fun, and parties.”

I nodded. “Understood. So, we’ll get what sleep we can, and then go to this captain in the morning. Sound good, everypony?” They all nodded. “Good. Now, ladies, let’s get some sleep.”

Dust settled into the bed as Cards nestled on her couch. I sat up, back against the wall, and waited for them to fall asleep first. When I was sure they were both asleep, I took out my record player and set up my earbuds. Putting in one of my favorite albums, I rested my head atop my bag and allowed myself to rest.

Cards had better not be having weird dreams about me, I thought as I let my consciousness drift off into the doldrums of sleep.

Author's Note

Footnote:

Just so we’re clear, “Agricola” is Latin for “farmer”.

Chapter 8 — Dogs

Chapter Eight: Dogs

“But apart, all we are is just a pile of mush and some crumbly dry mess...”

Deep?

How deep did the conspiracy run? I thought as I stepped out of the house and into the morning sunlight. From Duke Elkington’s message, I knew it didn’t go to the top. If it did go to the top, he wouldn’t have mentioned a hope that the Princesses would forgive him. It at least ran up to the ducal level in the local area, and if my knowledge of feudal politics was accurate, a duke was second only to the king in terms of actual power—or princess, in this case. Well, that depended on the legal strength of the crown, which usually varied between dukes running their duchies like tiny kingdoms and a state wherein dukes chafed under a proper civil service. I should ask.

“Hey, girls,” I probed. Bags under red, sleepy eyes, Dust grunted at me. “How strong is Princess Celestia’s authority?”

Cards yawned as she closed the farmhouse door. “Whatever she says goes.”

Okay, so from what I asked earlier about democracy in Equestria, I could only assume that Equestria was not a parliamentary monarchy by any means, so that meant no civil service. Still, when the monarch’s word is basically law, that meant that Equestrian crown authority had to be really high, but that it delegated local power to dukes and counts and so forth. Thus, I figured, Celestia was a strong monarch who did not derive her power from her dukes, but rather that her dukes derived their power from the mare herself, so that meant that Equestria was a unitary autocracy.

“This way, lady and gentlecolt,” Cards muttered, ambling down the road. Dust and I followed her, trying to ignore the singing of the birds.

That lead to the question of just what it was the conspiracy was up to. Even members of it swore by Celestia’s name as if she were a goddess, so I highly doubted that it was some elaborate plot to overthrow her. Why does nopony swear by Luna’s name? You’d think they would, but apparently not. On the other hoof, they seemed to have absolutely zero problems with using dark magic, even dark magic by Equestrian standards. That rose a host of questions, such as “Who taught them dark magic?” and “Why would they think using dark magic was a good idea?”

It couldn’t have been that there was a legitimate demonic influence to this, could there? That’d... make almost too much sense, if not for the fact that I was sure no demon could possibly be in this part of the world. I was sure of that because after the genocides during the recent Dark Crusade, demons and their worshippers had firmly and irrevocably been placed on the “endangered species” list. Did Equestria have the concept of an endangered species? I had to ask—

I paused, my thoughts getting a case of whiplash as they tried to keep going alongside the girls. Through the trees that lined the road I spied a clearing, and something black moving within. As Cards lead, Dust followed, and I silently crept through the brush. Well, as silently as possible when you’re in brush.

Now far enough in that I could see clearly into the clearing, I just gawked. Lying dead on the ground, its throat torn out, was a monstrous elk. Judging by eye, it looked to be over a thousand pounds, five feet tall, and its antlers were some of the biggest I’d ever seen. Looking at it, I, a mere pony, felt small and weak. This bull elk had probably caused a fair amount of property damage in its life.

With all of that meat and elk, that wasn’t exactly the animal that truly caught my eye, no. What caught my eye was the fearsome falcon picking at the elk’s neck. Its glorious black feathers rustled only slightly as the giant beast ate. It didn’t take me any time to recognize its species, Falco teutoni, der Teutschfalke. I was so transfixed by its majesty that I didn’t notice the bushes next to me rustling until it was too late.

“What gives?” Dust said quietly, and I had to bite my tongue to stop from yelping.

“Shh!” I hissed, pointing at the bird. “Look at it.”

She squinted her eyes at the bird and its prey. “Is that bird eating an elk? What kind of bird would do that? Seriously, what even is that?”

“Falcon.”

“It’s too big to be a falcon,” she replied, frowning.

I noticed Cards, shaking her head, standing by the road and staring at us. “Well, that species is both the largest species of falcon and one of the (if not the) largest, most powerful bird of prey in the world. If that bird wanted to, it could easily hunt ponies, but never does. Look, it even killed a thousand-pound elk! You will respect that bird, or else offend me on a very basic, patriotic level.” The falcon turned its head to look at me. I knew birds couldn’t smile, and I’d never claim to be able to speak to animals, but it felt like the falcon was smiling deviously at me.

“Huh. Never pegged you for huge fan of nature, GB,” she whistled.

“I’m not. That bird right there is just important and awesome.”

“Why?” she asked.

“That there is the most important species of bird in the world,” I replied, nodding at the falcon. “It’s the Teutschfalke. Back in Teutschland, it’s our national animal, a living symbol of our nation and patriotism, and is featured most prominently on the family crest of House Pendergast. It’s even proudly displayed on our flag, at least some versions of it. If the golden eagle were a pretty cool pony, the Teutschfalke would be that guy smoking cigarettes but never getting smoker’s breath or lung cancer, wearing sunglasses, and single-handedly defeating all the school bullies who picked on the falcon’s uncool friends, all while a swarm of hot girls lustfully chase him. That’s just how cool it is. You make fun of it, you make fun of me.”

I was silent for a moment. “You know, there’s something terribly symbolic about a Teutschfalke ripping out the throat of a monstrous elk and eating it. I think it’s a good omen. The question is, how the hell did a bird native to a continent across the ocean make its way to this part of Equestria? That’s actually really strange.”

The falcon spread its glorious wings and gave a blood-chilling cry. For a second I thought there was a tag on its leg, but quickly dismissed that idea as just me seeing things. In another second it had launched into the air and disappeared with an awing speed. I contemplated skinning the elk and offering its pelt to Duke Elkington, but felt that was a little on the nose, and I was too lazy to actually do it right now.

Cards berated me for wandering off as our trio set off again. Nothing interesting really happened the rest of the trip.

|— ☩ —|

“River Rush River Tours!” the sign on the wooden house declared. The building was painted red, which really made it stand out against the green and browns of the forest around us. In a word, it was safe, cozy, and dull as all hell. Behind the building, bobbing lazily on the river, was a large paddle boat with two decks and a red roof. Really, the place looked so normal that something seedy had to be going on here. Sex slave industry, perhaps? Illegal drugs? Walrus tipping?

Cards knocked on the door, and nopony responded. Hearing shouts from behind the building, we walked around it. Standing on the wooden docks connecting the boat to the building was a graying stallion wearing a white peaked cap. “Do you have to be so slow, you mangy mutt?” he shouted, waving a hoof at the boat.

The unicorn mare attempted to approach him, but I pushed her out of the way and trotted up instead. “Ahoy,” I greeted.

With a smile on his old face, the earth pony turned to me. “Ahoy yourself, stranger!” he replied in a warm tone. “I’m Captain River Rush, and you are?”

“My name is Captain Jericho, and I fight space aliens.”

He gave me a thoughtful look and nodded. “An honorable profession.” River Rush pulled a pipe out from a pocket on his white jacket. I offered him a light, and he grinned at me. “Thanks, Captain Jericho, fighter of space aliens.”

“Please, just call me ‘government boy’, it’s what everyone else around here calls me.”

River Rush turned his head to the boat. “Dog, get out here and say hello to our nice guests!”

A large dog-like head poked out from the boat. Rolling its eyes, it lugged its whole gray body into the open. Standing on two stock legs and with arms reaching down to its knees, it looked like the freak aftermath of a dog meeting an overly ambitious gorilla one night at the bar. An almost annoyed look on its face, it walked like a gorilla down the dock. “What Captain want now?”

“Ah, there you are, boy,” River Rush said happily. “These are our guests, government boy and those two mares keeping their distance over there.”

“Is that... is that a diamond dog?” I asked, pointing at it—at him. I couldn’t help but notice the green vest he wore, the word ‘Songnam Security’ written over it. Then there was the collar around his neck, the tag reading ‘Deeohgee’.

The dog sighed, then said in a deep voice not unlike a gravel road, “What the matter? Never see dog before?”

“Well, no, only read about them in old books. What’s your name?” I asked, but the Captain interrupted.

“Dog,” River Rush scolded, “is that any way to treat a guest.” The dog scoffed but did not say anything else. “Speaking of which, are you folks looking for a ride? Perhaps to Songnam? We were just about to set off that way.”

“Yes, Captain, we were. What are the price for three passengers?”

He laughed. “Well, government boy, just ’cause I like you, say... ten Bits.”

“Per pony?”

“For all of y’all,” he said, taking a puff on his pipe. “Usually, it’s that per pony, but we ain’t goin’ anywhere out of the way.”

I pulled out ten of the Bits I’d looted from Doc Dome’s clinic. “Here you go, Captain.”

“Great!” He looked at the dog. “Dog, help load these ponies’ bags into the bedroom, and then ready the engines.”

“Sir?” the dog asked me, looking at my bags. I politely refused three times before he reluctantly walked over to the girls. They rather willingly parted with their bags, which he lugged off to the boat. I watched as he disappeared around the other half of the two-story boat.

Cards walked up to me, and Dust flew to me. “Okay, girls,” I told them, “I got us passage to Songnam. Any questions? No? Good.”

We followed Captain River Rush to the boat, which I noticed was named ‘S.S. SSSSS’. “What’s with the boat’s name, Captain?” I asked.

He made a sound like hissing air, but I realized he was actually saying the boat’s name. “I named her that because when I bought her and went to paint her a name, the only letter I had an outline-thingy for was an S. Being that I can’t write for diddly, I figured it’d just be easier to name her the S.S. SSSSS.”

Equestrians are weird. Lightning Dust flew up ahead and landed on the boat’s second story balcony. She looked around, then waved at us. Really weird. Dust trotted off and, presumably, explored the boat for herself.

“Around the corner,” River Rush explained as we stepped onto the boat, “is a room marked ‘bedroom’. Dog put your things there, since that’s what I told ’im to do. Any of y’all get tired, feel free to rest it up in there. It won’t be long before we reach Songnam, okay? If you need me, I’ll be upstairs, captaining SSSSS. So just sit tight and enjoy the ride.”

He left Cards and me to our own devices as he trotted up the stairs. I looked down and pawed at the wooden floors. They seemed nice enough. Sturdy enough. I got the distinct impression that River Rush got bored very often around here, and that cleaning his boat was his own relief and doubled as some Freudian phallic thingy, I was sure. Stupid Freud, worst Teutscher ever, setting science back centuries. I wondered if Freud’s teachings had somehow wormed their way into Equestria. If not, Equestria was probably years ahead of us in the field of psychology. Well, at least I couldn’t detect anything in the way of malice to any of the Captain’s actions.

“I think I’m going to take him up on that offer of sleeping,” Cards yawned, and she traipsed off.

“And then there was one,” I muttered darkly, dramatically. Though it was true, I was now alone on the boat. The S.S. SSSSS lurched away from the dock as the paddles spun to life, and soon we were going downriver.

With nothing to do and nowhere to go, I eventually found myself walking in circles around the deck. As I walked, I got to appreciate how big the boat was, and how small this river was compared to it. There was just enough room for it, but none for any other vessels. I hoped that we wouldn’t run into any issues like that. Given the boat’s shape, that damn quack Freud slipped into my mind, telling me the boat was a phallic symbol and the river was clearly a metaphor for River Rush’s mother.

Speaking of the river, the trees that flanked it thinned out a bit here, but we were still in forest country. I think I saw a deer; it was mocking me from the riverside in its strange, silent deer language, I was sure. It was daring me to jump out of the boat and engage it in fisticuffs; but I knew better than the deer, and so stayed put on the boat. The once fearsome beast accepted it had been beaten and fled into the woods like a coward, but not before urinating in defiance of my wit! Save for the constant maliciousness of the common deer, it was the perfect time to—

“Hello?” Dust said, probing my shoulder with a hoof.

—jump out of my skin! Hell’s bells, I only barely kept everything in my bags actually in my bags when I tumbled over. Dust giggled at me, and I glared at her. She only smiled and laughed at me. Dust was sitting, I noted as I stood up, on the boats railing, her legs dangling over the side, a forehoof holding onto one of the pillars attaching the railing to the deck above us.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” I scolded, and the mare shrugged her wings. “That’s the second time today, stop being silent.”

She kicked her legs and leaned her head towards me. “Gotcha. So, what were you doing?”

“Well,” I sighed, “I was brooding darkly about stuff. What about you? You vanished for an hour or so.”

Dust looked out at the river. “Dunno, just sort of... thinking, you know?”

“What an insightful answer,” I muttered.

“So. Where’s Cards gone off to?”

“Bed. We were given a bedroom and she used it.” I shrugged. “I probably couldn’t sleep, too worked up.” The boat jostled, shaking Dust. “Have fun up there?” I asked, pointing upwards.

She drooped her ears and sighed. “I guess you can say I did,” Dust said coldly, looking up at the clouds. Where the hell did that come from? “To be honest, this is the longest I’ve even been groundside in my life. I mean, I always thought there was no purpose on the surface. I had to train, train, train up in the clouds if I ever wanted to be a Wonderbolt. But now...” She glanced at me and flashed a small smile. “Least I’ve got friends like you down here.”

“Friends?”

She rubbed the back of her head. “Well, truth be told, GB, you’re the only unicorn stallion I’ve spent more than a minute with. Cards is the first mare in that regard, too. I’ve just spent most of my life with other pegasi, and so...”

“How the hell do you stay so isolated from earthers and unicorns?”

She frowned. “Earther? That’s a weird way of putting it.” I shrugged. “Well, to answer your question, I grew up and was raised in Cloudsdale.”

I tilted my head. “What’s that?”

Dust chuckled. “It’s only the coolest city in all Equestria, and probably the world! It’s a giant metropolis flying through the clouds.” My brain imploded, got launched into another universe, fought daringly against alternate universe monsters, became that universe’s king by defeating an incomprehensible evil, then left, telling them he needed to go save another universe now, and so finally found my skull again. “A city built out of clouds, too. Around fifteen thousand feet in the air, she sits more majestic than Canterlot.” She continued kicking her legs as she watched my reaction.

I gasped, taking a step back. “That’s impossible!” And that was unnecessarily dramatic.

“Hmm?” she hummed, her hooves banging against the railing. I looked into her eyes and I didn’t get the feeling she was lying.

“At fifteen thousand feet, it’d be too cold and windy to survive! There couldn’t possibly be enough oxygen to breathe, and the altitude sickness alone would probably kill you!” She merely tilted her head, a confused look on her face. “Cloudsdale couldn’t possibly exist—you can’t build out of clouds!”

“Are you saying it cloud not exist?” she snickered.

“Tell me you were joking, Dust. Tell me that Equestria doesn’t have flying citadels at heights where a normal pony would die.”

“Well, it’s not impossible. With the help of a little pegasus weather control magic and an innovative thinker, you get a city like Cloudsdale.”

“‘Pegasus weather control magic’? The hell is that?”

She frowned. “Okay, now you’re just making fun of me, aren’t you?” I vigorously shook my head. “Oh, come on, everypony knows pegasi can control the weather. We always have.”

“I swear upon the blood of God that that isn’t true,” I said darkly. “Weather is weather, it controls itself. The only time it doesn’t is in fantasy and science fiction.”

Dust furrowed her brow. “Yeah, you’re making fun of me.”

“No, I am not, Miss Lightning Dust. Ich schwöre, dass das die Wahrheit ist. Pegasi cannot control the weather.” She frowned hard, and then jumped off the boat. “Dust, what are—!” Then I saw her fly up into the air. “Oh, du Miststück...” Dust flew too high for me to see, thanks to the deck above me. Rather than race myself up to the upper deck, I just stood there and waited for... whatever it was that she was doing.

Tick. Tack. Tock.

With Dust still not back, I got to thinking. There were a lot of really impossible things in the world, I’d even told her as much last night. Was it possible to have a city in the clouds? I imagined a massive city of stone built in shallow water, a place where all the streets were made of water. And then the stone dissolved into thick clouds, and the water just became air.

There were two ponies on opposite sides of a street, one coaxing the other one to just jump the gap. The second one jumped for it, missed, and plummeted four-and-a-half kilometers to his death. It was a common occurrence, the first pony reasoned, and then went off to play water polo in a storm cloud. Meanwhile, on the ground below the city was a large farm, whose farmer was a shady earther with a salt-and-pepper beard. When he saw the pony fall and crashland dead in his farm, the farmer nodded sagely, and then marked up a tally on his blackboard. “Twenty-first one this month,” he said to nopony in particular. It was some elaborate scheme to avoid paying taxes—even though the sewage from the city (giant waterfalls of bodily waste) fertilized his fields and made him fabulously rich, he just hated taxes that much. After all, when he was a colt, a pack of wild taxes had come to his house and made him dress like a filly—

I shook my head and realized I needed to see a therapist, even though the word therapist looked suspiciously similar to the rapist. At least the two words were pronounced differently, right? Or had I been wrong the whole time and therapist was pronounced ‘the rapist’? I muttered the two different pronunciations to myself. Come to think, if therapist was pronounced like that, it would go a long, long way towards explaining why every pony in Equestria was crazy—no one wanted to visit a ‘the rapist’.

A head poked up from below the edge of the deck, and two orange eyes peeked out at me. “Psst. Psst! Hey, GB!”

I blinked, glad to be free from the hellhole that was my mind. “What?”

Without warning, a slithering black mass of ash crawled up from Dust’s side. I stared at it as it floated up into the air, Dust hovering next to it. The undulating mass of black ash floated there as Dust frowned at her blackened arms. “Ugh,” she groaned. “Why’d today have to be so cloudless? The only thing I could get was this thing from the boat’s exhaust, and it was hell trying to get it without actually choking on the fumes.”

“Why are your arms all black?” I questioned dumbly.

She frowned. “I don’t have arms, I have forelegs.” I shook my head, though she went on. “But if you’re asking about my forelegs, it’s because I was trying to wrestle this here thing.” She poked the cloud, and it moved a bit to the side. “Nasty thing, burning coal.”

I stared at what was in front of me, trying to process it all. I decided to file it all under the ‘Will Come Back And Haunt Me’ cabinet. “You can actually touch and move clouds?”

She poked and moved the cloud again. “With the proper training, sure. I mean, if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you’re just gonna tackle on through the cloud. Weather clouds and building clouds aren’t the same thing, you know? Any pegasus can walk on building clouds, but only a trained one can actually do anything with weather clouds. I once tried my hoof at becoming a weather pegasus, but that was boring, so I stopped. Still remember the technique.”

I rubbed my eyes, the bruise above my eye and around my neck aching. “You can actually control weather.” As much as that should have been a question, it came out as a blank statement.

“Mmm-hmm,” she hummed happily, nodding at me. “Ain’t too hard once you get the hang of it.”

“And so a city in the sky...”

“Actually exists, yep. Was born and raised there. I told you that already, right? I mean, pegasi just do that. Heard tale there used to be other cities like Cloudsdale in the past, but now she’s the only flying city in Equestria.” Ikarus would have been proud, and then died because that stupid earth pony did not know how to use wax wings.

“And the world,” I added in a distant tone. “I suppose... suppose I’ve seen worse and more illogical things out there in the wide, wide world.”

With a deft punch to its center of mass, Dust destroyed the cloud. She covered her mouth and backed away from it, letting the particles disperse. A part of me realized that Equestria liked to burn coal, and the sheer idiocy of that almost helped me forget that Equestria also liked defying the laws of physics. Dust winked at me and she flew below the bow again. She came back up, arms and face wet but clean, and crossed her forelegs over the railings. Still flying, she reminded me vaguely of the image of Cupid, if Cupid weren’t a baby who needed to go on a diet and see a ‘the rapist’ about these equicidal urges to shoot people he’s been having lately. Yet, she still kicked her legs aimlessly as she looked at me.

“I’ll have to bring you there, GB,” she said in a giddy voice, “when this is all over and we’ve saved the day.”

I like how she said ‘when’ and not ‘if’, makes me more confident. Wait. What? “It’s possible for a unicorn to go to Cloudsdale? I thought you said that only pegasi can walk on clouds.”

She jostled her head in a kinda-sorta way. “Used to be so, then a few years back, so I heard, some ambitious unicorn found a spell in an old book that changed that. Lets earth ponies and unicorns walk on clouds, and there was this other one that could give a pony these creepy-looking insect wings. There’s this one company that jumped on the idea and now uses the cloudwalking spell to give tours of Cloudsdale to non-pegasi.” Dust glanced up. “You can even get the spell in a nice talisman if you wanted to stay for a while and had the money.”

They did what?! I could handle the idea that Equestrians were more liberal with magic than most sane ponies back east. I could understand why Equestrians could get away with it, the demons so far away and so often dealt with by us Teutschen. Hell, I could even deal with ‘pegasi weather magic’. But to have an entire city made of clouds suspended at likely-lethal heights seemingly (or literally) by magic and with an entire tourism industry built from selling enchanted talismans to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who had the cash was madness!

I admit, perhaps my thoughts were a result of my cultural preconceptions, and perhaps I just really had to accept that Equestria was different than Teutschland. What was wrong to one culture was perfectly normal and acceptable in another cultural, and that was perfectly okay. But when the issue was magic, that’s when things started to get fuzzy. On the one hoof, it was ‘other country, other customs’. On the other hoof, they were dealing with an incredibly dangerous force as though it were no more dangerous than painkillers.

One culture had no right to impose its viewpoints, morals, and practices over another. But when another culture’s viewpoints, morals, or practices could hurt and kill them, such as female genital mutilation, it was the office of Equitologie to step in and educate the people out of harm’s way. I could only speculate as to just how royally screwed Equestria would be if Teutschland wasn’t out there; if we didn’t send our sons and daughters into the killing fields; if the symbol of the falcon wasn’t nearly omnipresent throughout a quarter of the planet; if the Reich didn’t selflessly stand up for the lives of people so they could maintain lifestyles that insulted Teutschland’s very existence.

I closed my eyes, took a breath, then said as cheerily as I could, “Yeah, that’d be awesome. We should really do that. I’ve never been that high up before.” Not intentionally, at least.

“Glad to see this isn’t bothering you or anything,” Dust chirped. “For a moment there, GB, I thought it was.”

More than you could imagine...

|— ☩ —|

I pushed up on my hat and got a good look at the approaching Songnam River. This was the river the SSSSS had been built for, most certainly. Shouting something unintelligible, Captain River Rush steered the boat out of the smaller, nameless river estuary and into the Songnam River proper. I wasn’t sure how long it’d taken us to get here, since I was pretty sure I’d fallen asleep at the bow at some point, and only now the boat’s activity had roused me.

Further out on the river was a barge spewing out a stream of black smoke from its engines. It didn’t look like the kind of happy ship where the mariners (a word which always made me think “marinating in mares”) sang rousing songs just for the hell of it. As it went downriver, I gritted my teeth and fretted for any pegasi who had the misfortune to need to wrangle up stray clouds from that, assuming my limited understanding of Equestrian weather was accurate. Looking around, the waterlogged terraces lining the river caught my interest. Were those rice paddies? They were, weren’t they? Strange. I liked rice, but eating too much of it is bad for you and over the years will make you and your people tiny.

Our ship’s dog barked as the SSSSS banked left, going upriver. Lying down on the deck, I watched through the railing as the hills and rice paddies swept by, as boats rode the river up and down. A thought almost, almost, mused about how easy things had been going today; but I took that thought, hit it repeatedly over the head with shovel, cut up its body into tiny pieces, and attached those tiny pieces to a swarm of messenger pigeons and let them loose as punishment for the thought trying to tempt fate. I tried to suppress any other thoughts like it by focusing on the river and trying to find any more Freudian symbols to think about and then feel sick about.

I heard hoofsteps coming from behind me. Rolling onto my back, I looked over at Cards, her eyes puffy, as she slogged across the deck. It would’ve been nice to think she was just the worst jogger ever, but I unfortunately knew better. Our eyes met, and she swallowed.

“Government boy?” Cards asked. I rolled to my hooves and just looked at her. “You really didn’t read those letters, did you? You don’t know what they were about, right?”

“No, but I imagine you’re going to tell me,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. Starting to wonder here if it’d be easier to accidentally push her off the boat.

“One of the letters from Boulder’s foals to him, telling him how much they missed and loved him. Two of them were about Boulder having to do things in order to support his kids and hopefully earn enough to help put them through college.” She sniffled. “The last two were about the money White Tongue was sending back home to cover his mother’s expensive hospital bills.” I pretended to check my watch. Only after pretending to check did I realize that I actually wanted to check the time, but Cards spoke up before I could. “That means that when I killed Boulder, I didn’t just kill him, I murdered his family. Boulder only took that job to support his kids, and White Tongue’s mother was too sick to live outside of a hospital. When, when Jeepers said that those two weren’t bad ponies, he wasn’t wrong. They did bad things, but what kind of father wouldn’t hesitate to do bad things if it meant the only way to put food on his family’s table? What kind of son wouldn’t work hard for the mother he loved?”

I smell an oedipus complex! “And this bothers you?”

She clenched her eyes and nodded. “Boulder’s foals were innocent, but with one careless swing, I murdered them, government boy.” I cocked a brow but remained silent. “How can you possibly not be horrified that because of you, government boy, White Tongue’s mother is going to die? Everytime I close my eyes... I see them, the foals from Boulder’s photo. I can almost hear them asking why I took Daddy away from them, see their teary eyes, feel their cries in my very soul. I tried to save my town, but instead I—”

The back of my hoof found a personal friend in Cards’ cheek. She shrieked and stumbled backwards. “You’re absolutely right,” I said in a stern voice, careful not to sound harsh or demeaning. “But think about it: What kind of example was Boulder setting to his kids? That it’s okay to hurt ponies weaker than you for the sake of those you deem worthwhile? And what kind of mother would raise her son to harm the innocent if it meant keeping her alive?” I closed the distance between us, using my height against her for all it was worth. She cowered down in front of me. “So what if their loved ones agonize over it? That’s what happens when you take a life. Most everyone has family, friends, or something. Hell, if you think about just how amazing every part of the equine body is to keep us functioning—every bone, every muscle, every neuron, every cell, every enzyme—it seems like such a waste to kill.”

“And I...” she stammered weakly.

“And you did something that you now regret. You did something that is impossible to change. You can’t change it. You couldn’t control what happened afterwards. At the time, it was either you or him, and you chose to live.” I shook my head. “We do horrible things to survive, and we do horrible things to make sure the people worse than us don’t hurt those better than us. In this world of ours, that’s what a hero is. And depending on whose point of view you’re looking through, history’s greatest heroes double as history’s greatest monsters.”

Cards exclaimed, “I don’t want to be a monster who kills ponies without regret, like—” She froze, eying me.

“Like me?” I suggested, and she refused to respond, not even with body language. “You know what, little girl? You whine and angst a lot. You think you’ve had a hard life, that you’ve seen some horrible things, and now you’ve done a horrible wrong yourself, right?” Her eyes darted around, but she gave a hesitant nod.

I chuckled. “I killed my mother in childbirth and am an only child, my father never quite forgave me for it, and I most certainly have daddy issues; save for my father and I, my whole family is either dead or locked in an insane asylum; don’t get me started on all the mental issues I probably accrued during the Dark Crusade, since seeing the places you grew up defaced by the slaughter of your countrymen does not do you much good; and most mentally scarring of all, my pet turtle was so afraid of me it died!”

After saying all of that aloud, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Really, now that you know, I can’t pretend to be all dark, mysterious, and brooding about it, slowly giving away cryptic clues until we finally get the big, dramatic reveal—which is fine. I hate brooding over things, anyways; could never do it right and just sounded like I was whining. Back on topic, that was all before I left the Reich, and you don’t even want to know the things I’ve seen and done out here in the real world.” I threw my head back and laughed again. “But do you know what? For all of that, I’m not going to whine, spend sleepless nights wondering if I could’ve done better, or let it bother me in the slightest. I haven’t earned the right to be sympathized with, forgiven, or pitied.

“In fact, I’m going to do the exact opposite of what you’re doing; I’m going to feel happy with my lot in life. I’m going to jump around and laugh and sing and dance and tell jokes because that’s just who I am! I will sit down and think that, whatever else could have happened, I must have made the right choice because I’m alive and the world is perhaps better off for what I did. If you let your mistakes, your fears, your regret, and your grief define you, then all you’ll be is a reflection of those horrible emotions. You can’t ever, ever, think of it as ‘I just killed a stallion’, but rather as ‘I just saved a bunch of innocents’.” I smiled. “Worse comes worst, just do what I always do, and laugh it off, knowing you are walking endlessly within the deepest level of Hell, the Wheel of Time. I’m more interesting that way, don’t you think?”

Cards looked distant, as though she were convinced if she looked distantly enough, she’d totally see far enough to prove the world was flat. Then, in a voice so quiet I wasn’t sure if she was thinking aloud or not, she said, “You’re wrong. You are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! I just want to help ponies, not hurt them.”

I nodded, taking a step back. “Cards, we don’t live in a world where you can’t save some people without hurting others. Life has the annoying habit of being so gray.” I put a hoof on her shoulder, and she flinched out of my grasp.

She swallowed hard, daring to look me in the eye. When I looked back, she looked away. “Why are you trying to be a hero?”

“Trying?” I scoffed. “Was, am, and will be.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Cards replied. “I... I don’t believe you when you talk about those virtues your people have. Well, I do, but I don’t believe that you believe them. So, why are you trying to be a hero, government boy?”

I closed my eyes and took a breath. A thought turned to the letter in my pocket, to the words consider this task a personal favor for me. I opened my eyes. “Because I have no choice in the matter.”

She tilted her head. “What does that mean?”

I feigned a cough, then spun around thrice. Cards stared at me as I began humming and swimming my body to an invisible beat. I could see question forming on her lips, and interjected with, “This whole conversation is too damn depressing, so I’m dancing to make everything suddenly fun again.” Of course, I had to sing a jaunty little tune at her.

“What...” she tried as I ended my verse.

“Crappy pop music, my girl!” I exclaimed. “Thank the deity of your choosing that it’s not as popular as other genres. Or maybe in Equestria it is...” My dancing died. “What if pop music is more popular here?” I said in a dark, dark tone.

“Uh...”

“Cards,” I snapped, “go back to bed. Rest. Sleep some more. Think about what I said. And for the sake of God, Celestia, Luna, or whatever deity-thing you worship, stop angsting over nothing, and start worrying over real issues, like however popular pop music may or may not be in this country.”

She hesitated for a long while. I waited in silence for her to move, listening to the boat chug on through the water, and a strange mechanical sound in the distance. Finally, Cards sighed, turned around, and walked away. Just before she was out of sight, she stopped and looked at me. “Do you enjoy my suffering? Honestly?”

I stared at her for a long while, my expression blank. “We Teutsche call it Schadenfreude,” I said in a casual tone.

Cards shook her head and walked out of sight around the boat. I looked back out in front of the boat and groaned. Aaaand boring. That strange mechanical sound, quiet but distinct, played with my imagination. Then there was that diamond dog. I had to see him again and ask him seemingly random questions. Plus, pop music. When we got to Songnam, I was going to have to amble around a record store and marvel at whatever music Equestria produced. Shrugging off my lazy urge to just stay put, I wandered around the deck.

The mechanical sound got louder at the rear of the boat, by the paddles pushing us through the water. That made sense. I couldn’t see if there was much smoke it the air, thanks to the deck above me, but I saw a metal pipe of some sorts running up a wall. Near the pipe was a doorway that looked like it lead into a cellar. I pulled on its handles, and the door opened without much resistance. The sound got rather loud from down there, so it was logically the best, safest place to blindly wander into, especially because it was dark save for an angry red glow. Maybe there I’d find proof of that illegal walrus tipping ring.

As I entered the room below, I was struck by the smell of sweat, wet dog, and coal. Lots of coal. And for that matter, why did dogs smell when they got wet? I needed to ask a scientist about that. At the far side of the room, next to a roaring furnace which bathed the room in red light, was the diamond dog, leaning against the wall. His ear was to something that looked like the horn of a record, his eyes to the floor. With a nod of the head, he stepped away from the horn, grabbed a shovel, and shoveled a single heap of coal into the furnace.

“Hello?” I called out, but over the roar of the furnace and mechanics, he didn’t even look at me. “Dog!” I called louder, and he glanced at me. Frowning hard, he gave me what I thought was a ‘What do you want?’ shrug. I pointed at him, then at my mouth. “Can we talk?” He stared at me. After a second or two, he gave me a shooing gesture with his paws... hands... or whatever they were. “Please? Can we talk?”

He facehoofed with one hand, pointing to an iron door labeled “Deeohgee” on one side of the room. Taking that as a yes, I trotted over to the door, opened it, and stepped through into a dingy, little room. Despite the hammock, the little round table in the middle, and an odd pin-up calendar featuring a mare in a bikini, the room had the odd feel of the kind of place you’d hide your dirty magazines from your wife, not a place where someone actually lived. Somehow, the loud noises from the room behind me were much quieter here.

I wiggled around the claustrophobic space and took a seat at the musty table. A moment later and the diamond dog scuttled into the room, scowling at me as he closed the door behind him. “What pony want?” he demanded.

“To talk.”

He cocked a thick, furry eyebrow. “What ’bout?”

“Tell me about diamond dogs,” I said flatly, “I’m honestly curious.” The dog tilted his head, and I continued, “I’ve never met a diamond dog, and I sort of can’t pass up an opportunity to learn about such a rare species as yourself.” And maybe learn its weaknesses. No response. “Or maybe tell me a little about the boat you’re working on.”

“Welcome to boat. Hope you like black lung disease,” the dog said without any trace of humor.

“Oookay... Do you have a name? Do diamond dogs even have names?”

“Deeohgee,” he muttered, glancing nervously over his shoulder, which must have been hard when he didn’t have any room for his neck in the first place.

“D-o-g? Dog? That’s your name?”

“No, Deeohgee. Spells dog. Pronounced dee-oh-gee.”

I blinked at him. “Huh. That’s clever. Really clever... I like it.”

Deeohgee rolled his eyes. “Pony done? Deeohgee need get back to work.”

“What’s with the strange accent?” I asked. “Do diamond dogs even have a language as I’d understand it? How come you weren’t taught better Equestrian?” Before I could finish talking, Deeohgee growled at me like a dog. I pressed the back of my tongue against my uvula, growling back at him. Well, it wasn’t a growl so much as was just me gutturally rolling my R, not that foreigners could really tell the difference.

Suddenly Deeohgee stopped and laughed. “Pony can growl? Never met pony what could growl like dog.”

Well, that went better than expected. “Never met a dog what could growl like a pony,” I replied, fishing into my bags. I pulled out my bottle of Bucking Bronco. There was still a speck of blood on it from where it’d hit Jeepers. “Say, do you drink?”

Deeohgee smiled at me. His sharp, jagged teeth did not inspire confidence. Nevertheless, he squatted down at the other end of the table and eagerly held out a hand. I obliged him the bottle, and watched as he took it with the one hand, using a single clawed finger to pop the bronco’s head off. His hand reminded me a little too much of that illusion I’d seen in the farmer’s attic. Perhaps the physical image of that illusion spell was of a diamond dog?

He took a deep swig. “What pony’s name?” Deeohgee asked, giving the bottle a contemplating look.

“Jericho.”

“What kind of name that is?”

I gave him a mirthless tone, saying with the utmost seriousness, “It’s a dog’s name.” He affixed me with a strange look. “It’s not the kind of name a father names his son; it’s the kind of name he gives to his golden retriever.” I let out a chuckle. “Funny how these things work, eh, Deeohgee? But just call me—”

“Government boy,” he said. “Good hearing. Heard you tell Captain.” Deeohgee took another pull of the drink. “Government boy... government boy... Hmm. You know, you only good pony I met. Makes two good ponies in this world.” I cocked a brow, and he explained, “Government boy and Duke Elkington.”

“Duke Elkington? Why him?”

“Pony is cruel, evil, mean,” he said in a dark tone. “Pretty Pony Princess not care about us, not make us ‘subjects’, not help us.” Deeohgee shrugged. “Duke Elkington help dog, say all dogs welcome in Songnam, become our packmaster. He feed, shelter, and care for dog. Pretty Pony Princess don’t mind or care; we loyal only to Duke.” He shook his head in a ‘What can I say?’ way. “Can’t say Deeohgee blame Pretty Pony Princess. Some packs today try enslave pony; pony can’t tell difference between good dog and bad dog. Pony not care enough.”

I nodded. So, if Duke Elkington was helping out diamond dogs and gaining their loyalty, a loyalty which they gave to him and him alone, they’d make for good friends on the Duke’s conspiracy. Those claws on Deeohgee alone looked like they could tear me apart in a femtosecond, but I had to imagine an army of him, and that was... not pleasant to contemplate. “Why don’t you say the word ‘I’?”

Deeohgee sighed. “Dog have many kind of bark, like pony have many language. Western barks not have ‘I’ or ‘you’, only third-person. Saying ‘I’ feel wrong to Deeohgee. Go south, Rambling Rock Ridge—only pack with first-person live there. Wait, don’t. That pack bad. Slave labor. Fail at it, but try.”

The more I learned about Equestria, it seemed, the more screwed up it got. I got the feeling that ponies in Equestria didn’t ask a lot of questions. What was next? A metrosexosaurus? Swarms of insects that caused insane property damage? Dragons in general? All the hot girls were secretly gay? I shuddered at the possibilities.

Handing me the empty bottle, Deeohgee smiled at me. “If Deeohgee didn’t like government boy, wouldn’t have told government boy ’bout bad dogs.” He stood up, gesturing for me to follow. “Come, it bad for pony health down here. Deeohgee not want government boy get black lung disease.”

“That’s from inhaling coal dust, right?” I asked, and he nodded. “Then why are you working down here? Isn’t that at all dangerous to your health?”

Deeohgee waggled his brows. “Dog immune to dust-in-lung diseases that pony get.”

|— ☩ —|

“Good morning, Songnam!” an incredibly loud male voice rang out from the ether as I stepped out from the engine room. I looked around, noticing the many boats around the SSSSS, and then spying the city straddling both sides of the river. Strangely enough, I couldn’t see any walls; if the city were attacked, it wouldn’t last a day. With everything evil in Equestria, did the ponies really feel so safe that they thought they didn’t need walls?

“Hey, it works,” the voice cheered. “You can thank our proud sponsor, Voixécrivain. Voixécrivain—makers of the Parleur and the Voixson! Thanks to them, Songnam’s the first city in the whole world to have an integrated system of speakers! I can talk to all my subjects and give announcements from here in my castle!”

As the voice spoke, I walked around the boat. When I got to the bow, I had to pause and rub my eyes. The river around me was wide and filled with boats, most of them docked in various wharves lining the river and in clearly artificial harbors dug out into the side, and many of them unloaded a cargo of ponies into the city. Songnam proudly lined both sides of the eponymous river (or did the river run through the eponymous city?), many of the buildings painted bright colors, waving bright banners of every hue imaginable, balloons flew all over the place, and I got the feeling that Songnam was a city whose success was measured in how many ponies died of alcohol poisoning each day—the more the better, since you can’t have a party without alcoholism and regrets.

All throughout the city rose towers of brick with red-tiled roofs, each tower waving a flag I couldn’t quite make out. In fact, red-tiled roofs seem to be the in-style thing in Songnam. But as far as walls went, it was brick or whitewashed stone all the way here. The side of the city on the southwestern bank of the river seemed to be on a hill, judging by how much higher everything way. Though hard to make out over the buildings, it looked as if the hill was peaked by a white castle, though I couldn’t make out much. Bridges spanned the river, one of them even looked like it was built exclusively for locomotives, but one bridge further down the waterway was the most massive of all; if the huge skeleton of iron and concrete decorated with streamers and balloons was any indication, it was a few years from completion.

But despite all those colorful sights, none of them held my attention more than the giant statue on a small island in the middle of the river. She was standing up tall on her hinds, her arms standing on a large shield. Made of some sort of glistening white stone, her wings extended just enough to look downright angelic, no more, no less—and given what I knew of Equestrian mythology, I couldn’t say whether or not the angelic symbolism was intentional or not. Maybe some creep out here just had a fetish for sculpting wings? Whatever the case, it didn’t change simple white dress she wore, the crown on her head, the subtly friendly, almost motherly look on her face, nor the horn on her head.

My eyes widened. It was a statue of Princess Celestia. A statue of the fallen angel herself built into an artificial island. “La Maîtresse du Soleil” was carved into the shield. The hell was with Equestrians and that language? All around the statue’s base were huge horns, as if somepony had built giant semi-buried record players around Celestia as some sort of incredibly impractical joke. As the stallion continued speaking, I realized that the voice was spreading out across the water from the horns. Sound carried well over water or something, if I was recalling that factoid correctly.

“So, ladies and gentlecolts, Lollapalooza begins in just a few moments. Prepare to enjoy the drinks and delicacies from all corners of the world, the best songs and dancing this side of the world, the Wonderbolts, parades and floats, casinos, games, talks from me, and all the fun your little hearts can handle,” the stallion said proudly. “And whether you’re here for the celebration or just passing through to parts unknown out west, I wish you the best of fortune, the greatest of times, and a fun day. Plus,” he went on in an almost ecstatic, colt-in-a-candy-shop tone, “if you stick around, I hear a very special lady from Canterlot might just show up!” He took a breath and calmed down. “But till then, check out who’s playing for the local mayoral elections. Orchestra’s going strong, but the new kid on block, rock ’n’ roll, is trying its best to drum up some support, and I do so love me an underdog. Stop on by and cast your support in for your favorite musical party.

“So, as a famous philosopher once said: as when the modes of music change, the walls of the city shake. And as a certain Songnam native once said about us: whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on! Yeow! Let Lollapalooza begin, haha!”

I just stood there as the city around me exploded in a cacophony of shouts, cheers, and confetti. Several balloons rose out from the city and into the sky, and I hoped that each and every one of them had been lost by a small child, a child who was now crying and would eventually drive his parents to seek marriage counseling. I wondered why I hoped that, and couldn’t reach a satisfactory answer.

A flock of seagulls flew over the river as the SSSSS turned and headed for a spot along the docks. Meanwhile, I pulled out the gutted record player and looked it over. Indeed, there engraved on the bottom was a logo, “Voixécrivain”, depicting a pony’s ear and soundwaves. While I wasn’t fluent in the language, I thought I knew enough to understand that the company’s name was literally “Voice-Writer”. Though the label mentioned it was a “Voixson”, a “Voice-Sound”. I fiddled with a volume slider and then pressed play. Though the tone and accent was different, the voice recorded was the same as the excited, friendly Duke Elkington I’d just heard. Turning it off and putting it back, I heard somepony walking up from behind me. Scratch that, some ponies.

Cards, eyes wide with awe, stared out at the city, the statue, and everything around her. For the first time since I’d seen her, she didn’t look depressed, and that was good, that meant I didn’t need to throw her off the boat in annoyance.

Dust, walking beside her, gave me an... odd look. “Hear that? The Wonderbolts are gonna be here.” She ran a hoof through her mane. “Cool.”

I don’t want to deal with this right now. I nodded at her. “And this strange, uh, sound system is interesting. I can’t say I know its like anywhere else, so Elkington’s boast about it being the first of its kind might not be so much empty air.”

“Is that so, huh?” she replied, looking out at the city.

I noticed a large billboard pointing on top of a building. There was a large, toned stallion with two models wrapped around his arms. A cocked brow, he held up a glass bottle with a red label in a hoof. The bottle was filled with a peachy-brownish liquid. “Drink Juggernog!” the advertisement demanded. “Clinically proven to take those punches and duke ’em back!*” The asterisked line was explained in tiny, tiny print at the bottom of the billboard. Taking my binoculars out for a moment, I read the fine print. “Results may vary. If you react poorly to magical beverages, do not drink—”

Shaking my head, I stopped reading. Even energy and sports drinks appeared to have an amount of magic in them. Also, how did one “react poorly to magical beverages”? Was it possible to be allergic to magic? How would that even work? Would it be like hives, or a rash, or full-blown anaphylactic shock? What if a unicorn was allergic to magic? By the Machine Spirit, that’d suck. So, so many question, so, so little time.

Dust tapped my shoulder. “You know what we’re doing, right? A plan, yeah?”

“Of course, a master plan,” I said, and she gave me a dubious look. “And that plan is to investigate the Duke of Marcia.” Her look did not change. “Okay, fine—we’re going to do some reconnaissance, scope out the city, and once we get our bearings and an idea of what’s what, we go after the Duke. We’ll buy as many peanuts as we can, throw them at Elkington, and pray to God that he’s allergic.” In a more excited tone, I concluded, “I estimate about a million-to-one chance of it working, which is pretty much a guaranteed promise of success in my book!”

Lightning Dust shot me what was probably her most devastating deadpan stare. “We cannot have a plan that hinges on Duke Elkington first being allergic to peanuts.”

I groaned. “Well, excuse me, pegasus. How about this: we find his room, open his door slightly, prop a bucket of acid over the door, and then knock. Sound like a plan?” Dust and Cards just stared at me.

“How does that help us solve the problem of whatever’s going on in the swamp?” Cards asked.

“Well, while he’s rolling around on the floor, screaming as his flesh melts off the bone, we show him a bottle filled with a liquid that will stop the acid. We’ll only give it to him if he spills the truth, and when he does, it turns out that the bottle was filled with more acid, thus solving the problem for good.” The mares continued to stare at me as if I’d just told that I wasn’t really who I said I was, but was instead a powerful wizard from the near future. If I really was a powerful wizard from next Sunday, I’d bring back milk with an expiration date set twenty years into the future. That’d convince me, so it’d surely work on them.

“The hell?” Cards muttered. “Are you saying we’re going to torture him with acid?”

“Would you rather I tie him to a chair and pretend that he was Jeepers?”

“I thought you said you didn’t torture ponies!” she barked, stamping a hoof.

“It’s not ‘torture’ or an ‘interrogation’, Cards,” I said in a sagely tone. “It’s ‘kinetic information retrieval’.” She just gaped at me. “Look, so I’m not quite sure on an exact plan at the moment. All I know is that we’ve got to do some reconnaissance, and that the plans ends with the line ‘and then stab him a lot’.”

Dust let out a loud groan. “Are you making fun of us now?”

“I think he does that a lot,” Cards commented, kicking a hoof at the railing.

The pegasus shook her head and looked back out at the city. Cards did the same. A moment later and I heard Dust muttering angrily to herself, even gritting her teeth. Subtlety was probably not an art she’d been educated in.

“Is something bothering you, Miss Lightning Dust?” I probed.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Dust replied curtly. Well, that was a lie. Not even a particularly good one. If she wanted a good one, why not say something like ‘I just found out I’m pregnant with your baby from the future and don’t yet know how to break you the news’. At least that’d be creative.

My expression got harder. “Lightning Dust...” She refused to respond. I sighed. One of these days, I told myself, I’ll meet a mare who didn’t have psychological issues up the wazoo.

That was about when I remembered that I had once had a (state-mandated) therapist. He killed himself. In his suicide note he expressly and in no uncertain terms blamed me and me alone, and then wrote “maybe life isn’t for everyone”, which was exactly what he suggested to me during our final therapy session. As it turned out, when asked why the state ordered you into therapy, the correct response not “I think my oedipus complex is for dogs”.

The SSSSS pulled into a little spot in the wharves behind a waterside building labeled with the name “River Rush River Run”. Was that a different name than the one back in the forest? I was sure it was. Deeohgee came up onto the first floor deck just as Captain River Rush came down. The girls and I watched as they attached the boat to the docks.

“So, here we are!” River Rush announced. Clearly, stating the obvious a few minutes after it became obvious was a favored pastime of his, judging by the proud smile on his mug. He stepped onto the dock, pulled out a key, and opened the double-doors leading into the building. “It’s open! Let’s hop on in for a spell.”

A moment later and we found ourselves standing in the building’s lobby. The lighting was well enough, Cards and Dust had found two comfy-looking chairs over in a corner to sit in, Deeohgee was unloading crates into a backroom, and River Rush was tidying up the front counter. Me? I was just standing in the middle of the room, a blank look on my face as I did absolutely nothing of note. Something told me not to interrupt Dust and Cards’ discussion, another something told me that talking with the dog or stallion would rope me into doing work, and so standing like an idiot was clearly my best option.

I looked outside the glass front doors and spotted a flier pinned to a wooden pole outside. With nothing better to do, I trotted outside and looked at it. “Princess Celestia coming to Songnam this Lollapalooza!” it read. I looked down the dock and spotted a few more fliers like it scattered about, none of them giving any more information.

The weight of what I’d just read hit me. Princess Celestia? Here? “Plus, if you stick around, I hear a very special lady from Canterlot might just show up!” the Duke’s announcement had said. Of course, he must have been talking about Princess Celestia! How the hell hadn’t I realized it when he said it? I knew I’d talked about her a few times, but I’d actually sort of forgotten about Celestia.

Oh, that Princess. She was a part of my bucket list, “Disprove Celestia”. Of course, now that I was actually here in Equestria, the priority of gandering at a living fable had been pushed back. Far back. I needed to deal with the current problem, have some fun, learn a bit more about Equestria, write a dirty novel, figure out what the deal was with Equestria’s lust for magic, and I was having a bit too much fun doing what I was doing now to really care about Celestia.

What does Celestia even do? I wondered as I stood there, little waves hitting the dock below me. I’d heard and read her being addressed as “La Maîtresse du Soleil”, which I was pretty sure meant something to the effect of “The Mistress of the Sun”. That would fit in with Equestrian mythology. The goddess-like tone she was referred to in seemed to confirm that. If her job was to protect her little ponies, she wasn’t doing that good of a job with it. And judging from the proud, matriarchal appearance her statue—which I was occasionally glancing at—had, her duties more-than-likely involved being melancholic, looking motherly but secretly loathing small children, and generally not putting out.

A light breath of wind passed by my cheek. If all weather in Equestria was ordained by the Equestrians themselves, did that mean somewhere there was a pegasus blowing this one bit of wind onto my face? No, that couldn’t be; too much micromanagement. So... did that mean that the pegasi only controlled large-scale weather effects, generally leaving the smaller stuff to behave like how the world should work? honestly, the more I learned about Equestria, the less I actually knew—

“Would you thugs just speak to me?!” a mare cried out, a sound of marching closing in on me.

I turned around and froze. Stomping down the pier were a number of armored stallions lead by two mean-looking diamond dogs, also wearing armor. The foremost dog had an eyepatch and steel talons over his claws, claws which already looked sharp and scary enough. A sour puss on his face, he tried to ignore the pegasus mare flying next to him.

“Look, I know you brutes don’t like to speak, but you’ve gotta talk to me—I’m a reporter!” she protested.

A magical grip on my sword, I wondered just how fast I could cut the dog’s stomach open versus how long it’d take him to repeatedly rape me to death with those claws. The odds weren’t in my favor, if I was carrying the two properly.

He stopped, his puss twisted into a scowl as he turned to face the periwinkle mare. “Fact that you reporter already evidence of flaw in your moral fiber,” he growled. The mare started to say something, but just sputtered out a mess of gibberish. I pulled my hat down and looked to the ground, trying to obscure my face. Taking my grip off the blade, I prayed that the dog wouldn’t notice me. But, really, who was I kidding? He was probably here to find just how many new sex holes he could stab into my body.

The dog continued lugging himself forwards, the troops following behind. Then, as he was just before me, he made a gesture like tipping a hat at me and said, “Sir.” He turned and walked into River Rush’s River Run, the troops marching in after him. I noticed that none of the ponies had swords or the like, only batons.

That reporter mare landed next to me, huffing. “These stupid guards, y’know?” I looked at her but didn’t respond. The mare looked scrawnier in build than Dust, but still a bit taller than Cards. “I swear, these guys made my job go from boring and irritating to anal penetration with a crowbar.”

I stared at the mare. Did... did she just say that? Was that something that actually came out of her mouth?

“Say, you been here long?” the mare asked in a casual tone.

“Came in with River Rush,” I replied, still trying not to think of the crowbar thing. The bad thing about my mind was that it was impossible for it not to picture things. Well, at least I knew what’d be in my nightmares tonight!

Her eyes went wide as she got herself a proper look at me. “Wait, really?! How!?” She shook her head, offering a hoof. “Hi, by the way. I’m-I’m Tab. And you are?”

She blinked as I lifted my hat a bit. “My name is GB,” I replied, giving her hoof a firm shake.

“I bet you are!”

I inclined my head. “What?”

Tab let out a little giggle. “Hi, again! I’m Tab, reporter from the Cloudsdale Post.” The same one Dust worked for? “So, you came up here on the SSSSS? I’d love to talk to you about that, say, over a cup of coffee—”

I felt an arm around my neck pulling me away from Tab. “Yeah—no. See, his schedule’s busy,” Lightning Dust said.

“Wait, who are...” Tab tried, but her face twisted into a baleful glare. “You,” she hissed.

Dust grinned. “Hey there, Tab. Long time no see, hmm?”

“Not long enough.”

“Isn’t that always the case,” Lightning Dust chuckled back, gritting her teeth. Again, one of these days I was sure to meet to a mare who wasn’t psycho, but today was not that day.

Tab put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me towards her. “I saw him first, Dust. He’s my story!”

“Oh, ho, ho!” Dust laughed, pulling me the other way. “I’ve been on this story for over a day.”

“Bullshit, you just got here! And is this why you took a week off? Lollapalooza and stealing my stories?”

Putting her elbows on my back and resting her head in her forehooves, Dust scoffed. “What stories, you hack? And for your information, this colt’s not an Equestrian, and I’m showing him around, getting me a killer story about all sorts of foreign things.”

“Was ist das denn?” I mumbled, looming between the girls.

Tab’s eyes lit up like so many stars. “Foreigner?” she gasped. Dust hummed an affirmative. “Is that true?” she asked me.

I shrugged. “Ja, Frau. Ich bin ein Ausländer.” A gull flew overhead, and I heard ruffling from inside the building. Something was going on in there and a completely avoidable catfight was distracting me from finding out what!

“You’re really a foreigner and everything?”

“Das hab’ ich eben gerade gesagt,” I droned. “Du Fotze.” Bad stallion, bad! Do not call mares ‘Fotzen’. It’s vulgar and sexist of you... but fun because they don’t know what you’re saying.

“What’s a colt such as you doing here with that witch?” Tab asked, glaring at the mare half-slung over my back.

I shook my head and facehoofed. “Mir ist kotzübel... und mir tut der Hals weh.”

“As you can see,” Dust interjected in a tone that was decidedly ‘smug bitch’, “me and him have got stuff to do, the biggest story of the century to break—you know, normal business for me.”

“Oh, come on, Dust!” Tab scoffed, throwing her hooves up. “This here buck, er, story’s the kinda thing worth a humana humana humana, Maybe even a fourth humana! It’s not like you ever wrote anything of note.” She let out a sharp laugh. “C’mon, rookie. Let those trained to write take these stories.” She put a hoof on my chin and turned my head to face her; I had the sudden urge to bite her hoof for all I was worth. “So, coffee and that story?”

“Ihr seid so scheißfreundlich,” I muttered to both of them. Slipping myself forwards, Dust grunted and tumbled to the ground. Tab laughed at her, but I shot the periwinkle mare a scathing look, and she fell silent. “Look, you two, feel free to have your catfight over whatever’s wrong between you two, but leave me out of it.” I paused. “Wait, Miss Tab, what was that story you were trying to get?”

Dust’s jaw dropped as Tab took a proud step towards me. “Duke Elkington’s guards have been up to things recently, and they refuse to say why. This is the third time in as many weeks that I’ve seen Captain River Rush ferry the Duke’s troops.”

My heart sank into my stomach, burned in sulfuric acid, then gloomily returned back whence it came. I looked around and most certainly didn’t see Cards. “Dust, where’s Cards?”

“Back in the... building,” Dust replied, eyes widening. Before either reporter could speak, I spun around and darted into the front lobby of River Rush’s River Run. Inside, the stallions were all milling about without much purpose, talking casually to one another. When I burst in, they all stopped and stared. River Rush stood behind the lobby desk as he chatted with the two armored dogs.

River Rush waved at me. “Welcome back, fighter of space aliens!”

All in the lobby looked around at each other, unsure. Deeohgee walked out of the backroom, rubbing dust off his arms. When he saw he, he smiled and waved. “Welcome back indeed.” At his words, everypony nodded at me before going back to business. Deeohgee limbered over to me. “Thought you leaving.”

“So did I,” I replied, looking about. “What’s with the troopers?”

Deeohgee gave a sad shake of his head. “Town called Sleepy Oaks. Can you keep something on downlow?”

I looked over my shoulder. The two reporters were standing outside the door, staring at me. “Suppose that I could.”

He sighed. “Just got news. Little town ground zero for outbreak. Say it some kinda disease that make pony cruel, paranoid, suspicious, maybe suicidal. Scuttlebut say it ’cause of weird pony magic. Troopers here to quarantine town, keep townpony safe, keep Equestria safe, keep secret to keep pony from all going panic. Don’t think disease contagious, but not sure, and better safe, yeah?”

That was... something. I thought for a moment. The effects he’d described wouldn’t exactly be out of place for Sleepy Oaks, come to think. In fact, it’d make sense. The train that’d brought me into the town certainly didn’t have any trouble getting me there, and you’d think a dark government conspiracy trying to isolate a town would prevent that. Plus, Duke Elkington’s Voixson might make some sense in that context, even. Not to mention the fact that the Duke’s goons had mentioned an infection to me right before the girls and I had killed them back in Sleepy Oaks. Maybe there was a lot more at work here than I’d known.

Or maybe it was just a story. It was far, far too convenient to be real. A disease that caused paranoia that would just so happen to explain away any accusations that Elkington was up to no good? Please. And if some sort of disease were the cause, it wasn’t affecting Cards too terribly. Jeepers and the other two agents from earlier sure hadn’t looked like they were trying to spot an outbreak, and Jeepers was downright insane and evil. Maybe the Duke had just found himself a perfect excuse to lock up Sleepy Oaks without incurring Celestia’s ire. And if it the disease was supposed to be kept under wraps, Deeohgee didn’t have any issues telling me. So what if they wanted the disease rumor to get out, to make it look like that was the real secret, not that they’d been doing shady business in Sleepy Oaks? That made lots of sense.

But what if both stories were true, were intricately related? Maybe the disease was real; Duke Elkington’s shady dealings had caused it, but he was trying to stop it before it got out and possibly exposed him, perhaps. After all, if you mix truth and lies well enough, you can get away with lying by proving what little truth you have. Whatever the case, I could ask Elkington himself soon enough.

I took a deep breath. “And, uh, where is that young girl I was with? The one who looked like a playing card but acted like a mopey zoo lion.”

He chuckled. “Little pony was on docks out back. Wandered around like pegasus did. Stands behind you.”

“What?” I turned my head. Sure enough, there was Cards, standing outside next to Dust and Tab. She offered me a blasé, sarcastic wave before turning her attention to the pegasi. Of course, Dust and Tab seemed to have gotten themselves into a little scuffle, and were now trying to push each other out of the way. Unless they decided they suddenly wanted to engage in a wicked awesome aerial duel to the death, I didn’t care.

The dog with the eyepatch walked up behind Deeohgee, prompting the latter to turn around. Deeohgee, in an almost hushed tone, let out a mix of barks, growls, and more traditional sounds. Eyepatch frowned, so Deeohgee spoke again, these quiet barks, growls, and traditional noises sounding somehow different. A different ‘bark’, so to speak? Eyepatch nodded at that, then made a gesture towards the backdoor. The ponies and armored dogs saluted, then marched out back and into the SSSSS.

Deeohgee looked at me and smiled. “Stay safe, government boy. And,” he added with a wink, “keep Sleepy Oaks on downlow.” The bastard, he wanted me to mention it! He gestured to the door, a firm expression on his face.

With a sigh I walked out the front door. The pegasi were still busy dueling it out—neither of them actually hitting one another—and generally looking childish. When they saw me, they stopped and smiled. “What happened?” they demanded in unison.

I massaged the bridge of my nose. “Tab, you wanted a story?” I asked, and Lighting Dust shot me the most heartbroken, betrayed look I’d ever seen.

Said mare jumped at me. “Heck yeah! So, where d’ya wanna grab the coffee. Well, no, you probably don’t know any places around here, so let’s go to—”

“Sleepy Oaks,” I said firmly, holding up a hoof to silence her. “If you want the story of your life, find Duke Elkington and ask him about a disease at Sleepy Oaks, and about Agent White Tongue and Agent Boulder. Should be something there. Though I warn you—it could be dangerous.”

“R-really?”

“Very. It’s what I was hoping to look into. But if you’re willing to do it, the story is yours, not Dust’s,” I answered in a calm, reasonable tone of voice.

She smiled wide at me. “Gotcha, GB! And thanks for helping a real reporter, and not that two Bit hack Lightning Dust.” Tab turned from me and spread her wings, only to look back at me. “If you’re still in the area after this, don’t suppose we could still grab a coffee, hmm?”

I winked at her. Taking this however she wanted, she thanked me and flew off.

“You bastard!”

“Huh?” I muttered, turning my head to see Lightning Dust punch me in the breast. I grunted and pain, stumbling back from the blow. Could she hit that hard the whole time!?

“You complete bastard!” she screamed at me. “How dare you just-just-just choose her over me!” She swung again, though I ducked out of the way. “I thought we were working together, you thoughtless jerk!” The game of punch and duck refused to end, no matter how much she shouted at me. “Why would you help her?! That-that hussy! I thought we had an agreement or something! You helped her and not me!” Save for her dry, furious eyes, she looked about ready to cry. “Just abandoned me there, you thoughtless, heartless, inconsiderable—” Dust let out a furious growl as she threw a hoof at my face.

With a single, precise motion, I grabbed her, spun her around, and pressed her body against the wall. One of these days, I’m going to meet me a nice, normal mare... “I really, really wish you wouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I said in a cool, hints-of-underlying-threats tone. “I get that you’re angry and ticked off at that one mare, but rushing to conclusions is just plain dumb, Lightning Dust. I’m not angry, I’m disappointed.”

Her expression didn’t change. All she did was struggle in vain against me. Cards just stared at us, biting her lip.

… and when I meet that nice girl, I’m going to realize that normal ponies are boring and come to hate her. I lowered my voice so that Cards would not hear us talking. “See, I suspect I just sent Tab to her death. That, or hopefully the stockades,” I told Dust, and she blinked at me. “We can gauge the Duke’s... willingness to do bad to protect his interests. I simply got rid of a problem; how he treats her is how he’d treat us if we were direct about it. Either way, Dust, I sided with you back there, and am quite irked that you thought otherwise.”

I let her go and stepped back. Dust didn’t move; in fact, she moved so little that she fell to her knees. She had the blank look of somepony who’d just been stabbed through the heart, and hadn’t had the good decency to die yet. Oh, White Tongue, what fun he provided!

Adjusting my hat and duster, I turned to Cards. A rogue cloud of confetti from the party going on up in the city proper hit said mare in the face. She gasped, flailed around, caught herself, and then spat confetti out her mouth. When she saw me looking, she sputtered something about sending an innocent reporter to her death, but I ignored it.

“Cards, let’s go,” I commanded. “We’ve got to scout the town out and establish a base somewhere safe. I’d recommend a nice hotel.” I took my first few steps up the pier and to the shore proper. Strangely, though I could hear the gleeful shouts of a party, this little section of the docks and its shore were empty.

“Wait,” Dust said in a weak voice. Pausing, I looked over to her and cocked a brow. “What about me?”

I was silent just long enough to make her think I wasn’t going to speak. “Are you coming or not? We’ve still got an Equestria to save.” And a Princess’s haunches to leer creepily at.

Dust rubbed her eyes. She stood up on shaky legs. “Really? Y-you’re not just going to abandon me here?”

Do I sense mental issues here? Who wants to join me in not caring? Hey, Cards, I found you a dinner date for your pity party! I shot my best attempt at a sympathetic look. It probably failed, but I was trying and that was as good as she was ever going to get. “Disappointed is not anger, Dust.” I gestured my head at Cards. “Cards, let’s go.” Then I looked at Dust. “And if you really want, you have the option of coming along, just like you have the option to sit here and never see either of us again. I wouldn’t force you to do something you didn’t want to do.”

Just like that, I wandered up the pier and to the stone shore, whether or not Dust followed after me.

Chapter 9 — Brunch

Chapter Nine: Brunch

“Being a good friend means being able to keep a secret. But you should never be afraid to share your true feelings with a good friend.”

“Now, now, now, children, if I might have your attention for just a few minutes,” Duke Elkington’s voice said from the record speakers tucked about the street. The whole street, from the clowns to the street musicians, from the foals crying because of lost balloons to the mothers tearing their manes out because of said foals, went quiet. Not silent, since many ponies were still making deals as they purchased goods from the innumerable vendors around the street. I myself paused to listen, marveling at how silent the crowd had gotten.

“Today,” he continued, “I come to you with a heavy heart. I come to you to make a public service announcement.” I noted that the Duke didn’t pronounce his ending R’s; his pronunciation of ‘heart’ thus sounded like ‘hart’, the teutsche word for ‘hard’. Stop molesting me with your voice! “I want to talk to you right now about diamond dogs.” Many in the street shifted around uncomfortably. “Moments ago I was told an absolutely heartbreaking story about a little filly from out of town. She came here, so excited for Lollapalooza, and then came across a diamond dog just doing his job. The little filly was so scared of this strange creature that she bawled in sheer terror.

“Now, I know that many of you don’t know the first thing about diamond dogs, or even worse, the only thing you know about them is to be afraid of those hulking brutes from western Equestria. And so too do I know that many of you are travelers, passing by our fair city on your way out to the uncharted lands of the Wild West. Many of you know only horror stories about the noble diamond dog, how they hurt and enslave ponies. And I just wanted to tell you who know not about diamond dogs that these lies are just lies, at least here in Songnam.”

I glanced around to the buildings lining the cobblestone street. Even the ponies making transactions paused to listen. Streamers and balloon fluttered silently in the breeze, all ears perked up.

“Here in Songnam, dear children, all are equal, all are welcome, all are free. Many of you are Manehattanites, city slickers unfamiliar with any but ponies in that concrete jungle; others of you are Mare Orlesians, famed for your culture and oddities; some of you are from Canterlot, our glorious capital; others are from the Wild West, where life is a daily struggle to expand and survive; some here are from the Crystal Northlands, a mysterious and magical realm; but above all else, we are, each and every one of us, Equestrians.” There were murmurs of approval from all around the street.

“It is our duty to be kind, compassionate, and better. To this end, I accept and welcome even diamond dogs into Songnam. Tolerance, compassion, kindness, dear children. If not for Equestria, then for dear Princess Celestia. I don’t pretend to speak for her majesty, but I’d like to think that kindness and tolerance is what she’d want us to embrace, as I have done. Peace out, children. This has been a public service announcement from Duke Elkington, telling you to love and tolerate.”

The speakers clicked and whined out. For a moment, the street was almost silent as ponies muttered amongst themselves. Then, at once, the whole city roared back to life. Ponies walked around again, hooves clopping on the cobblestone as musicians played their odds and ends. Once again, folks bought and sold wares as confetti and streamers were thrown into the air. Of course, a cloud of the confetti came back to earth and hit Cards in the face, with all the resulting flailing and spitting you’d expect.

I glanced over my other shoulder and noted Lightning Dust, her eyes to the ground. She took a furtive glance at me, but refused to hold my gaze. Cards and I had agreed to find somewhere to set down earlier, now the matter was finding that somewhere to go.

Hooves forwards, I ambled down the street. To the horror of the world, I got to thinking. And the more I thought about Duke Elkington, the more a part of me came to like him. Sure, he was probably a megalomaniac, a liar, and consorted with all sorts of evil magic, but at least he was standing up for an oppressed minority. Had to respect that, especially if others in the nation didn’t approve. It was easy to stand up to injustices when majority opinion was for it; it was another thing to be the only voice of tolerance in a racist land. Good thing he was still evil, though; zero moral compunctions with killing him via acid, thus.

The street we were on gave way to a large plaza bordering the river. As crackly polka music played from the speakers around the plaza, ponies walked around, checking out the various tents and stands set up around it. Then the polka music crackled with a mechanical mare’s voice that said, “This is a remix... a Vinyl Scratch remix.” What was moments ago campy folk music morphed and twisted into something wholly different, something wholly dancy and techno, the singer’s voice sped up so fast it sounded like she was singing in a cloud of helium. It was oddly catchy, even it was almost entirely drowned out by the shouts and conversations of the ponies all about the little fairground. I counted some twenty posters advertising that Princess Celestia was going to be here sometime soon.

I gave Dust an oblong look and said, “Let’s hit the Discothek, ja?”

“Wha’?” the mare replied with dazzling elegance.

“Oh, nothing,” I chuckled, turning around fully. “Hey, girls, is it okay with you if I messed around in this plaza? I want to scout out some of the displays.”

Cards looked at Dust, and Dust looked at Cards. Both shrugged, but Dust said, “I guess so. But if you’re doing that, can I go around and see if there’s a hotel to stay at around here?”

“Yeah, that’s cool with me,” Cards replied.

“Make sure you find a fancy, upper-class one,” I added, “because I can afford us that, ladies.”

“Oookay, I can do that,” Dust said, eying some intensely fascinating bit of her hoof. “I just don’t want to sit around and do nothing.”

“And I just want to explore and experience some of the local Equestrian culture,” I said to nopony in particular. “Cards, what are you going to do?”

Said mare looked around. “Don’t suppose there’s a bar around here, hmm?”

Bad girl, bad! You are not going to go get drunk while trying to get laid just because you’re probably depressed. “No dice, I’m afraid.”

She sighed. “Well, damn.” Cards looked at Dust. “Hey, can I go help try to find someplace to go, too?”

“Sure, if that’s what you want,” Dust replied, and off the two went.

“And then there was one,” I muttered dramatically, turned back around to face the plaza. “Well, one again. And again was there but he? Hmm.” At the center of the plaza was a small, grassy area whereupon several families had set down for picnics around the large statue in the center. The statue, it seemed to me, was of a stallion in plate armor, sans helmet, hefting a large sword over his shoulder and holding up some sort of scroll. I told myself I’d visit it later as I trotted up to one tent-stall thing.

“Step right up, step right up!” the mare behind the stall’s wooden counter shouted. “See the very best in Equestrian weaponry—essential to any brave soul heading out West!” Above the tent was a wooden sign that read ‘Colt — est. 1836’, with the C’s curves reaching out to its letter L. For the record, instead of a proper letter L, the sign instead used a downwards-facing broadsword with keen mouthgrip. “You there, fine gentlecolt,” she said, pointing a cane at me, “you look to me like the rough-and-tumble sort headin’ out West.”

“Oh I do, you say?” I replied, stepping up to the counter.

She smiled. “Oh but of course—and you can expect only the best from Equestria’s number one defense contractor, Colt Steelcrafts!”

I said in a skeptical tone, “Equestria’s number one?”

The mare set her cane on the ground, resting her chin on it. “And her very best. Why, did you know that Colt Steelcrafts is the only company trusted enough by Princess Celestia herself to provide the swords and batons used by her majesty’s very own royal guards?”

“Really?”

“Yep. If her majesty herself trusts in Colt, shouldn’t you?” She adjusted her red-and-white-striped tophat. “Look, I know how you are—a family stallion, right?”

“Hmm?”

The mare gestured her head in a faroff direction, a direction off towards Cards and Dust. “Wife and daughter, right?”

Cards, my daughter? God, do I really look that old already? I mean, I probably had my midlife crisis almost a decade ago, but.... do I really look that old? I nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“And see, I know how it probably is for you: Equestria’s a rapidly changing place in this brave new world of ours, technology and culture shifting and advancing day by day. Economy’s a mess, so you feel that the only way to support your loved ones is to pack up head on over to the frontier, yeah? You wanna get you some good land before it’s all gone, hmm?” she asked, and I nodded. “So, tell me: do you know just how dangerous it is out there? You’ve probably heard the legends, but do you really know what you’re up against?”

I pretended to be hesitant and unsure. “In truth, not so much.”

A confident little smirk bloomed on her lips as she pulled down a chart from... somewhere above her, a chart depicting all manner of nasty beasts. She took her cane and pointed to the various pictures as she spoke. “Buffalo tribals. Some places like Appleloosa got lucky and made nice with ’em, but most buffalo ain’t so kindly or reasonable as Chief Thunderhooves. Then you’ve got yourself wild packs of diamond dogs, pack what will use you and your family for slave labor. You’ve got vampire jackalopes, giant insects, cave and forest trolls, chupacabras, dragons and sea serpents, timber wolves, manticores, and all sorts of nameless horrors that just want to eat you alive. And don’t forget changelings, those little buggers will suck out and eat your very soul!”

“Really?” I do recall a few of those things when I was out there trying to get into Equestria...

“Uh-huh. And forget you not the ruins of the ancient Empire. Long before our brave Princesses defeated the vile and then-Emperor Discord, Equestria was once bigger. If you’re lucky enough, you might even find whole abandoned cities and castles out there—ruins just teeming with treasure, gold, danger, and adventure!” Her tone went dark and dramatic. “But if you’re unlucky, you might just find out the reasons why they were abandoned over a millennium-and-a-half ago.”

“Like?”

She laughed. “Diseases that will turn you mad. Wildlings, pony tribes long since gone feral, and they say them ponies have long resorted to cannibalism. Witches and warlocks, practitioners of forbidden magics. Tales of werewolves and vampires, even. Legions of the undead that stalk the night!”

I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from laughing. Diseases were a fact out in frontier lands, and I had at least been in one such ruined city on my journey across the Equestrian continent. But everything else? This mare should consider a new career in telling stories. Or maybe as a novelist. “Golly,” I said, trying to looking nervously out at Cards, “and so you’re saying I need a Colt blade to protect my loved ones?”

“Mmhmm,” she hummed, pushing the chart back up and out of sight. “And here at this officially licensed Colt retailer, we offer the widest, best, and most affordable weaponry in Equestria. Why else do you think that more law enforcement officers in Equestria choose Colt over our competitors? We’re that good.”

That was it. I lost it and laughed, and she frowned hard. “Ma’am,” I said, “I don’t really care about out there on the frontier, but you sell that story of yours so good that, even though I don’t need one, I want to buy something from you.” Her frown went from dismayed to puzzled. “So, tell me, what would you recommend?”

“Well,” she said, eying me, “we have a large catalog of top-of-the-line swords, arrows, axes, and batons. I myself prefer a good sword, so I think you’d like—”

I rose a hoof to silence her. “Don’t sell me what you think I’d like; offer me the blade you use. After all, if the dealer mare owns one, it’s got to be a good one.”

Five minutes later and I walked out of there with a nifty shortsword tucked under my duster, one with a keen weight and a good mouthgrip, and left behind me a thoroughly confused and overpaid mare. Cards and Dust were standing together by the statue in the middle of the plaza. As I walked, I saw another tent for “Frontier Fighting”, where one could pick up a bow and fire practice arrows at moving wooden targets depicting changelings. There were even prizes if you hit enough targets, so said the sign. Fun as it looked, I was itching to see what the girls had found out.

“What’s a Voixson?” a stallion with a brown shirt asked at a stall for Voixécrivain and its products. From the Voixson he spoke into came back the exact same words he’d just said, only crackly. “Uh, I’m not paying for that.”

I passed by a booth advertising Juggernog and offering samples, which I ignored. The last thing I needed was to get involved in magical snake oil. As I reached the grassy center, I observed a bunch of foals standing around a clown. “What’s black, white, and red all over?” he asked the kids.

“A zebra housewive suffering from domestic abuse?” I offered, and the clown just blinked at me. The children didn’t even seem to notice as I walked by. When I reached my confederates, they were chatting it up with three other young mares. I looked at Cards and suddenly felt really old. It wasn’t that I was old, just that I’d probably had my midlife crisis when I was far too young, I swear!

“Oh, hey there, GB,” said one of the other mares, a blue one. “It’s GB, isn’t it?”

I blinked. “Yes, Ma’am. Have these two ladies been telling you things?” I replied, gesturing my head at Cards and Dust.

“Yep,” another of them, green, chirped. “So, you were looking for a nice hotel? Something ritzy?”

Cards said, “Yeah, we were.” She nodded at me. “He’s paying.”

“Ooh,” said the third mare, a pink one. The three strangers all laughed. “Lucky ladies you are.”

Feigning a cough, Cards looked over at Dust. “Yeah, so, um.”

“Va fangool, cafones,” I added in a soft voice. Learned that from a drinking song.

“Hmm?” the three strangers hummed.

“Anyways,” I said, stepping up to Dust’s side, “and so where is this place?”

The blue one pointed over her shoulder, at a tall building a few blocks down but still on the riverfront. “That’s the Ritz. It’s the fanciest hotel place this side of the river, and a favorite of the aristocrats.”

What an oddly appropriate name. I tipped my hat at the lady. “Thank you kindly, Ma’am. Shall we go, Miss Cards and Dust?”

Dust replied, “Um, could you hold that thought for a moment. Cards and I were talking about something different. Give us a minute, please?”

“I...” I sighed, frowning. “Alright, fine. Hope you learn something interesting.”

“And could you step away while we talk, please?” Cards added. “Like, maybe wander a bit more around this little faire.”

Rolling my eyes, I grumbled, “Whatever the lady wants, she gets.” They had better tell me what they talked about, or else I’ll have to assume they’re trying to betray me. “But come get me as soon as you’re done. I’m eager to get this show on the road, as it were.” I backed off, then went over to the Juggernog booth.

“Well, howdy there, pardner!” the stallion behind the Juggernog stall said. “Ya come t’buy a lil’ Juggernog?”

“That depends,” I replied, eying all the bottles of Juggernog behind him, not to mention all the Juggernog paraphernalia. Seriously, there was even a Juggernog sword sheath available. “When the posters mention Juggernog is magical, what does that mean?”

The earther stallion scratched his head. “Well, uh... from what I understand, there are these kinds of magical herb thingy that grow in certain caves. They like to soak up magic and all that jazz, I think. It’s the same kinda herb species that we make healin’ potions out of. Add a few ingredients and bam! You got yourself Juggernog.” He smiled. “Now then, care for one?”

I picked up one of the bottles and looked it over, hunting for a list of ingredients. To my dismay, I found none. “Where does it tell me the ingredients?”

“Well, those a secret. Why would we tell you them?”

I frowned. “In case people want to know what’s in their drink.”

He frowned back. “It ain’t like we’re putting poison or stuff in ’em, or like anythin’ in there’s bad or nothing. If we did, Juggernog wouldn’t sell, dude. And again, the exact ingredients are a secret.”

“But yet they are the kind of ingredients that can give a pony powers?”

“Powers? No; all it’ll do is make you a bit stronger and be able to stand the pain. Like, if you were, say, fightin’ a crazed griffon, a bottle of Juggernog would give you the strength and endurance to fight him off, see?”

“Does it contain opium?”

He shrugged. “Possibly.”

I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Why the hell isn’t this a controlled substance? It’s clearly a combat drug and performance enhancer, with no other real intended applications. Plus, it’s magical!”

“What’s a controlled substance?” he honestly asked, and I shot him an incredulous look. “You mean, like a prescription thing?”

“I... Know what? Yes. Good enough.” I put the bottle of Juggernog back. “You should really put ingredient labels on things.”

“Again, why?”

“Because it’s a consumer’s right to know!” I replied, stamping a hoof.

“Listen here, buddy, I don’t really care what’s in what I eat and drink as long as it don’t kill me. And if it’d kill me, it wouldn’t sell, and the market would decide what was and wasn’t right. Putting the ingredients on bottles would just waste ink on stuff nopony would read, anyways. Juggernog’s gotta keep its trade secrets. Any good buyer would listen and learn about the products they buy, not read some dumb label of trade secrets on the back. Now that right there is just logical, and you can’t argue with it.”

Weird. He keeps talking, but all I hear is “blah blah blah penis penis penis”.

“Now,” he said, lowering his voice and frowning, “are you actually gonna buy something?”

I looked off to the side, giving the air a winning smile and a hooves-up. “Winners don’t do drugs.”

He looked at me, where I was looking at, then back to me. “Who... who the hell are you talkin’ to?”

Getting serious, I looked back to the guy. “Kids, my friend. Kids.”

“There... there are no foals in that direction.” Indeed, the only things in that direction were young couples, single and totally lonely ponies, and innumerable stalls advertising all sorts of products.

“Well, if Duke Elkington can make random public service announcements whenever he wants to, so can I.”

“Are you mad?”

“It’s a possibility I haven’t yet ruled out.” I shook my head. “Look, your entire policy and attitude, quite frankly, sir, leaves me shocked and appalled. First coal power, then no list of ingredients on the back of things—how has Equestria not yet been devoured by a throng of morbidly obese smog monsters who don’t know the meaning of love because they can’t figure out the ingredients put into a bottle of a combat drug masquerading successfully as a civilian energy drink?!”

“Wha...?”

“Hey, government boy!” Cards called out, and I jerked my head towards her.

“Cards! Do not interrupt me when I am arguing with a merchant over a consumer’s right to know what they put into the morbidly obese, pancake-like shells that they call bodies!”

“Um...”

“Sir, maybe ya oughta get on back to your, uh, daughter,” the stallion said to me in a venomous tone.

I trotted on over to Cards, then flopped my ears down. “Cards,” I said in a totally not whiny tone, “do I look old enough to be your dad?”

“What?” Dust asked, walking up to Cards.

“Because everyone keeps thinking you’re my daughter, Cards,” I went on. “And, I mean, I’m not that old, right? You’re a grown mare but people think I’m your father, and that’s really screwing with me. This is just like that time when I was a colt and got a head injury and so was high on prescription painkillers, then I thought the best way to get chicks was to learn how to juggle. But that didn’t work, Cards! It didn’t work! Those Teutsche ladies just shoved me into a locker—and they took my balls!” I stomped my forehooves on the ground. “Juggling is for losers who will forever remain alone and unloved! That might be fine for your lifestyle, Cards, but it didn’t work for mine!”

“Uh—hey!” Cards protested.

“Can it, not-Daughter! I’m having an existential crisis here, and its all your fault for looking so young and innocent,” I said evenly.

“What the hell is going on here?” Dust demanded, and when I looked at her, she looked away from me.

“Lightning Dust, everypony keeps thinking that you’re my mare, and that Cards is our daughter.”

“What.” Her tone was most flat.

I slid up next to Cards, putting an arm over her shoulder. “Look at us, Dust. Look at us? Do I really look like her enough to be her father? I’m, like, twice her size!”

“Uh.”

“See, that’s what I thought—not her father.” After a moment, I snapped, “And stop acting so skittish around me, Dust! It’s out of character. I can understand Cards, but you? No way.” She didn’t look me in the eye. “Is this because of me being disappointed in you and making you feel bad and stuff? If so, stop being sad. You don’t do the whole ‘being sad’ thing well.” Dust glanced at my hooves. “Oh, come on, Solarin.”

“Zohl-ah-reen?” Dust muttered, giving me a questioning look.

“Yes, it’s what you are. An Equestrian—or, in Teutsch, eine Solarin. Now, if you had a Y-chromosome you’d be ein Solari. But your sex organs are all on the inside, so you get your own word,” I said, and they just looked at me. I took a deep, deep breath, then let out a long, long exhale. “Okay, girls, I’m good. I’m good. I have calmed down and am ready to talk logically.”

“Wait, just like that?” Cards asked, slithering out of my grasp.

“Yes. I was just really, really frustrated and needed to vent.” I pounded a hoof over my breast. “Hand aufs Herz—I’m good.” I took a deep breath. “So, what did you two ladies learn from talking with those girls?”

Cards and Dust exchanged several glances. A small family walked by, a mother, father, and their filly. When the filly saw me, she frowned in puzzlement. She looked up at her dad and asked, “Daddy, what’s a zebwa housewife suffewing fwom domestic abuse?”

I burst out laughing as the parents just gaped at their little girl. Childhood successfully sabotaged! My laugh did not sound evil. Well, maybe a little. The father shot me a venomous glare before grabbing his daughter by the hoof and leading her quickly away. I heard the filly ask twice more, each time earning the family more stares from other ponies.

Dust, who’d been watching the filly, looked at me. “Well, those girls are locals, have been their whole lives. They mentioned a few odd things, a few neat places to go for Lollapalooza, and the tunnels that run beneath Songnam.”

“Tunnels?” I asked, a puzzled look on my face. “There are tunnels under the city?”

Cards nodded. “Apparently, Duke Elkington started hiring diamond dogs to help him build service tunnels under the city.”

I remembered what Deeohgee had told me about the Duke and diamond dogs, that, counting me, there were only two good ponies in the world. “Service tunnels?”

“Well, look around, GB,” Dust said, gesturing her hoof around. “Do you see anypony carrying around trash cans and picking up garbage and stuff? See, Duke Elkington, according to the girls, wanted Songnam to feel more magical, so the government’s services are done underground or something. Garbageponies travel in the tunnels, come up, collect an area’s garbage, then go back underground as if they were never here. Emergency services travel underground, too, so the girls said.”

“It’s like a bunch of smoke and mirrors,” I commented, “only without any smoke or mirrors, and instead with underground tunnels.” I rubbed my chin. “Say, does Equestria have... umm, underground railroads? Like-like-like locomotives that operate underground?”

“Uh, no. That’d be silly.”

“Hmm. Teutschland does,” I said. “So I guess we can’t take an underground train to get around town. Did you learn anything else during your private, ‘no boys allowed’ talk?” They shook their heads. “Oh, come on, Solari.”

Cards frowned. “Wait, I thought you said that version of the word was for stallions.”

I shrugged. “Der Solari is the Equestrian male; die Solarin is the Equestrian female; die Solari just means ‘the Equestrians’. Don’t distract me, girl.”

“Look,” Dust sighed, “we were talking with them about how to avoid a local faux pas or two. Faux pas that only a girl would be bugged about doing. That, and they were curious about you. Girls in this city seem to be so damn nosy.”

“Noses so long they double as lightning rods?” I asked, trying to hold back an idiotic smirk.

“Haha,” Dust deadpanned.

I set my sights on a hotel rising above the street a block or so away. If it was full of nobles, then I doubted Songnam’s security forces had much of a presence there, what with noble houses usually providing their own guards. At least, that’s what I assumed. Didn’t know if it was true or not. In fact, knowing my luck, that hotel probably had an inordinately high amount of security from Songnam’s finest.

“Okay, so enough doing nothing,” I said. “I want to get this show on the road.”

|— ☩ —|

In no time at all, I found myself and the girls standing before a large whitewashed stone hotel. By the front entrance—a large set of glass doors—stood two stallions in blue police fatigues not unlike the kind Cards had. On the street outside came and went all sorts of ponies, talking and doing whatever they were up to. The stores outside bustled with business as ponies left carrying bags full of useless but shiny knickknacks.

I turned to the girls. “Okay, here’s the deal, ladies; we’re a minor family of aristocrats from somewhere off the beaten path. I’m the head of the family, Dust is my wife who’s had multiple affairs, and Cards here is my angry lesbian daughter who hates my guts. We’re here to try to get the family back together, to forgive and forget, and nothing else. Got it?”

Cards blinked. “Why am I an angry lesbian?”

“Well, it’s a secret,” I replied with nod. “So, help us out and leer at the haunches of various mares while I look on disapprovingly. Here, let’s practice.” I scowled at her and shook my head, even though I pretended to try not looking at her. “Oh, and I’m also bitter that my wife could never produce a male heir. We’re just one big dysfunctional family.” I clapped my hooves together in joy. “This is going to be most entertaining! You’ll be the very favorite daughter, Cards!”

“Do I have to be your daughter?” she groused.

“Of course. I am your biological father, after all.”

“Excuse me?” she dryly replied.

I gave her a sagely nod. “See, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am obviously your biological father from another universe, timeline, dimension, or something. The father you knew is clearly a lie.” She looked at me, struck dumb. “See, if we accept that I’m secretly your real dad and only your mother knew about it, suddenly everything makes sense. Blackout wasn’t trying to kill me because I beat her up in the shower; she was trying to silence me because I was her baby girl’s actual father from the future’s past-present alternate dimension! It wasn’t because Blackout was probably pissed because she’s a veritable ice queen whose job probably prevents her from ever getting laid, and so she took out her sexual frustration on me—it was because she was trying to protect her honor, that she wouldn’t become known as the trans-dimension, seven-nippled harlot she is!”

I took a breath. “That neatly explains everything, everything, about her motives. Plus, it completely and perfectly explains why people keep thinking I’m your dad, because I am. It’s not because I’m old! I’m in the total prime of my life and have never been in better shape or looked more attractive, so it can’t possibly be that I look old. I mean, being your dad from some strange time paradox is a far more rational explanation than ‘angry mom taking sexual frustration out on me’, and totally proves that I don’t look old. You got it? I don’t look old!”

She blinked at me. “Um...”

“I’m not old! And I most certainly don’t have a phobia of being old and weak and powerless and useless and helpless and forced to wear adult diapers because I’d soil myself at the thought of having to pick up a sword and fight the forces of darkness! Total prime of life, yep. Fit. As. A. Fiddle. A fiddle being played by a hot girl, not some creepy band geek, too.”

I paused. “Wait. Do places like these fancy hotels accept raw gold coinage?”

Cards’ jaw hit the ground. “I... what?”

Dust leaned towards Cards. “I think he broke.”

“I’ll have you know that I am house trained very well,” I spat in an indignant tone. “But for the record, Cards, even though you are my very own flesh and blood, I disown you because you refuse to acknowledge me as your rightful father. This is why our faux family is so perfect, can’t you see?”

Dust looked at me as if she were about to slap some sense into me. Luckily for her, I manually slapped myself. “Gah!” I grunted. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just that... ugh, don’t want to talk about it right now. This is worse than the time I was locked in a room full of foals with ass cancer. It was so terrible because they were all really sad, but it was also hilarious to me, so I didn’t know what to do and that only made things worse. I mean, I was locked in there and saw this sad little filly, and I asked her, ‘What’s wrong, sweetie?’ And she looked at me with teary eyes and said, ‘I have ass cancer.’ It was so unfunny but I laughed! They all looked like they wanted to strangle me, and they probably would have if not for their tiny, tiny hooves.”

A pegasus walking by appeared to have heard my story. He stopped and exclaimed, “The hell?!”

“That’s right, good sir,” I replied, “that is where I’m going when I die.” The stallion shook his head and flew off. “Jerk,” I muttered at him.

“Um...” Cards panned.

“Right, so now that completely avoidable mental breakdown is over,” I said with a renewed vigor, “how about we go on in and inquire about their policy for accepting raw gold, hmm?”

Cards glanced at me. “Raw gold?”

I took a quick step towards her, a smile on my face, and she flinched back. “Of course, Cards, lots and lots of gold. It appears to be worth quite a sum.”

The mare backed away from me. “Uh, how are you possibly carrying so much gold on you?”

“Trust me, Miss Cards, I can fit an extraordinary amount of stuff in my bags.” I put a hoof to my jaw. “Well, let’s go in and ask. Sound good to you all?” They hesitantly nodded, and so we went in.

The marble floor of the lobby shined as sunlight poured in through a windowed ceiling, the light bouncing around and glistening in the large lobby fountain. It all had the scent of ritz and aristocracy that could only be cleansed by someone standing up and shouting, “Vive la révolution!” Followed by some happy-fun guillotine time. I heard that if somepony was executed via guillotine, their head remained alive for several seconds. If I ever got the chance to execute someone that way, I would totally grab their head, spit out a pre-prepared witty line, then punt the head as hard and far as I could, giving them one last adventure before they died a horrible death. I’d probably say something like, “Whoa, don’t lose your head, mate.”

The young lobbyist mare with glasses was penning through some sort of ledger as I approached the desk lobby. “Pardon me, Ma’am,” I said as smoothly as I could.

Her ears perked up as she looked up at me. “Hmm? Whatever can I do for you, Mister...?”

“Rex Power Colt, slayer of unidentifiable flying objects and taster of fine sausages, at your service,” I offered, the most subtle name I could think of. “But please, just call me Rex.” She nodded. “Ma’am, I was wondering if you’d be so kind as to inform me what forms of currencies you take? And, for that matter, have you any rooms available?”

“Um, yeah, Mister Rex. We’ve got a room on the fourth floor,” the lobbyist replied.

I took out a gold coin and put it on the desk. “And does the hotel accept raw gold as payment? I appear to have misplaced my Bits proper.”

Not ten minutes later and I was standing in a fancy hotel room as Dust and Cards set down their bags by the foot of one of the two beds. I sighed and sat down in front of the door, watching the girls settle in. Neither of them looked at me. Oh, and as it turned out, a little gold paid for an extended stay here, plus all the room service we could order and spa passes. I was going to have to use me those spa passes. Who was game for a ponypedi? I was game for a ponypedi!

Cards poked her head through the curtains, looking out at the city, her rear facing me. I had to admit to myself, I was getting very good at not caring about nudity so much. It helped that both mares present had lovely tails which covered their nethers from my gaze. Someone once told me that if everyone’s naked, it was only awkward for the first ten minutes; after all, when everypony’s nude, nopony’s nude. That didn’t mean that my insistence on wearing pants meant that I was actually the naked one here, right? Did Equestrians have nightmares about going to school wearing pants?

Somewhere in the course of my thinking, Dust had wound up standing in front of me. Well, standing at the end of the dwarven entrance hallway that lead to the hotel room proper. She was looking at her hooves.

“Hey, Lightning Dust,” I said, and she looked at my hooves. “If I had an evil twin running around and we ever got into a fight and you ended up having to figure out which of us is the real me so you could kill the other, I’ll be the one who says ‘It’s not a holiday until you’ve set fire to a cassowary’. Are we clear?” She stared at me until I was sure her eyes would have dried out and disintegrated into her last name, then nodded. I rose to my hooves and trotted past her and over to Cards. I poked the unicorn’s shoulder, and she leapt away from me, throwing herself against the wall.

“Wha’?” she muttered from the floor.

I bent down and whispered to her, “If ever you think I’m an imposter, like I’m acting out of character or something, you will ask me ‘who’s the greatest chancellor the Reich ever had?’ I will then slap you and insult your lack of sexual prowess. That’s how you’ll know it’s me and not my evil clone that I’m sure has to be running around here somewhere or will soon be in the future; it’s too cliché for the bad guys wielding dark magic not to try at least once.” There. Now if one or the other betrayed me and told the imposter the secret, the other mare would be able to get the hint that it wasn’t me.

“Uh...”

“Oh, Scheiße!” I hissed. “Cards, what happened to those talismans? Those evil ones we got from the farm house?”

Cards blinked at me. “M-my bag. I kept them.”

“Show me,” I demanded.

She managed to stand back up and amble over to her bags. A pocket unzipped later and I was dead sure that I saw her socks—but less importantly, she held up the talismans. “I didn’t know what to do with them, so I kinda just kept ’em.”

“Good girl, clever girl,” I said, rubbing her head. She jumped away from me, falling onto the bed as she dropped the white and purple talismans. Dust stood where she had been, staring at me as I picked the purple amulet up. “You know, girls, I think I know exactly what we’re going to do. See, we’re going to check up on these little things. I’m betting that someone in this city knows about them. And if we know about them, we might know a little more about just what Duke Elkington is capable of.”

Dust tilted her head.

“Look, I really don’t know where to begin with this, exactly. I want to solve this problem we’ve got, leer at a Princess, and also find out about this here talisman. I’m not sure how, exactly, to go about trying to do something with Elkington. I mean, really, I doubt we can just walk up and ask him. To test that theory, I sent that reporter girl whose name I can’t recall to find out how twitchy the Duke is about this issue. With information on what kinds of magic he has working for him, we can plan accordingly. Were I the one planning, which I am, I would try to find the seediest underbelly of this city. The slums, if you will. Especially if it’s filled with creepy old people, shifty looks, and smells funny. Since a party is going on, let’s go to the place with a deathly theme.”

Silence reigned supreme over the room. Frowning, I stuffed the talismans into a coat pocket. Then, Dust took a breath. “How can I help?”

I smiled quickly. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? See, if I went out on my own, I’d attract less attention than would a stallion alongside two pretty girls, right? However, leaving you alone here is a complete guarantee that you’ll end up kidnapped and captured by Duke Elkington, whether or not he knows about me, reality will find a way to do it. Oh, and for the record, if either of you are taken hostage, I’ll assume you’re dead and hold a curt memorial in your honor. If he guarantees your safe return, I’ll assume he also raped the dead bodies. You have now been warned in advance.”

“W-what?” Cards stammered. “Why?”

“Because I’m still sore about you not helping me when I got lynched, thank you very much,” I replied. “And were there a chance of escaping, you’d find it yourselves. Plus, I must remind myself that if I got captured while trying to save you, you’d still die.” I chuckled.

“Was... was that a joke?” Dust questioned, eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Of course it was.” Well, I’ll at least let you sit there and rot long enough to think about what you’ve done, allowing you endless chances to angst and somesuch.

“You’ve got an odd sense of humor.” She gave me a strange look, but when I met it, she found some incredibly fascinating bit of her hoof to stare at.

I half-groaned, half-sighed. “Dust, would you stop acting so timid already? It’s totally out of character. At least tell me what’s bothering you.”

Said mare bit her lip. “Tab. I... I can’t stop thinking about Tab. Did you really...?”

Rubbing my forehead and sitting down on the bed next to Cards—my weight causing her to bounce on the mattress—I said, “No, I was just being dramatic.”

“R-really?”

“Yes, Miss Lightning Dust. I was feeling dramatic and irate. In all reality, odds are we’re going to run into Tab again somewhere, and she’ll be a tad bit irked that the Duke didn’t tell her anything. But it got her out of my hair, so I was game for it. Now, does that make you feel better?”

She hesitated. “Yes, it does. I mean, I didn’t like that harpy, but I didn’t want her dead.”

“Good. Wanting ponies dead is the first step towards becoming me.” I nodded. “So, what to do, what to do?” As if on cue, I heard Cards’ stomach rumble. “Oh yeah, we haven’t really eaten anything yet, huh?”

Dust cleared her throat. “The hotel offers a continental brunch—”

Without warning, I let out a high-pitched, girly gasp. “Brunch is the gayest meal of the day!” I sprang forwards. “We must have it! What do they offer?”

“I... don’t know. Waffles, I’d guess.”

Again, I gasped. “Waffles! Perfect. Those are exactly what we need to tell what to do next!”

“Huh?”

I grabbed Cards off the bed and dragged her to the floor. “Because waffles can tell the future. Duh.”

|— ☩ —|

“Remember, stay in character,” I whispered to the girls as we took seats at the table. “You all know who you are.” The white tablecloth fluttered slightly as I got settled into the seat. All around the room, well-to-do schmucks sauntered and ate around the various other tables. Also, there was a fountain, because I guess rich ponies liked the sound of someone perpetually urinating while they ate. I wanted to strangle them all with their own lungs, aristocratic scum.

Licking my lips, I gazed down at my three fluffy, hot waffles and the two scoops of vanilla ice cream lopped atop. Next to the plate was a fork, a knife, and a large pouring-thingy of maple syrup. “See, girls,” I started, “the trick to telling the future with waffles is to use maple syrup. If you use blueberry and try to tell the future, a ghost will force me to actually love your mother, dearie.” I shook my head disapprovingly at Dust, who stared down at her plate of waffles.

“But, gov—” Cards tried, and stopped. She rolled her eyes. “Dad, do you have to be so mean when talking about, er, Mom?”

“Shut your whore mouth, sweetie,” I said in a loving tone, picking up a fork and knife, “or else you’ll end up a harlot like your mother.” Dust blinked at me, but kept her mouth shut. “That’s why your mother got smart and learned to keep her mouth shut—like a good mare should. Now, eat your waffles, dearie.”

“Um...” she droned.

I pointed a hoof at Cards. “Female, do I need to show you the reason why I have a belt and you don’t? Spoiler: for whipping disobedient slaves—er, no, wrong joke—for whipping whiny, spoiled brats who never loved their father or whore mother.”

“Um, excuse me,” a slick stallion said off to my side. I looked over at a real pretty boy unicorn, finely dressed and finely groomed. The urge to strangle this aristocrat was disconcertingly high. “I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s no way to talk to either a lady or your daughter.”

I gave him a flat look. “Sorry, colt. My daughter is a hardcore lesbian because when she was young, she wandered into a really freaky sexual fetish shop, and since then has had a pathological fear of penises,” I explained in an utter deadpan. Everypony gaped at me. “Well, no, she actually found my stash of illicit magazines; I’ve been into the weird stuff ever since my wife’s womb was polluted and made barren by syphilis, which she caught by fornicating a garden snake. Who knew snakes had sexually transmitted diseases, hmm? Now run along; she hates stallions and, especially, me.”

He shook his head. “That is a horrible thing to say and I refuse to believe it! How could you speak such poisoned lies about your own flesh and blood?”

“Well, all you’ve got to do is pump air in and out of your throat by expanding and contracting your diaphragm whilst moving your lips, teeth, tongue, and other oral bits around in such a way that vibrate the air at different rates, which another person will then interpret as these things called ‘words’. This allows the other person, if he speaks that ‘language’, to understand you. Your language just so happens to interpret those particular vibrations I made as me saying that my wife is a whore and my daughter a witch.”

“I... I...!”

I seriously contemplated walking off, buying a pair of sunglasses, then coming back here just to dramatically remove the sunglasses. “Because my pet turtle died when I was a colt, that’s how I can do it. I have a perfectly valid reason not to like my once-syphilitic wife or my currently lesbian daughter.”

“That’s...” Cards muttered, “I like bucks.”

“Then what was that copy of Wingboner Magazine I found under your bed all about?” I snapped, and her cheeks went red. Really red. As in, ‘so red that the rest of her body lost all bloodflow and she promptly died of embarrassment’ red. The entire room went silent. Victory over the nobles!

“You...” Cards squeaked, probably having a brain aneurysm. Her eye twitched several times. She glanced between me and the stallion, and he ran a hoof through his fiery orange mane.

On the other hoof, I was digging into my waffles. “Mmm!” I hummed. “These are lovely.” The stallion was still leering at Cards, so I said, “Don’t interrupt her meal. This is the first time I’ve given her permission to eat in three days—I only feed her dog food, you see. She has terrible dog breath, but we still ostensibly love her. In fact, this is also the first proper meal I’ve had in months, so if you interrupt me, I’ll bite your face off.”

That buck cleared his throat, looking at Cards, whose neck went limp. She slammed her head into the table, immediately bouncing it back up. Cards forced a wide smile as her nose bled profusely, which was surprising, given how all her blood was visibly in her cheeks.

Mister Cares-A-Lot took a white handkerchief out from a suit pocket. “Here, Miss, let me help you.” He dabbed at the blood on her face, and tried to help stop the bleeding. “Look, I’m sorry, Miss...?”

“Cards,” she offered with a girlish smile. “My name is Cards.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Cards. My name is Social Grace the Third.”

“And I’m Double-oh-Seven Homophobia Soprano,” I offered, “all-around swell guy and occasional drinker of tiger blood.”

Social Grace shot me a look that would make Medusa flinch. “This isn’t funny, what you do to your daughter, embarrassing her for sick, twisted amusement. What right do you have to insult and belittle your lovely daughter?” he said in a sharp tone, and I swore Cards only barely stopped herself from swooning. “How dare you to mock her and then smile about it!”

I made sure my face was as emotionless as my muscles would allow. “According to science, there are an infinite number of universes out there, each one a different reality than our own. If the math is right, there’s even a universe where I’m an exceptionally colorful clown named Jojo who rides around on a unicycle and is constantly honking his novelty clown horn, all the while going around stealing foals and then using peanut butter to stick them to high surfaces because it’s the only way I can get an erection anymore. But I guarantee you that in none of those universes am I right now, at this moment, smiling.”

Cards seemed to remember that she, in fact, had legs at the moment. I knew because she chose that exact moment to kick me beneath the table. I grunted and reached down to rub the fresh bruises, the mare herself glaring at me. “You’re not funny. You are a cruel, cruel stallion,” she hissed.

Social Grace mimed her expression at me. It softened as he looked back to Cards. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. But... I don’t suppose you’d care to dine at my table, a table where most certainly you will not be humiliated, would you?” He gestured to an empty two-pony table off to one side of the room.

Running a hoof through her striped mane, Cards giggled. “I... I... yes, that sounds pretty awesome.”

“Wait just a minute,” I growled, grabbing the stallion by the neck and dragging him to me. I grabbed my container of maple syrup and, still holding onto him, poured it over my waffles. With dark intent and darker expression, I leaned my face down until I was almost breathing in the waffle. “Hmmm,” I hummed with all possible interest. I focused, concentrated, and looked deep into the maple syrup. It only worked with maple syrup for a reason, after all. And then I saw it: visions of fire, brimstone, the end of the world, all that I loved dying, and—yeah, nothing I didn’t know. I groaned, “Oh, no, not that again.” I looked around the waffle, trying to find a prediction other than the tired, has-been prediction that I always saw when I gazed into my waffles and sought answers.

“What are you...?” Social Grace tried, and I shushed him hard.

“I’m looking into my waffle and trying to tell the future,” I replied. Cards kicked me again, harder, but I refused to let go of the buck.

“And, uh, what do they tell you?”

I shrugged. “Oh, the usual crap: the end of the world is near, it’s going to be fiery and people will die both brutal and pointless deaths, a holocaust of frost and fire that will bring everlasting torment upon the wicked and benevolent alike—same old, same old, really. Nothing to be worried about.” I blinked. “Waffles are known for being very dramatic, you understand, and they have a terrible grasp of scale. They see fiery armageddon, genocide, and the forced deflowering of all that is holy and sacred where a normal pony would only see soup that is too hot.” I hummed. “Ah, I found something useful! The waffles tell me that I will enjoy them, and that Cards probably won’t get raped if she goes with you.”

Cards kicked me several more times as the stallion just stared at me. “I...” he tried. On the plus side, the mare’s nose had stopped bleeding. Seeing that trying to kick my leg off was failing her, Cards stood up.

“You know what, Social Grace?” she said in a defiant tone. “Yes, I accept your offer. Please, would you kindly escort a lady to your table?”

I raised my head from the waffles and shoved my face into Social Grace’s. “Listen here, pony,” I growled low enough for him to hear me, not loud enough for Cards to hear me, “you see that girl over there, the one that looks kind of like a playing card? I might belittle her, but I would be most upset if you touched a single hair on her head, you understand me?” He nodded. “Good. Because if you hurt her, so help me, I will gouge out your eyes with the jawbone of an otter and drag your genitals through a mile of broken glass as my form of pre-vengeance foreplay. Okay?” I finished in a friendly tone, my voice still just as low.

“Yes, sir,” he squeaked.

“Good to know, sport,” I chirped, pushing him away from me. I looked at Cards. “Now, be back at the hotel room by seven, and whatever you do, don’t get trapped in a turtle.” I watched as a shaky Social Grace took Cards by the arm and gently lead her to his table. Dust stared at me. “Something the matter?”

She tilted her head. “Did... did that just happen? Did you really say all of that and let Cards... go off with a strange buck?” she asked as I munched on my waffles and ice cream.

“What’s a buck?” I countered. “Because, really, that word refers to deer, and unless that stallion had invisible antlers, he was no buck.”

Dust hesitated. “Uh, slang term for stallion.”

“How long has it been a thing? A word, that is.”

“I think a few years, maybe? Dunno.”

“That’d explain why Mister Welch never used it,” I mumbled to myself, nodding. “Still, it’s a stupid term, and you’re stupid ponies for using it.”

“But what about Cards?”

I shrugged. “What about her?” Wow. That line felt beyond cliché.

“You just... brutally belittled her and now she’s run off with some strange stallion! The hell is wrong with you, I have to ask.” She threw her arms up.

“Glad to see you’re not being so timid anymore,” I remarked. “And to answer your question, it’s punishment for Cards’ whining... and not because I totally went way out of bounds with the whole acting thing and now have too much pride to apologize. Oh, but the Wingboner Magazine thing is a true story. Found it under her bed. That, oddly, and socks. What’s with Equestrians and socks? Are they some sort of fetish gear and whatnot?”

“But what if that guy, Social Grace, I think, does something to Cards?” She gave me a ‘what the hell have you just done’ shrug, shaking her head. “I thought you said you were worried that if you left us to our own devices, we’d die—a thought which is utter bull, by the way.”

“So, you’ve settled on anger being your chosen emotion right now?”

“Positively livid.”

“I myself am ducky.”

“Then get back to your pond, you quack,” she countered.

“Then I’ll need me my bathing suit.”

“Just strip in and jump.”

“What kind of barbarian do you take me for?” I scoffed.

“The kind of barbarian who blabbers about a girl’s personal secrets in public!” she hissed. “So quack.”

“If I’m going to quack, won’t I need a bill?”

“Well, then—” Dust held up a hoof “—check, please.”

“Touché.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m really not in the mood to touch any part of you right now, thank you very much.”

“Excuse me?”

Dust shook her head. “Look, GB, you should really apologize to Cards.” I affixed her suddenly with a cold, hard look. She bristled slightly at the look, but held her ground. “I mean, you have to admit, we’ve been a bit mean to her. Celestia, I feel bad about insulting Cards’ horn and everything now. And what you did back there?” She shook her head. “That was not okay, GB.”

To my continuing amazement, she didn’t flinch under my glare. I sighed. I licked my gums. I didn’t look over at Cards. Her eyes met mine, and we faced off as if it were high noon.

“Please,” she said in a quiet voice. “Please, GB. For me?”

“Leck mich, Sonnenanbeter,” I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

“Is that a yes?” she probed, not unlike a space alien going straight for the prize.

“In Teutsch, yes is ja,” I said, looking down. I fiddled around with the brim of my hat. “Ich pfeife eben darauf. Aber hast du mich ausgeweidet?” I took a breath. “Okay, ich geb’ auf und dir den Verstand. Weiß ich doch, ich werd’s hinterher nicht bereuen. Was willst du noch von mir?” I affixed her with the next best thing to a glare. “But... for you, Lightning Dust, I will.”

Dust offered me a smile. “Thank you, GB. You’re doing the right thing.”

I swallowed. “But first, I need to apologize to you.”

She blinked. “Wait. Me?”

“Yes,” I said with a calculated nod. “For what happened back at the farmhouse.” She stiffened, rubbing her arm. “I know I explained my reasons, but I never actually apologized for hurting your feelings back there. So, Miss Lightning Dust, I’m sorry. I hope in the future that if I ever need to pull a gambit like it again, it will not harm your feelings in any way, shape, or form.”

“I...” Dust looked away from me. She looked a bit like a hummingbird trying to read its wristwatch, not yet aware it didn’t possess wrists or watch technology.

“And for that matter, I apologize for earlier today, at the docks,” I went on, and she licked her lips, still not looking at me. “That was rude of me, downright mean-spirited, and I’m sorry. I was just a bit sour that you’d honestly think I’d betray you like that—and it was both entirely my fault and entirely avoidable.”

“No, no, it was my...” she said. I looked at her, and she froze. Rather than speak up, I let her silence hang in the air a moment, allowing her to think. That, and I was eating my waffles, so I couldn’t speak. They were too delicious to stop eating.

“H-hey, GB,” Dust finally spoke up. I hummed as I cocked a brow at her. “Would you mind if I went out and tried to find a place where we could find out about those talismans? I don’t want to just follow you around as you do things, I actually want to contribute to this. And—” she hesitated “—I am a reporter trained to investigate.”

“College-educated?” I asked, and her ears flopped. I sighed. “Well, if you want to, I guess that’d work. The only reason I insist myself on doing the investigations is because, well, I too am trained for that sort of thing.”

“You were a reporter?” she asked, inclining her head.

I couldn’t help but smirk. “No, Spezialagent. You’d call it a Special Agent. It took about twenty solid weeks of training specifically for that job, but I earned it. Not to mention that before I did that, I earned me a... oh, what would be the translation? Um, it was an undergraduate certificate in National and Competitive Intelligence.”

“That... that sounds like some kinda super spy stuff.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I had dreams at one point of doing that. Reality was, I spent my time tracking down serial murderers and rapists, only occasionally messing around with paranormal stuff. They said I had a knack for, uh, criminal profiling, but I was just doing what I’d been taught to do. Nothing special.”

“Huh?”

With a nostalgic sigh, I leaned back. “I still remember this one case I worked on, real strange one. See, there’d been a number of mares gone missing around the Vieux Carré district of Neuorléans. Since I worked out of the Neuorléans office, I somehow wound up with the case.” I picked up my glass of water and took a sip. In a friendly, conversational tone, I went on: “Anyway, to make a long story short, the killer was this one guy whose basement was full of mutilated mares. Turns out, he had this pathological hatred of girls. He cut them up, ate bits of the bodies, drank wine out of their skulls, and not to mention how he also had a bit of fun using their skulls to urinate in.” She just stared at me. A few other patrons had again decided I was most interesting thing in the room to judge poorly, the sounds of snooty conversations and clinking glass coming to a halt. Tone the same, I said, “When we captured the guy and put him on trial, the question became: was he insane?”

“And.. uh...” my brunchmate tried, “was he? He was, right?”

I nodded. “Mmhmm. See, it wasn’t just that he drank out of or pissed in the skulls of the mares he’d butchered, but that he often did them both with the exact same skulls.” I shook my head. “Now that was just plain unsanitary.” I took another bite of my syrupy waffles dipped in vanilla ice cream” You know, these are really tasty. I can’t say that enough.” If I can keep Dust distracted, she’ll forget about wanting me to apologize to Cards.

Looking out across the little dining room, I spied a bar in the room over. There were hardly any actual doors in this part of the Ritz, just open doorways. I could see out into the lobby, and from there glimpse bits of the busy streets outside. As I moved to stand up and get more waffles, Dust asked, “So this is where you go apologize to Cards, right?”

Du Miststück! I nodded. “Yes, it is.” Muttering teutsche curses to myself, I walked over to Cards. She and Social Graces were talking it up, and Cards seemed to be laughing at every one of his little jokes. “You there, small pony—a species of which I also am a member of.” I gave Social Grace a hard look. “And nothing else.”

“Oh, it’s you,” the buck groused. “Look, I understand that you might be her father—”

“I’m not her dad,” I interjected, and he blinked at me. “In fact, I have no children. Cards is just some girl I met the other day and was helping out because her real parents tried to kill her, I think. She wasn’t very specific, just got all teary and sad when she brought it up.” I adjusted my collar. “Anyways, Cards, I came here to apologize to you.” Said mare stared at me. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk to you ever since we met; I’m sorry I’ve made you cry on at least two occasions; sorry that I insulted you so much today, that was rude and mean of me, and was not funny; and I’m sorry I refused to figure out where enough was enough and cut you a break. Okay, Cards? I’m sorry. I am sorry. I won’t do it again, alright? I-I-I’ve just been being a bit mean and nuts today to try to cover up for the fact that I have no idea what to do, okay?”

Cards looked up at me. She was silent for the longest time, and then she said in a quiet, distant voice, “Who’s the greatest chancellor the Reich ever had?”

Mister Hoof decided that Cards’ cheek was his one true love and decided to take her on a date. “I find your lack of sexual prowess to be incredibly disconcerting, and I am sure you will die just as much of a maiden as when you were born!” Also, you pronounced Reich wrong, and that’s just terrible.

Cards shouted and flung herself backwards, hitting the wall. Social Grace leapt to his hooves, knocking his chair over and shouted, “That’s it, sir! I know not who you are in relation to this young lady, but I refuse to let you bully her! I challenge you to a duel!”

“Alright,” I said with a casual shrug, and gave him a side-neck chop. Social Grace collapsed to the floor, unconscious. I looked out at the rest of the room, at the gasping aristocrats and two frightened foals. “It’s okay, everypony—I’m sure he was a registered organ donor, and so am I. We can legally duel to the death in most countries. Not because we’re organ donors, but because most nations don’t have laws against dueling.” They continued acting afraid of me. I checked Grace’s pulse. Still alive. “Besides,” I went on in a reassuring tone, “he’s alive. And even if I had killed him—which I didn’t—the fact that he’s an organ donor would’ve meant that his death would have saved, like, seven other ponies, which would technically make me the good guy here because I killed him and thus saved those lives.”

Cards groaned, rubbing her cheek. “Bastard. Didn’t think you’d actually do that.”

“Well, Cards,” I said sternly, “I’m a very honest stallion and I stick to my word and do not lie.” Much. I attempted to brush a little dust off her shoulder, only for Cards to flinch, yelp, and tumble onto the carpeted ground. With a sigh, I hauled the mare to her hooves.

“GB!” Dust hissed.

I looked over at the pegasus. “What? I apologized, and she invoked a code we’d previously agreed on that meant that I had to slap her in order to prove myself. I did nothing wrong.” Social Graces groaned as he mucked about on the floor, probably dazed.

“Stop right there, sir!” a guard called out as he and his companion rushed into the room. “Nopony breaks the Ritz’s rules!”

I like how polite they are about trying to arrest me. “No, no, it’s cool,” I replied, backing up and flashing a smile. “It was an officially sanctioned duel between two ponies of proper breeding. I needed to do that to defend the honor of my noble house.”

The two guards rushed past me and into the bar. They surrounded a rather confused zebra sitting at the bar. “You know the rules—no tips over fifteen percent! We can’t be having the help get uppity, can we?”

I stared, then blinked. I blinked, then rubbed my eyes. I tried to say something, failed, and blinked again. “This whole nation,” I finally said as the guards forced the bartender to give back part of his tip, “is stupid.” Cards grunted as she tried to squeeze past me. “Oh, and Cards, sorry about slapping you, but I had to in order to prove I was really that government boy.” I sighed in as melancholic a way as I could muster. “Look, ladies, when you’re ready to talk and listen to... to me profusely apologizing for acting like a total ass today, I’ll be up in our hotel room, pretending to brood about stuff. Dust, you’ve got your room key, so... bis dann, Frau.”

|— ☩ —|

The white ceiling of the hotel room was white, built in such a way that marked it with little dents, valleys, and popcorn-like things. Looking up at it, I traced the landscape above the bed with my eyes, seeing pictures where none were. The little lantern by the bedside cast flickers of light all over the room, further altering the ceiling’s landscape, further making me see things that I knew weren’t really there. It had been six hours since I’d last seen Dust or Cards, if my clock was to be believed. Sighing at my solitude, I fondled the iron cross in my hoof.

Deep down inside, the reflexive urge to push forwards was once again scrambling at a brick wall. So, Duke Elkington. How to fight him? “Suppose I could try a full-frontal assault.” And die horribly. “Break into his castle at night?” Maybe, but it feels cliché. “What’s wrong with cliché? If it works, it works. Also, elephants in the room avoid you like the plague.” Just find a way to prove that Elkington is evil first, otherwise everyone will think you’re evil. “So, just an investigation?” Correct. “Great. I’m right back where I started.” You were right all along, maybe? “Shut up, internal monologue. Nobody likes you.” You’re right... Hey, mind slitting your wrists for me? That’d help get rid of me.

I kissed my cross before putting it back under my shirt. My thoughts kept turning back to brunch, how I’d made an utter ass of myself, and how I’d possibly make it better now. Or, really, what I needed to say to make them think me less of an ass. I need Dust and Cards’ good side if I want survive this mess, don’t I? I mustn’t act like a complete ass anymore—might have been okay before you knew them, but now’s different. Now we’re a team. Can’t be a jerkass to your confederates.

Wrong way of thinking. You need to think in terms of “What do they want to see?” and “What do they want to hear?”

Girls prefer it when guys have a sense of guilt and shame, right?

Now we’re talking! This is a golden chance to present yourself differently to the girls, to present yourself, not as an ass but as someone who is just lost and not a little bit nervous. Which isn’t technically lying, right? You don’t know what to do, and you’re nervous because of that. You just need to show them that, and maybe play it up just a little bit, hmm?

The room’s door thumped. Rattling, the lock clicked. Lighting Dust, humming, trotted in with a white paper bag in her mouth. Cards followed behind her, sipping the straw of a paper cup. Raising my head from the bed, I watched as Dust, still humming, set the bag down on the long vanity-like table set against the wall. I sat up and scooted down the bed. When Dust looked at me, I darted my eyes to some intensely fascinating speck on the carpet.

And if they sense your guilt and shame to be honest, they’re more likely to open up to you, to open dialog, and not just abandon you.

“Hey,” I greeted weakly. “Sorry about everything, Dust, Cards.” I rubbed my forehead. “God, I’m sorry. I... didn’t actually expect to see you ever again, that stunt I pulled back there. I’m just under self-imposed stress in my attempts to save Equestria and fight Elkington, and I just snapped. I just snapped. I have no excuse, a-and if you want to hate me, please do.” I sighed. “Doesn’t mean I won’t help you get the story, Dust, or save Sleepy Oaks, Cards... if you even want my—”

Dust sat down next to me, holding some sort of red carton full of Pommes frites in her mouth. “Chips?” she offered through her bite. A puzzled frown on my face, I took the carton and looked down at it. Dust sighed. “Me and Cards decided to pick up some early dinner. Didn’t know what you liked, exactly, but I was pretty sure you liked chips, right?” I nodded weakly as she said, “I got a burger and chips, Cards got a milkshake.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied dumbly.

Dust nodded slowly. “Look, we’ve all been under a lot of—”

“Don’t just brush it off, Dust. I offended you multiple times, struck and offended Cards, and who knows what kinds of Equestrian social taboos I’ve broken. And. I. Am. Sorry. I crossed the line multiple times, and then you turn around and buy me chips.” I buried my face in my forehooves. “God, I’m an idiot. I didn’t think, I acted like a child, and I hurt your feelings. I’m a rude, inconsiderate jerk who needs to get smacked. And, God, I’m s—” Dust’s hoof struck me clean across the cheek, and I yelped from the blow’s strength.

The pegasus looked back at me with a hard look, her orange eyes seeming to dig into my flesh. “There. Now you’ve been smacked,” she said in a tone bordering on freezing, and Cards chuckled “Do you feel better yet?”

“Emotionally, yes. Physically, no!” I shot back.

“Wish I’d’ve gotten heads,” Cards muttered.

Dust smirked and said, “We flipped a coin over who’d get to smack you for what you did.”

“You were planning this?” I asked, scooting away from Dust.

“Mmhmm!”

Rubbing my cheek, I pulled out one of the chips and took a bite. “At least these are pretty okay.” I shoveled some more chips into my mouth. They weren’t nearly as hot as I might have liked, but refusing food offered to you was considered an insult in many countries, and I wasn’t about to find out if it was insulting to Equestrians, too.

Dust smiled. “Good.”

“And... now what?” I asked. “You came back here for a reason other than smacking me, right?”

“Well, that was the main reason,” she said with a wink.

“Great. This relationship just got abusive.” I ate me some more.

“Look, GB,” Dust said, glancing furtively at Cards, “you might sometimes be a jerk, and Cards and I had a long talk over that, but—” she hesitated “—we do sorta need your help.” I cocked a skeptical brow, and she continued, “Both of us are pretty sure you can do some things we can’t, and we can likewise do things you can’t. Like it or not, we’re something of a team. Doesn’t mean you can get away with everything, though.” She grabbed my collar. “And don’t you dare pull another stunt like you did today, got it?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied in a quiet voice.

“Good!” she chirped, letting go of me.

“I don’t want to be a jerk,” I muttered at her, looking at my chips. “Never have, never meant to be. Never wanted to be loud or obnoxious or rude, but...”

“Kinda failed at that,” Cards said, and Dust shot her a harsh look. The deputy mare went back to drinking her milkshake.

I rubbed my cheek. “It’s just that... just that I do that because a part of me is afraid for you girls. Whenever I get stressed, I resort to humor. Whenever I’m afraid, I remember that I was trained to have a heart of steel.” I founded a hoof over my heart. “Nun, wo das Herz mal früher war—” I looked up at the mares “—ist heut’ ein Platz aus Stahl. Ich sag’ mir, du kannst nicht mehr fühlen.”

“What?” Dust asked.

“My heart must be a place of steel. I mustn’t feel anything. I know the road I walk in life is a lonely one, and it is lonely because those who tread besides me always meet a terrible end. And... and I’ve come to rather like you two, hard as that is to believe after only knowing you for some twenty-four hours. Some small part of me knows you’ll get hurt, and it wants to protect you from my world. It thinks that maybe, just maybe, if I push you back far enough, you’ll go home, you’ll hate me, you’ll forget me, and you won’t be harmed by me.

“Cards, just meeting me has ruined her life. Meeting me has killed her best friend, forced her to kill another pony, and made her own parents disown her.” I looked up at Cards, my eyes glistening with a vague wetness. “I wanted to come here and help you all, not ruin you. Now, here we are, two lost souls and a reporter. And, Cards, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I killed Glasses, sorry I made you kill Boulder, sorry I associated you with me. I want to make that up, make your life better for having known me, but all I’ve been doing is making you sad or humiliating you.”

“You... you really mean that?” Cards asked, a distant, dark look on her face—a face which she aimed at me.

I nodded weakly, looking down at my lap. “I know I’ve told you not to care, and that I didn’t care about Glasses, but... that’s a lie. That’s a lie, lie, lie! I was taught that showing emotions was a sign of weakness in males, that the sociopath was practically the ideal. We Teutsche stallions are taught to repress our emotions, to become Männer aus Stahl, stallions of steel. We are told that to be a sociopath is, in a way, what we must be if we are to save this world.

“Sometimes... no, often, I even pretend to be a sociopath. I pretend to act like I have no emotions, pretend that I cannot feel, that I cannot cry, and thus am strong. Hell, I even lie to myself, trying to convince myself that I am such a sociopath. I try to think like a sociopath, even. I was trained to, but trained to do so for the good of all of us.”

I took a deep, deep breath. “Oh, God, there I go—breaking down. By the Machine Spirit, I’m sorry. I... I...”

Dust put an arm over my shoulder. “Hey, hey, hey—it’s okay, I-we forgive you, right, Cards?” Said mare nodded.

I rubbed my eyes. “It’s... I’m not breaking down or tearing up because I’m weak, Dust. I’m doing it because I’ve been strong for too long. I know you two can handle yourself, and Cards is even taking this better than I am, but I don’t want my life to hurt you. I don’t! I try to think and pretend and lie to myself that I’m a sociopath and feel no pain, but... but... I’m too weak.”

Dust’s hoof massaged my shoulder. “Hey, hey, hey hey—GB, you are strong, and you’re strong where it matters most.” She took my hoof in her own and pressed it against my breast. “In here. Hell, even after thinking that we hated you, you still offered to help us, to stick around. That alone is more than any other stallion I’ve ever known has done. That takes real strength of heart and character.”

I sniffled. “But am I strong enough to fight Elkington without getting you two hurt?”

“GB, you leave that up to us. We don’t need a white knight, we don’t need a hero, we simply need a cohort, a... a friend, if you will. You have skills we don’t have, and we have those you lack. We three make a good team, don’t we?”

Straightening myself up, I said, “We’ve still got to put ourselves to the test to see if we’re any good together, Miss Lightning Dust.”

She smiled. “Well, I know it’s true—I’m a reporter; we’re trained to have sharp eyes. Like-like-like how Cards and I actually did some stuff while you were, uh, moping.”

I cocked brow, trying to get a grip on myself. “What?”

“Well, using my super sleuthing skills, I think I know exactly the creepy little shop where we can find out about those talismans. On the other side of the river, there’s this creepy little zebra district, and I hear there’s a spooky zebra that knows a thing or two about the dark arts. He owns a shop that’s only open from evening to morning, so I couldn’t really check it out just yet. Want to head up there with me in a few hours?”

“Yes, Miss Dust,” I replied, nodding.

“Oh, and I found out that Social Grace works for Duke Elkington,” Cards added, and I jerked my head in her direction. “Got to thinking maybe he can help us, since his family insists that he work with the Duke while Grace is staying in town.”

That’s... really manipulative of her. “And so you intend to do... what, exactly?”

Cards smiled. “He asked me out, government boy. Later on this night, in a few hours. Wants to take me to a fancy little place, and I told him I’d go.” She bounced on her tippy-hooves. “Never been on a date before—this is going to be so exciting!”

“You’re really chipper about all of this, Cards,” I commented. “I still thought you were in shock over you-know-who.”

And just like that, Cards’ happiness died spectacularly. Her ears flopped and she frowned hard. “I... kinda just said yes without thinking. Can’t I at least pretend to be happy over something? I literally haven’t smiled in days.” But I only killed Glasses yesterday! “I’d like to find something to keep me from killing myself later, okay? I don’t think I have enough Bits to drink myself to death, anyways, and I was hoping to get at least a bottle of wine out of this date.”

“I-I-I’m sorry, Cards! I didn’t mean to say that, I meant to say that I was surprised you were dealing with everything so-so well.”

“No, no, no, GB.” Cards sighed. “You’re probably right.”

Finishing my chips, I stood up, and Dust’s arm fell off me. I went to toss the empty carton into the paper bag. Something about Social Grace working for Duke Elkington made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But my waffles had told me that he probably wasn’t going to rape Cards, so I didn’t think too hard about Grace’s occupation.

“Just so we’re clear, ladies,”I said, “what happened today in this room never happened, o-okay? I thank you for your support, and I promise you I will no longer be such a jerk to you two, but as of now, I’m going back to being strong, if not for you then for myself.” The mares nodded, and I walked towards the door.

“Hey,” Dust called out, “can waffles really tell the future?”

Stop Reading my mind ten seconds late, Lightning Dust! It’s unbecoming of a lady. I looked over at her and laughed. “I do not know, but they’ve always been correct when they tell me they’re going to be delicious. In truth, that’s the only thing they ever really say. I only assume they say other things.”

“And when you assume, you make an ass of you and me,” Dust said back, inclining her head and laughing.

I sighed. “Well, I’m sorry I tried to lighten up the mood with waffles, alright?” With a glance over my shoulder, I walked over to the door. “Look, ladies, I can see you’ve all got things to do, and they’re all better than my plan of ‘sitting around and hoping for a plan’. I’m going to go for a little walk, scope out this neighborhood for anything interesting, then be back in an hour or so and be much calmer and everything, okay, Dust?”

Said mare nodded. “Fine by me, GB. Ooh, that rhymed!”

I left the room and entered the hallway. A devious little smile found its way onto my lips as the door closed. That had gone far better than I had expected. I chuckled under my breath as I walked down the dimly lit hallways.

And so I wandered down the halls, down the stairs, and outside. The sun was still high in the air as I walked past the little alleyways lining the street. I even poked my head into one such alleyway, curious about what secrets it held within. That’s about when I saw an advertisement for a brand of cigarettes marketed for foals...

Author's Note

Footnote:

Quest Perk Added: Keynesian Economist

The great Teutsche economist Jan Mainard Keynes is your economic Lord and Savior. You now do an extra 15% more damage versus Laissez-Faire economists. How dare they believe the market can think for itself!

Jericho is now a Western RPG, it seems... I’m okay with this. Think y’all that I ought make more footnote Perk and RPG jokes from now on down here? I’m tempted to. Wonder what Jericho’s stats would be if this were a Bethesda-style RPG.

I love you guys! Your comments and thoughts help inspire me to write more. Special thanks this chapter go to Aequinoctium, who is now apparently Jericho’s official German consultant.

In any case, this chapter was not written in chronological order. I kept going back and editing in new scenes. Hopefully it all works. And I promise—promise!—that the plot will stop stagnating and being boring by next chapter, aight? I’ve still got ponies to mentally & physically harm, you know. So, sorry for this chapter being so mediocre. I apologize too for being a terrible writer.

Chapter 10 — Stories

Chapter Ten: Stories

“Okay, maybe it’s the second best story you’ve ever heard. But probably still the scariest. You like scary stories, right?”

Kreuz.

That was our word for it, the cross. Pronounced as one syllable, like “Kroits”. See, something about this whole little... ghetto, for lack of a better term, just rubbed me the wrong way, and I had pulled the Iron Cross out from my shirt and let it hang freely over my breast. If we didn’t get mugged at least once, I owed the voice in my head five Bits. So with a dark expression on my face, I sauntered through the gloomy streets of the zebra enclave, Lightning Dust hovering alongside me.

“So, what’s with that necklace?” Lightning Dust asked.

“Hmm? Mein Eisernes Kreuz?” I replied.

“I, uh, yeah. That thing. What’s it for?”

I looked around the street bathed in the evening’s light. Long shadows threw themselves all over, lit braziers only making the shadows dance. Dust and I were the only ponies there. Not the only people, for zebras went about here and there, letting us know that we weren’t alone, but I got the feeling that my ponied nature meant I was a strange sight in this part of Songnam. “Zebra witchcraft,” I muttered.

“What?” she asked, and I looked at her. Dust was flying upside down, arms pillowed behind her head and legs crossed as she looked back at me. What a damn cherub...

“It’s simply an Iron Cross, a gift from my father,” I said as a zebra stallion walked by us, heading up the street as we went down it. “But assuming Solari have no understanding of it, I should tell you that it is a symbol of strength, dominance, power, militarism, masculinity, and of the Reich. It’s even on some of our flags. If, for example, you saw our war ensign, you’d see a flag with the Schwarz-Weiß-Rot, the Iron Cross, and the Teutschfalke.”

“Um, oookay, but why are you wearing it?” She rolled over, still hovering, and now rested her chin over her hooves.

“Because it wards off dark magic, so they say. And this is something of a good luck charm, so they also say,” I said. “This ghetto is giving off zebra magic vibes, and zebra magic is nothing but vile witchcraft.”

She frowned. “Wait. You’re saying that zebras can use magic? I mean, I don’t really know the first thing about zebras other than that they have stripes, but I thought only ponies could—”

“Ponies are unique for their affinity for it. We are the only race that is born with an inherently possible magical ability. That’s why we’re so vulnerable to evil, so easily tempted by demons, so weak to corruption. But zebras?” I shook my head. “Zebras aren’t born with it, they must learn. Sadly, they all too often make pacts with demons, for all zebra magic is evil. They use charms, fetishes, and dark rituals to enchant objects, to bring forth magic. Under teutschem law, this is a witchcraft, a capital offense punished via public execution. Well, saying it’s ‘public’ is already assumed, since all punishment is public in Teutschland.”

“Public?” Dust asked, setting her hooves on the ground and now walking alongside me.

“Of course. We see it as the most reasonable thing to do.” I looked down the shady alleyways we were passing. “We pride ourselves on our cruel and unusual punishments. Like, one of the most common forms of punishment in Teutschland is flogging, a punishment which mostly relies on publicly humiliating you; they strip you naked and whip you until you bleed, making sure as many people as possible know who you are while they brutally beat you. It’s kind of neat to watch, in a real ‘I’m a terrible person at heart’ sort of way.”

“That just sounds horrible!”

I shrugged as I tried to recall an argument from one of my favorite books. “It’s supposed to be horrible; that’s why the punishment works. If punishments weren’t cruel and unusual, it would be pointless; you’d never learn anything, and it wouldn’t be a real deterrent against crime. After all, pain’s a basic survival mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution, safeguarding us with warnings against things that threaten our survival. Teutschland simply uses this highly perfect survival mechanism for its intended purpose when we punish people, and what’s wrong with that?” Do Equestrians even have a theory of evolution? “I mean, not to try to change your opinion or anything, but as I was taught in Geschichte und Moralphilosophie, punishment must be so unusual as to matter, to stick out in your mind, to deter, to instruct. That’s how we see it, anyways. I’m not preaching it, just stating the Teutsche viewpoint.”

“Why is that even a thing?”

“Well, it’s all a matter of perspective, really, Dust. Just like morals. Morals all derive from the instinct to survive; moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level—not unlike a father who dies to save his children. Culture will affect this. So, what is immoral to one culture is perfectly moral in others. Same idea applies here.”

“But-how-I—?”

“For example, you think that magic is fine. My opinion is that all magi are evil and should be executed on principle. Trained psychics, like die Bibliothekar, are fine, however. They are what the Reich uses. Of course, to be fair, I’m from a part of the world where we’ve proven that magi are untrustworthy by looking back at history; you live in a world where magic is just a harmless thing. Who’s right? In the grand scheme of things, both of us. You ideology works for you, mine works for Teutschland.” I took a breath. Doesn’t change the fact that Equestria’s use of magic is just downright irresponsible and will get them all killed sooner or later. “So, where is this dark little shop?”

“Um... I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But it’s in this little area, I think. At least, that’s what I was told.”

We reached the end of a street, and it branched off left and right. The left lead to a little area where a bunch of zebras were. To the right was some sort of market area, an area with both ponies and zebras. “I’ll take left, you go right,” I said. “Try to get your super sleuthing skills on, alright, Miss Dust? We’ll meet back here in half an hour.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll—ooh, a squirrel!” She pointed to a withered tree planted in front of some house. An albino squirrel leapt off the tree and onto the cobblestone street.

“Yes, it is one of those animals, whatever they are.”

“A squirrel, GB.”

“I know what they’re called.”

“Well, then call it by its name.” She inclined her head. “Never seen an albino squirrel before. That’s kinda neat.”

“I don’t wish to call it by its name,” I grumbled.

Dust looked at me, cocking a brow. “Squirrel. Come on, say it with me. Squirr-el.”

I narrowed my eyes. “No; it is a stupid word.”

“Squirrel,” she repeated.

“No.”

“Do it!”

I sighed. Remember how squirrel is pronounced! It is said in this particular Equestrian dialect as ‘skwɝ.əl’. Slowly, I said, “Squirrel.” Ha! Those years of studying the International Phonetic Alphabet and being called a nerd have finally paid off!

“Yay!” Dust clopped her hooves together. “You’ve gotten over your fear of the word squirrel!”

“It’s a shibboleth; do you have any idea how hard that word is to pronounce for us Teutsche? It contains three sounds in row that we do not have. I bet you ten Marken that I can ask ten average Teutsche to say it, and they’ll all get it wrong.” I blinked. “Ooh! My ability to speak Equestrian is now beyond the shadow of a doubt perfect!” I pumped my arm. “Yes, now I am the king of your language!”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, hotshot,” Dust chuckled. She rocked herself towards and away from me, repeatedly saying squirrel.

I gave her light push. “Oh, sod off. I’m going this way, you go that way, alright?” Dust continued to rock back and forth on her hooves, mocking me with her flawless pronunciation of squirrel. “Quit it. I said the word right, okay?”

“Well, if it’s such an uber problem for—”

“No!” I snapped.

Dust took a step back, ears flopping. “Uh...”

“I don’t know where you got that word from, but I know what you were trying to say, and you did it all wrong. It is pronounced über, not ‘oo-ber’. The -er is pronounced like the second A in ‘gangsta’, since we Teutsche don’t pronounce our ending R’s, much like they don’t in Northern Equestrian accents,” I said rapidly. “And the Ü... well, in this case, it’s pretty much just like the I in ‘is’, except that you round your lips while saying it. Are we clear? Mister Welch used to make that same mistake all the time and it really bugged me, but now you know and shall never say it wrong again.” I put a hoof to my chin. “Speaking of which, how the hell did that word ever cross the ocean and make its way into the Equestrian vocabulary?” I shook my head. “In any case, that lecture was my vengeance for the word ‘squirrel’. Ohh, said it right again!”

I gave her a lone wink as I shuffled backwards down the street. She stared at me, then burst out laughing. Now half a street away from the mare, I turned around and went over to the seediest looking zebra I could find. “Excuse me, sir,” I said, and he grunted at me. “I’m looking for a certain place. Might you have any local knowledge?”

He cocked a brow as he leaned against his stoop. “Depends. Whatchu after?”

Hmm. Strange. He didn’t pronounce his R. I wonder if dropping your R’s is a part of the Equestrian zebra accent, too. “A little place where I can find me some information about, ooh, sensitive magics. I’m trying to find ghost-chili-pepper-scented eye drops.” The zebra cocked a brow. “Have you ever put that in your eyes before?” He shook his head. “Because I’m trying to make my ex-girlfriend blind. Because she—”

“Dude, why you tryin’ to make her blind for?” he asked, cocking a brow. “You don’t do foul shit like that, pony.”

“Well, it’s because she cheated on me, like, five times! So, I mean, what do I do but blind her for life?”

He shook his head as two zebra foals kicked a ball around the street. “You stay the fuck away from her, that’s what.”

“Like, mares in general?”

“What I think about mares?”

I hesitated, pretty sure that his last sentence was somehow completely wrong. It needed at least two more verbs and a pronoun. “Um, what?”

“Buck, mares are a dime a damn dozen. When you find a bad one, they’re like a bad apple; ya dig through the Celestia-damned barrel till you find a good one.”

Doctor Z. Bra’s words of wisdom. “You’re right,” I sighed.

Half an hour and at least fifteen zebras alarmed later, I found myself back at the street corner. I groaned and checked my watch; Dust was late by twenty seconds, the fiend! Shifting my weight, I felt the dagger and its sheath I’d strapped to my right leg. Feeling its presence gave me a modicum of comfort. Together with my Iron Cross, I would be safe from any dark magics—if not by proxy, then in ability to gouge out the throats of any witch. Of course, there was still my sword, but a quick dagger slash was always so stylish and delicious.

I fondled my cross again, remembering my father’s words when he gave it to me. But just as I was about to have a lovely flashback, an acoustic guitar sounded up from above. “Hmm?” I hummed, looking for the guitarist. It was a smooth but loud melody, not bad, but not what I’d expect coming out of the blue. “Um, hello?” I called up, wondering if the guitarist would show themselves. “If that’s you, Dust, where’d you learn to play the guitar? In fact, how were you carrying one? Or did you just buy one?”

A minute passed, and still the guitarist played. I growled to myself, then shouted, “Shut up! You’re a good player, but I can’t very well appreciate ghosts! Or-or...” I looked down the street and yelled, “Can someone tell God to stop playing his guitar?” I jerked my attention skywards. “Listen, God, I know you get bored with being omnipotently impotent and everything, and I honestly suspect you get some kind of perverse enjoyment out of making my life hell, but can you—” I sighed, shaking my head. “Great. God picked up a hobby, and now the only way to stop him is to commit a sacrilege and kick my deity in the dick.” I looked off to the side and pointed into the empty space. “Because, as my dad used to say that Mom used to say: ‘God must be a stallion. If he were a mare, God wouldn’t have given his own sex such a hell of a time giving birth.’ Nevermind how Dad thought that was really funny up until I was born, then it became a cruel joke. I still find it funny, though, if only to spite my old stallion.”

The guitarist didn’t stop. “Gott, sprichst du Teutsch? Parles-tu Francais? ¿Hablas Hespañol? Speak’st thou Equestrian?! Do you maybe take requests? If so, an acoustic version of ‘Miststück’ von Megaherz? Bitte?” The guitarist was unswayed by my kindly request for a song whose title roughly translated into a gender-neutral version of ‘bitch’. “Du bist ein Miststück!” I bellowed up at the heavens. “Du bist ein Stück Mist!” I was so going to the ninth circle of Hell for that comment...

“Squirrel,” a mare whispered into my ear. I yelped, launching my body in the voice’s direction out of a reflexive urge to attack, and not because I was an idiot who just so happened to jump in that direction, nope. I tumbled on top of a very surprised-looking Lightning Dust. “Hello,” she squeaked as I practically pinned her to the ground.

I rolled off her and bounced up to my hooves. “Eh, sorry about that,” I said, offering her a hoof and helping her up. “Now, where is this damn music coming from?”

“Um, the Duke’s speakers?” she offered.

I deflated. “Oh. Well then. I am a stupid pony. Had forgotten that those speakers existed.” I cleared my throat, pretending to dust myself. “So, um, you find anything? I only got weird looks and accidentally made a foal cry.” I wonder if I can hack into the speakers and start blasting some Neue Teutsche Härte all across Songnam.

“Mmhmm!” she chirped. “Found out exactly where we can look, even. Care to follow me?”

“Sure. I mean, my only other option is just to sit here and make an ass out of myself some more.” I put a hoof to my chin. “And, you know, that’s a really appealing prospect.”

Dust chuckled, rolling her eyes. “You know, it’s so appealing that I might just join you.”

“Oh please. A companion is always nice. All you’ve got to do is shake your hoof at things and scream stupid things. Like so: you promised me strawberry-banana yogurt and instead I got soup that is too hot, soup which then hit my abused shoulder! Tod dem Sakrileg!” I put my hoof down and looked at the pegasus. “Subsequently, it is an undeniable fact that strawberry-banana is the best fruity flavor ever.”

She shrugged. “I like raspberries.”

I narrowed my eyes and growled, “You’re dead to me...”

Dust laughed at me, and I laughed back at her. Neither of us spoke—I, waiting for her to speak, and her, just staying silent. The song playing on the speakers shifted sometime in the last minute or so, and I hadn’t noticed until then. It was a soft, vocal song, hints of a guitar off in the background. Someone please break this awkward silence.

She looked off to the side. “Ooh, finally! There’s some good pop music playing.” I was about to complain that the song’s style was about a hundred years out of date, but then Dust said, “You know, you have pretty eyes.”

I blinked. “I-uh-what prompted that?”

Dust shrugged her wings. “Just something. Your eyes are just kinda nice.” Saying ‘you have pretty eyes’ is pretty much a tell for a serial killer; it’s like saying, ‘Hey, I hear you’ll be home alone in the dark tonight, and that you have no weapons. Hot.’ Suddenly, the song’s vocals got heavier as two stallions took lead of the soft song for just two lines before returning to the vocal solo.

“Someone’s rocking my dreamboat,

Someone’s invading my dream;

We were sailing along,

So peaceful and calm,

Suddenly, something went wrong.”

“So this is what Equestrians call pop music?” I asked, and Dust nodded.

“Well, it doesn’t burst.” Was that a joke? Because it sucked. “This song’s awesome, huh? I know all the lyrics and everything.” Dust reached down and tugged on my hoof. “Come on, GB—I don’t wanna stand out here in the cold and dark forever.” She turned around and walked down the streets, humming to herself. I failed trying not to look too closely at Dust, and saw that she was walking with a bit more spring than usual; her hips swung a little more than usual.

As the song went on, I followed Dust, listening to her sing along with it.

“Someone’s rocking my dreamboat,

Disturbing a beautiful dream;

It’s a mystery to me,

This mutiny at sea,

Who can it be? (Who can it be?)”

Dust went right, down the road to the little market. If this somehow ends with me waking up in a bathtub of ice and missing a kidney, I’m going to choke Lightning Dust to death with her ovaries.

|— ☩ —|

“I am so losing a kidney,” I muttered as I looked at the building’s façade. Dark windows, dark bricks, located in a dark alley. The only question at this point was, where did they keep the bathtub full of ice? Dust herself was peering in through the windows.

“I think it’s open,” she said, not sounding all too confident.

“How about we find out?” I asked, starting for the door. “And I better come out of this with as many organs as I had coming in, understood?” Somewhere in the distance, more of those old-sounding songs were playing as Dust simply cocked a brow at me. “Glad we had this talk.”

Stepping into the dimly-lit interior, I was first struck with the scent of lavender incense. Then, as Dust entered in behind me and closed the door, I took stock of the store’s merchandise. There were strange furs, shrunken heads, dreamcatchers, bone charms, voodoo dolls, jars with all manners of nasty things, a collection of mummified animals, a tusk of ivory that’d been carved and decorated with all sorts of evil-looking symbols, and just about every dark magic fetish imaginable. It was the very epitome of what a dark magic shop should look like. It was for that precise reason that I immediately doubted the validity of the shopkeeper. This place was more like some kind of tourist shop than your one-stop shop for all things unholy. Think about it: if you sold illicit drugs in your store, would you really decorate your shop with every imaginable sort of drug paraphernalia?

Dust and I made our way through the musty store, glancing at all the strange charms and items the shopkeeper offered. There was even a discount shelf—everything under five Bits, hot damn! Finally, after turning a corner, we put the counter in our sights. There was a zebra stallion standing behind it, a pencil in his mouth as he wrote something down on a notepad. I observed that he was wearing a set of robes. The only thing he was missing was his trusty wizard hat, then he could go out and cast his magic spells by rolling his twenty-sided dice. Ah, I missed those days when I played Dunkelheit und Drachen. I should try to see if I could convince Dust and Cards to play a game with me. I’d love to be their Spielmeister as they went on an epic campaign and slew dragons. Or maybe I could teach one of them to be a Spielmeister, and then I could be a mighty bard once again.

I was suddenly struck with the image of Cards as a mighty paladin, clad in plate steel and with a powerful magic blade, but still just as short. And then there was me, a super sexy bard with a feathered cap and a leather duster. We were in the deep, dark, and absurdly spacious sewers beneath some epic city, we were surrounded by the legions of evil and demons and bad popstars.

“Cards,” I said with a dark expression, “hold onto thy face. I’m going to save the world.” I threw my D20s and sexily pulled out my guitar as Cards held onto her face. The dice landed. “Super critical hit,” I growled, and played my guitar. I played heavy metal so hard and with so much love, soul, and passion, dancing with the funkiest, freshest, sexiest dance moves throughout my epic solo. It was so epic, so raw, so sexy that everyone’s face melted off and they died.

Paladin Cards stomped her armored booties, unaware that I knew she was wearing her socks beneath them. “Forsooth, thou spoony bard—!”

“Huh?” the zebra said, looking up at us and snapping me out of my pleasant fantasy. And I was almost at the part where my bardic skills made me the god of music and sexiness, too. “Ah, a couple of ponies. What can good old Bigs do for you?”

“Your name is Bigs?” I asked, and he shrugged.

“My mother was a very creative lady, you see.”

I thought back to what Cards had said about her own mother. “Yeah, I think I’m starting to see a trend with Equestria’s last generation,” I mumbled. I affixed the buck—assuming ‘buck’ could be used for non-ponies—a hard look. “They tell me you’re the guy to visit about magic of a darker art.”

He gave me an almost sinister look. “Ah, but of course. You have heard most correctly.” Bigs looked between us. “I do not get many couples, so you must be looking for something odd. Perhaps some sort of charm? Something to make your love bloom brightly, hmm?”

I put a hoof on the counter. “No.”

“Ah, of course. Different pony races don’t often intermingle, right? I often forget—sometimes have trouble telling ponies apart.”

Wait. Is he saying that Equestrian unicorns, earthers, and pegasi don’t often interdate? Wow. That’s... wow. That’s racist. “Listen, we just have no interests in romantic charms, Doc.”

Bigs blinked at me. “Doctor?” Then he smiled. “Witchdoctor, you mean? Am I that obvious?”

If I could, I’d execute you here for the sin of dark magic. Lucky for you, I don’t think you’re really a witchdoctor. “You decorate so obviously that you’re either real or a complete quack. Shall we find out which of the two you are?” I reached into a pocket and pulled out the purple talisman. His eyes nearly bulged out of his sockets and rolled around the counter, but by sheer apparent force of will, they stayed in his skull. “Exactly, Doc.”

The zebra took a breath, collecting himself. “You are not normal patrons here, are you? I-I mostly just get tourists and young locals looking for little things. But that? No, you are here for the big spells, are you not? Certainly know how to reach the top of the price range.”

I slammed down a gold coin. “I pay in cash.”

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head, “I am not to whom you should talk.”

“Then to who?” Dust asked. Don’t you mean, to whom? Silly Equestrians, not even knowing how to speak their own language.

“My second I,” Bigs said, turning around. I noticed that he was wearing some sort of pack on his side—That’s no pack! As he removed his robes, I saw a small face and body where I’d thought there’d been a bag. It was a like a little zebra fetus surgically attached into his side, his little limbs just hanging there, his head a bit too large and bald. The fetus’ eyes opened up as he smacked his lips.

“The hell!?” Dust gasped, flinging herself backwards.

“Ugh, Bigs,” the fetus groaned in a voice scratchier than but not unlike the zebra’s, “why’d you wake me up?” He looked at me. “Oh, we have guests, do we?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” I replied, looking him in the eyes.

“Ah, and such a polite one, unlike his lady friend,” the fetus groused. He slammed his hooves on the counter. “Mister,” he said to me, “would to be so kind as to grab me my wardrobe. It’s right over here.” He pointed to a white fedora and shirt so short that it looked like it belonged to a doll. I did as asked, and he promptly managed to put the hat and shirt on. “Much better! My name is Chausiku, never mind you that it’s a filly’s name.”

Well, now we know where all his mother’s creativity went. “Chausiku?”

“Yes, yes. If Mother is to be believed, it means ‘born at night’ in the old tongue.” Chausiku shook his head. “Mother never taught us much about the old tongue, figuring there wasn’t much point in teaching it to a monster.” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to know more about the homeland, but all we could learn were its dark secrets. But Momma said that the old homeland was destroyed, so...” He shrugged. “She was a crazy old bat, in any case.”

“Destroyed?” I asked.

Chausiku smirked, baring just a few too many of his ill-shapen teeth. “Oh, it’s probably just a legend. I may consult with the dark arts, but I don’t put much stock in legends.” I looked at him, nodding for him to go on. He sighed. “Look, asking me for a history lesson is like asking a cobbler for marriage counseling: I am but a mender of soles. If you want to hear the old stories about Vikuta and his Legion of the North, head on down to the Île-de-Nippun here in Songnam.

Nippun? Sounds almost exactly like Nippön, except that this word’s Ö-sound is more nasal. “Then I’ll have to go there later.”

He nodded. “Now then, why did you want to see little ol’ me, hmm?”

I jostled the talisman around. “You know about the dark arts?”

Chausiku leaned his head towards me, pulling on Bigs’ skin. Then he grabbed some sort of cane from under the counter and held it out towards the talisman. I put the chain on the stick, and he brought it up close to his face. For some reason, I wondered if punching Chausiku would cause Bigs pain.

Dust hesitantly stepped up towards the counter, looking as if she might vomit. “What... are you?” she asked, and Chausiku shot her a dry look.

“Conjoined twins, I’d imagine,” I said before anything got ugly. “Unusual, yes, but nothing to be bothered by. I’ve seen strange things in my time, and in the grand scheme of things, conjoined twins aren’t that strange. So don’t treat Bigs or Chausiku as if they were a monster, got it, Dust? That’s rude and insensitive of you!”

Chausiku smiled. “My, aren’t you the heroic type, Mister...?”

“Maximus Doomhammer Freud,” I offered, “advocate of prostate exams and knight of the pentagonal table. But, please, just call me Max.” At this point, using my real full name would probably sound like just another random mish-mash of sounds.

“Right, Max. You’re the first pony to not only look at me as if I were normal, but also to chastise somepony for thinking odd of me. Kudos to you.” He bowed his head. “I like me a pony who’s got manners. So, tell you what, I’ll help you out. And it’s not every day some buck brings in such a charm.”

I leaned in an inch towards him. “What can you tell me about it?”

Chausiku squinted at the talisman. “Well, it’s enchanted, but you already knew that. The feel of the magic is... neither zebra nor pony. This here is a dark object, and you don’t strike me as the kind who knows much magic.” He put his forehooves on the counter. “Tell me, where’d you get it?”

“Found it on a corpse,” Dust said. “We were out in the forest when we found a body with it. Couldn’t figure out who the dead stallion was, and we thought maybe you could help us figure out who he was so we can inform the family. But... this appears to be something more than we’d thought.” Hmm... You lied fairly well. Good on you, Dust. Too bad you looked in the wrong direction; anypony who knows about lying would likely see that you were probably making that up.

The fetus nodded, rubbing his chin. Then, with a jerking motion, he pointed the charm off into an empty corner of the room. The talisman blinked, and for a single, fleeting second, something tall and dark stood in the corner and leered at me and me alone. It was gone as quick as it had appeared. “This is pony magic,” Chausiku concluded.

“How can you tell?” Dust asked.

“Because unicorn magi don’t usually think about us non-unicorns when they make magical charms. If it had been made by a zebra, I could have used the charm, and so could a pegasus, griffon, earth pony, and so forth.” He frowned. “This is the kind of charm that, in order to work, would need the magical charge of a unicorn’s horn running through it. So, it’s a fair bet that it was made by a unicorn.”

I thought back to that strange mare Jeepers had controlled. If it was the kind of charm only a unicorn could use, that would explain the poppet. The thing was some sort of prototype, according to that list of instructions Jeepers had, which might have meant... almost anything, really. Perhaps Duke Elkington was trying to make it so his non-unicorn agents could use magical charms like that. But if so, why not just use magic that didn’t need unicorns? Every damn question answered raised several new ones.

“I often wonder what it would be like if we were born as unicorns, Chaskiku and I,” Bigs mused dreamily. “I’d love to levitate things, and I bet he would, too.”

“Bigs, you needn’t speak,” Chausiku snapped. “I’ve got this all covered.”

“Yeah, and besides, being a pegasus is better,” Dust said, jostling her wings. “Magic, shmagic—I couldn’t live without these babies. Who needs levitation when you can fly?”

“Right,” the fetus dryly commented. “So then, what did you to want with this talisman?”

Dust frowned. “I told you already, we wanted to find the family of its owner.”

Chausiku frowned harder than Dust. “See now, there’s a problem with that story.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Few problems therein, you see. One is that it means that you looted a dead body, and ponies what would do that ain’t exactly the kind to look for a body’s family. Another is that Max here gave us a coin worth far, far more than what simple country ponies would ever have. Now, I might myself just be a small town, country fetus attached to the side of this big guy behind me, but I know a rat when I smell one.”

I put my right hoof up on the counter. “You’re correct. However, the lady and I are not in a position to discuss the why of it all. Sorry if you smell a rat, but that’s just how things are.”

“Hmm.” A dark expression on his face, Chausiku elbowed Bigs, and the zebra turned to face me.

“Um, hey, can I get the amulet back?” I asked.

Bigs fished for something under his side of the counter. “My second I is wondering what to do with you.” He leaned to the side, looking to something at the far end of the store. “You say your name is Max?”

A little well of dread sprang up and spread from my spine out as I looked at Bigs. Whatever had just happened had suddenly shifted the mood to something decidedly hostile. “Can I get the damn amulet back?” I insisted, and Bigs only frowned at me. The dagger around my leg reminded me of its existence as I shifted my weight. I could draw my weapon and make him give me the amulet back, because something told me that was the most reasonable course of options. Or I could just do nothing; perhaps the problem would resolve itself. Maybe I was just being a little paranoid.

“Um, hey, are you two deaf?” Dust said in an annoyed tone. “Give it back to us; it’s not yours.”

“Oh, yes, yes, give us a moment,” Bigs replied, showing no indication of actually giving it back. You’d think a guy with a fetus attached to his side couldn’t manage to ever look menacing, but you’d be wrong. With just one flash of a smirk, he managed to look downright evil. Evil in that way of nefarious doctor’s lobby, reveling in the pleasure that it was making everyone feel impatient because their appointment was a half hour ago and they were still waiting. The thought of that sent shivers down my back.

We need to get out of here, dammit. I pounded my hoof on the counter. “Listen here, buddy, just—” I screamed as a dagger plunged into my wrist. I felt it pierce fur and flesh. Stab through muscle. Bounce off the bone. Drive through more muscle. Exit flesh and put a dent in the counter. Pain. Lots of pain. Blood, too. Bigs smiled as he ran through a door far behind the counter.

“Oh my goodness!” Lightning Dust gasped. “Are you okay?!”

“He better have washed this blade before stabbing me!” I grunted. “I don’t want to get an infected wound.” With more force than necessity, I tore the dagger out of the counter. The weapon still stuck in one side of my wrist and bloodily out the other. “If I get gangrene from there, so help me God...”

The windows exploded, showering the whole store with glass. “Freeze!” a stallion barked as a griffon and three lightly armored ponies charged into the building, only one of them having the civility to actually go through the front door.

“Well, there goes my weekend,” I muttered as I turned to face them. They were armored not unlike Songnam’s finest, just black cloth. In fact, I was sure I could read ‘Songnam Security’ on their armor. Several question immediately ran through my mind, and several questions were immediately knocked out of my mind when I was rammed by a particularly miffed griffon.

Part eagle, part lion, and all rage, the griffon’s weight sent me skidding across the floor. The bastard was quick, too, pouncing on top of me before I even stopped moving. “Now, stay down and this’ll go smoothly,” she growled, her beak looking particularly sharp, as did her talons.

Without even thinking, I reared up my legs and kicked her in the gut. She gasped, giving me enough time to scramble away and jump to my hooves. Okay, the counter was now to my left, and the windows were a ways to the right. I could see Dust getting accosted by the stallions and their batons, but that mare was not going down easily. Of course, neither was the griffon. She flapped her wings and tore at me.

“Scheiße,” I groaned the second before she tackled me with all her weight and speed. The blow knocked me into some sort of closet. The door was open, and a dusty broom fell on my head. Then several small unidentified boxes joined in on the party, followed by another broom, a stepladder, and a record player, nearly burying me in an avalanche of junk. To top it off, a little bottle of Juggernog rolled up to the side to my face, mocking me with its lack of an ingredient label.

I grunted, punched, kicked, but mostly flailed as I tried to get out of the junk pile. Each movement tore at the dagger in my hoof, cutting deeper and deeper. It was so going to get infected, I just knew it. The griffon, not burdened by having been buried by everything ever, casually grabbed my legs and pulled half of me out, her talons digging into my flesh.

“Hey, did you wash your talons before this?” I asked, and the griffon only growled at me. Great. Unwashed talons. Yet another thing to worry about. Still half-buried, I jerked my legs around, her claws digging deeper and deeper.

“Hold still while I tie you up, dammit!” she commanded. “Don’t wanna have to hurt ya.”

Her grip loosened for just an instant, and in that instant I tore from her grip and raised my legs. I bucked her clean in the face for all my pony legs were good for. Dust yelled from somewhere off as the griffon roared at me. “That’s it! No more Miss Nice Griffon!”

“And here I was thinking your name was Irritable Harlot,” I replied, and she slashed my legs. In response, I let her know just what the buck I thought about it. And let her know it a lot. And in the face. She didn’t like that, and this was communicated to me by how she pretty much gouged out strips of flesh from my legs until my lower body looked like some kind of twisted peppermint stick. It probably didn’t taste very minty, either. Of all possible nights, why did I have to pick this one to wear shorts!?

“Oh, what’s this then?” she chuckled, reaching for the sheath on my leg. Scheiße! I forgot about that! With all the bloodshed, there hadn’t even really been time to think, and the way my body was on the ground didn’t lend itself to helping me reach my sword. So when the griffon grabbed my knife in her talons and pulled it out, I did the only thing I could think of.

I reached out at her with my stabbed hoof and, with a twist of my magic and a scream, tore the knife out of my hoof and slashed her carotid artery with it.

With all the adrenaline that must have been pumping through her body, she was dead before she hit the ground. Correction: she was dead before her limp body landed on top of me. One good thing about having a common, if distant evolutionary ancestor was that if it had a neck, odds were that its weak points were in the same place.

The knife clattered to the floor as I just laid there, the weight of her body pressing down on my lungs. I saw the bloody hole in my wrist, centimeters above where the hoof proper began; I was tempted to jam the blade back in the wound just to stop the bleeding, but that would have almost certainly ended with me infecting my wound. I heard Dust yell, grunt, and then some stallion bark out, “Bitch broke my tooth!”

Groaning, I hefted the griffon’s body off me and ambled to my hooves. This was not a good idea, what with the fact that half of my legs were lying in little strips across the floor and on the griffon’s claws, plus the gaping hole above my hoof. I slipped on my own blood and faceplanted. At the rate I was going—ooh! There were five Bits in the griffon’s pockets. I was so taking those.

Bigs’ bloody knife was right there on the floor in front of my face. A split-second decision later and I held the knife in my teeth and stood on my hooves. Gritting my teeth over the weapon’s mouthgrip, I slogged across the floor and towards the counter, towards Dust and the stallions.

Seriously. What’s with this nation and socks? I mused, trying not to think of the pain. If I trussed up Princess Celestia in socks, stockings, and a corset, do you think all of Equestria’s stallions would just, uh, lose it then and there?

I put a hoof on the counter to steady myself as I turned a corner. There was a stallion right around the corner, holding his nose and grunting furiously. Had he actually bothered to look, he would have seen the griffon die, and he would have seen me creeping up behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Wha’?” he asked, spinning to face me.

“Cleanup, aisle sree,” I grunted through the knife in my mouth, and slashed him across the throat, nicking both carotid artery and jugular. “Need us a mop and broom.”

There, on the ground in front of the counter, was Dust and another of the stallions. She was scrambling away from him as he hugged onto her legs and shouted, “Ah! Somepony tie her up, dammit!”

The last stallion came out from one of the aisles, a rope in his mouth. “Hello!” I chirped, and the blade found purchase across his neck. I could now taste blood from four different bodies: mine, the griffon’s, stallion number one’s, and now this guy’s. I prayed to God that none of them had hepatitis, or I was screwed. As his body fell to the ground I dramatically growled, “I have leveled up.”

Dust freed a leg and bucked her grabber straight across the mouth. He screamed as she kicked him again. In her struggle, Dust flipped herself onto her back. That’s when her eyes drank in my bloody visage as I picked up the rope and stumbled over to her. She gasped as I almost casually stabbed her attacker in the back and tore the weapon out, and he screamed. I tossed the knife off to the side.

“That’s a lovely story and I’d love to hear it later,” I said to him as I flipped him over, stepping onto his throat with my bad hoof. “Dust,” I said, affixing the mare with a hard look, “tie him up.” She remained motionless. “Now!”

“I... I... okay,” she muttered, crawling up to the armored stallion and grabbing the rope.

“Did he hurt you?” I demanded.

“N-no, I’m fine. I hurt him more than he hurt me, I’m sure.”

I nodded. “Good.” I helped tie him just enough that he couldn’t fight back. Then I collapsed to the ground.

“GB!” the pegasus gasped. Her eyes went wide as she looked at my legs. “Ohmygoodness, what happened!?”

“Griffons make poor dancing partners—I have learned this lesson the hard way tonight,” I groaned, fishing around in my bag. “Keep tying him, damn you.”

“Oh Celestia, you killed them!” the stallion gasped. “Oh Celestia! Oh Celestia!”

“There!” Dust shouted, finishing the knots. They were a bit sloppy. Were I her, I would have untied him and tried again. The stallion continued shouting and begging as Dust said, “GB, what the hell is going on?!”

“Well,” I said, looking at the ceiling, “Bigs and Chausiku appear to be evil—go figure. They betrayed us, and then a bunch of uncivilized jerks broke in through the windows because only one of them has ever heard of doors before. Oh, and I’m bleeding to death, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is checking everypony here for hepatitis.”

She blinked. “I... I think I saw some healing potions or something in the store. Wait here, okay?”

“And here I was, thinking of taking up ballroom dancing while you went,” I replied. She shot me a confused, hesitant look, and then bolted off. That damn stallion kept screaming. “Listen, buddy, if you keep screaming, I’ll tear out your eyes and testicles, shove your testicles into where your eyes should be, and glue your eyes where your testicles belong. Are we clear?” He bit his tongue, and I smiled. “I’m glad we had this little chat, much more productive than ‘the rapy’.”

Dust returned, panting as she knelt before me. “Found some!” she declared, reaching into her bag. It was a pear-shaped bottle filled with a pink liquid. Oh, and there was most certainly no list of ingredients on it.

“Is it getting cold and dark for anypony else?” I asked.

“Shh-shh-shh,” she cooed, holding the back of my head and putting the bottle to my lips. It tasted both weird yet kind of nice, sort of vaguely pumpkin-ish with hints of bubblegum. Speaking of which, I could have really gone for some pumpkin muffins right about now. They sounded much better than bleeding to death. Wonder if they have this potion’s flavor in non-healing potion form.

“Are you sure these are healing potions?” I said, fighting back a cough.

“I... yes, yes, I’m sure. Why?” she asked.

“Because they’re the wrong color. Tränke der Genesung, er, healing tonics are red. Everyone knows that.” She stuttered something, but I silenced her. “More, please. Sort of dying over here. And give him one, too.” Dust pulled out three more pear-shaped bottles. I grabbed two of them, pointing at the stallion when she tried to give me the third. I took a breath, popped the cork off the first bottle, then jammed it into the hole in my wrist. With the second one, I poured it into my leg wounds. If Equestrian healing tonics worked anything like they did back home, that would help those wounds specifically; if not, I just wasted two tonics. Wee!

I could feel the heat of localized fevers throughout my body, the heat of unnatural cell production. Gritting my teeth and closing my eyes, I panted as the pain and bloody wetness clawed for life, only to be replaced by a burning sensation mixed with the feeling of sitting in lukewarm maple syrup.

When I opened my eyes, I found Lighting Dust biting her wingtip, her eyes locked on me. I gave her a curt smile to let her know I was fine, but she didn’t look any better. Yes, Dust, keep biting your wing, showing off a pegasus’s ability to have more body language that I do. “Blitz Staub,” I muttered.

“What?” Dust prodded.

“That would be your name in Teutsch,” I said, looking at her. “Der Blitz is Lightning. Der Staub is Dust. Ergo, Blitz Staub. It’s funny because both are masculine nouns, so you sort of have a very masculine name.” I blinked. “I just realized that most Equestrian names that I’ve encountered have an exact translation into Teutsch. Cards would be Karten. Strong would be Stark. Blackout can go to hell.” I laughed. “Well, everything went better than expected, huh? Well, it went worse, but as far as worse goes, it was better than worst, right?”

“Um...”

“Attagirl!” I said, moving my legs around. They felt different, and I didn’t like that. I wondered if there was a chance I could somehow cut these newly healed legs and replace them with the old strips around the griffon’s claws. Then I thought that was stupid. Then I actually looked at my legs. They were not fully healed, infinitely better than they had been, yes, but they stilled needed to heal.

Muttering some pretty strong teutsche words, I reached into my pack and found a syringe. No, my wounds aren’t severe enough to warrant any teutsche Tränke der Genesung. I was only given a limited number of those Aufputschmittel, and I’d rather not waste any of them here. I pulled out several gauze strips and recounted my first aid training. Using my magic, mouth, and hooves, I dressed my leg wounds first. Unless I actually gave them more healing serum, they would likely get a few nasty scars. Then I paused.

“Scheiße,” I mumbled, undressing the wound. Taking deep breaths, I looked at Dust. “Could you please check the area where you found the healing potions—”

“There were no more,” she said, gritting her teeth.

I sighed. “Yeah, I figured that, but I want you to go and check if there is any ethanol with at least, uh, sixty percent alcohol, please. I need it.” She nodded, and left. I looked over at the stallion, his wide eyes staring back at me. “You know, you are not clever,” I said. “You’re like one of those criminals that tries to be evil by hiding in the general store until it’s closing time, then you’re trapped there. And they think, ‘Golly gee, it sure is dark here. They lock the registers, and I don’t know how to pick locks.’ Then they sigh, ‘Guess I’ll just wait here till the police arrive.’ That’s what you are. You’re that guy.”

Dust ambled back into sight, a glass bottle in her mouth. “Here,” she said giving me it.

“Ah, you’re a right proper dream,” I thanked. “I’d kiss you, but I’m covered in so much blood that I wonder if I now have hepatitis.” The bottle was of ninety percent ethanol, yes! Dust feigned cough and looked away as I uncorked the bottle. “To make sure I don’t get any infections,” I sighed, heart pounding. Then I used the bottle, pouring the alcohol onto my wounds, burning the nerve endings and purifying the flesh. Speaking of which, it turned out that using alcohol on wounds and burning nerve endings hurts. Just to distract myself from the pain, I burst out into a song I’d heard a few times before:

“It’s a long way to Tipperpony,

It’s a long way to go.

It’s a long way to Tipperpony,

To the sweetest girl I know!”

And now to pour it into the other leg. Oh, not to forget the gaping hole in my wrist. This was going to be fun!

“Goodbye, Piccafilly.

Farewell, Leicester Square!

It’s a long, long way to Tipperpony,

But my heart’s right there.”

The bottle was empty, leg and wrist wounds cleansed. I tossed the bottle aside and grabbed my gauze. Around my wrist and parts of my hoof several times, already it was soaking up blood. Then around my legs, ’round and ’round I went. There. It was done. Back in the bag went the gauze rolls I didn’t use. I leaned back against a shelf filled with the strange furs and sighed.

“You... did that fast,” Dust commented, looking away from me. I stumbled to my hooves, stretching my legs. It hurt to stand, the wounds burning but very tolerable compared to what they’d been minutes ago. “Are you sure you should even be walking, GB?”

I didn’t reply. Instead, I followed my trail of blood to the griffon, ignoring the strips of me lying all around her as I picked my dagger out of her talons. Remarkably, my dagger was the only thing not covered in gore. After putting the dagger back in its sheath, a sheath now put on top of the bandages, I slipped again on my own blood and fell to the ground. I expected Dust to gasp and rush over to my side, but she didn’t, so I had to get up all on my own.

Dust, it turned out, was staring at the two stallions I’d killed. When her eyes slowly crept to me, she saw the griffon, the blood, and the strips of me scattered around her body. That was all she could apparently take. She darted off and past a few aisles before vomiting out what I thought used to be a burger and fries.

When she was finished, she stumbled towards me, and I walked towards her. “Feeling better?” I asked, and she only gave me a thousand-yard stare.

“They’re dead,” she whispered. “You... you killed them.”

You only now realize this? “If I didn’t, they would have hurt you, Lightning Dust,” I said firmly. Well, they might have. I don’t know for sure, but seemed like it. “And I would have stumbled across torn and shredded legs, a hole in my wrist, and done horrible things to make sure you didn’t get hurt.”

Wow. That sures does sound chivalrous. Oh, and you and I both know she could’ve probably handled her own there, save for maybe the griffon.

Shut up, she’s buying it. I smiled. “In fact, I have done so.”

She gave me a lost look.

“Hey, hey, Lightning Dust. Frau Blitz Staub.” She cocked a brow. “Squirrel.” Dust blinked. “Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Sqvirl—dammit! I got it wrong.” I stamped my hooves on the ground in frustration, and she giggled. “Attagirl, Dust! Don’t be sad. If you’re sad, I’m sad. And if I’m sad, I’m boring, and no one wants that. No one.” Dust curtly laughed. There. Mission accomplished.

The stallion cleared his throat, and all eyes were on him. I walked up and knelt before him. “Oh yeah, you’re still alive. Miss Lightning Dust, would you please check the backroom for Bigs and Chausiku?” She gave me a hesitant nod, then trotted off. The buck gritted his teeth as I said, “You know, you Equestrians are remarkably stupid. The only one I’ve met with at least half a brain is my companion in yonder room.” I chuckled. “When I go to try to meet Princess Celestia, I’m probably just going to walk in and find her dead, having choked to death on a spoon or something. And then her guards will rush in and arrest me. And then they’re going to convict me because it’s kind of hard to pass off twenty cases of ‘self defense’ when those twenty ponies you killed were Celestia’s royal guards. Then Princess Luna, if she even exists, is going to get angry at me and send me to the moon, where I will promptly die because there is no oxygen on the moon, which is kind of why I’m pretty sure Luna doesn’t exist.”

I set a bag to the side and fished through it. “Hold on one second.” It took me at least ten times that number before I squee’d with joy. I brought out two D20s, my old twenty-sided dice. Hadn’t seen them in years, but now I knew they had a purpose once again. With great pizzaz, I rolled my dice. See, the trick to rolling dice is always to do it with flair, especially when playing Dunkelheit und Drachen. You had to be excited when doing it, you had to be “I wanna torture this stallion in the face!” and not “Oh boy. Let us engage in battle. Are we done yet?”

The dice bounced around and landed by my hooves. “Yes,” I said, “I rolled a seventeen.”

“Um...” the stallion droned.

“And you rolled a seven.” I made a hissing noise like I’d been burned. “Sorry. You lose.”

“Wha’?”

“We were rolling for initiative. I won. I attack first.” I pocketed the dice. Putting my right hoof on his knee, I leaned in close and whispered, “Now, here’s how it’s going to work. I’m a nice guy, and I’d rather not have to offend that nice girl over in yonder room by having to bash your head like a bag of carrots. So here’s the deal: you tell me what I want to know, and I’ll be nice to you. ‘Nice to you’, of course, means I won’t cut out a rib of yours and use it to stab your arm off.”

“B-but I don’t have any arms,” he muttered.

I sighed. “Your language is dumb. You call them forelegs, we call them Arme, arms. They have entirely different articulation than do our legs, you see.” I shook my head. “Don’t distract me. Do we have a deal?” He nodded. “Good. So, question one: what are you doing here?”

He swallowed. “Security, assigned to protect this little shop and its objects. Lotta folks don’t like zebra magic and stuff, ’kay? Duke Elkington won’t stand for racism, ya know?”

“Then why did you burst through the windows? That was needlessly destructive for security.”

“Little fetus creepy thing told us to.” He forced a chuckle. “It scares perps, ya know? Songnam Security chargin’ through the windows is enough to make most pony folk just give up, yeah? He told us he could repair the windows on his own, so it weren’t no problem!”

“And tie us up?” I asked, putting a little weight onto his knee. “What for?”

“He told us to!”

“Chausiku? He has you just tie up anybody he doesn’t like?” I asked. Something rattled around in the backroom, probably Lightning Dust. “Is that it?” I demanded.

“That what they told me—I don’t know why!”

“They? Who are ‘they’? Bigs and Chausuki? A moment ago you said ‘he’.” I brought my hoof up to his neck as I slid him onto his back. “You’re lying to me, friend.”

“No! They and he are both that zebra-thing who owns the place! They just told us that if anyone comes in here, tie them up and that the zebra-thing would know what to do! Our boss told us to work this little area, and, for some reason, to take some orders from that zebra-thing, okay? I don’t ask questions, I just serve and protect, alright?!”

“So, attacking us was not on the orders of, say, Duke Elkington?”

“No! Chausiku’s!” He shook like he was freezing.

“And so you’re just a grunt with no real knowledge?”

“Yes!” he cried. “Please don’t kill me!

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Look, the only reason you’re still alive is because you didn’t get a chance to hurt that nice girl in the other room. She comes from a fairly innocent world. But me? No, I come from a very bloody world.” I put more weight on his throat, and he whimpered.

“Please!” he sobbed. “Three of my friends are dead, I got bills to pay, and I don’t wanna die!” My hoof remained where it was. “Not everypony gets to be as lucky as you, pretty boy traveling with a model without any care in the world, some of us got bills to pay, families to feed... funerals to attend.”

I blinked. “Did you just call me ‘pretty boy’?” I inclined my head. “The hell did that come from? I mean, look at yourself; it’s like every buck in Equestria spends half the day working out. You’re buffer than me, even.”

He took a breath. “I...”

“No, really. I’m confused. Why did you call me that?” I took my hoof off him, putting it to my chin. “Unless ‘pretty boy’ is now an insult. That’d make a lot of sense, actually. When I say that everypony looks like they work out all the time, I’m not exaggerating too, too terribly. That is to say, I look at half of Equestria’s stallions and feel inadequate.” Perhaps it’s something in the water.

After a few seconds of twisting around, the stallion managed to sit his back up against the counter. “No, no, no, you totally look great!”

I frowned. “Are you coming onto me? Because I will have you know that, while appreciated, I am not in the habit of getting together with people I’m supposed to be holding captive.”

There was an almost hopeful look on his face. “No, I’m just being honest. Tall with a slender build? How are you not drowning in supermodels?” He smiled at me.

“Maybe Equestria just has different standards of male beauty?” I said, jousting with the idea. “It’s like how back home, uh, the ‘action figures’—that’s the term, right?” He nodded. “Right, it’s like how all the action figures are getting buffer and buffer. Like, I see those things and think, ‘There’s no way any pony could get that big without drugs’. But then I’m walking down a Songnam street and see a toy shop: all the dolls are either slender or sort of remind me vaguely of that mare in yonder room, yet all the stallion action figure look like they’ve been shoving boulders under their skin.” Kind of like how Boulder himself looked. I wonder if his orphans are hungry now.

“Just how toys are, y’know?” he said, his smile more forced. “Fillies either wanna look like your lady friend over there or like Princess Celestia. Colts wanna grow up to be big and strong, but the modern mare likes her a buck that looks exactly like you.”

“Maybe.” I lowered my voice and shoved my face into his. “Ooor you’re just screwing with me in the hopes of getting favorable treatment, and flattery is the lowest form of manipulation. That sounds like a much better bet, yeah?”

The hope on his face was thoroughly dashed. “No, no, they really do! You’re-you’re totally handsome!”

“Riiight,” I sighed, looking over at the dead bodies I left. “Hold that thought for a second while I go drag all your friends’ bodies into the closet.” I did as I said, putting the two stallions and one griffon into the closet, though not before checking their pockets. I returned thirty Bits richer. “See, you’ve got to hide the bodies, or else folks will see them.”

“Um, GB!” Dust called out from yonder room. Took her long enough. “Could you come here? I need a hoof.”

“Sure thing, Miss Lightning Dust,” I called back before returning my attention to the buck. “You stay nice and calm, okay? If you do, tonight you might be able to sleep. Move, and I’ll force you to find sleep forever. Understood?” He gave me a weak nod. “Good boy.”

The back room was filled with more and more junk, just like the actual store itself minus any of the attempted organization, and with far more walls and little rooms branching off. Still, the floor was a neat concrete gray; the walls were brown and gray. As we all knew, dark colors meant gritty seriousness. No self-respecting witchdoctor would decorate his evil lair pink, now would he? If I ever became an evil overlord or something, I’d wear bright colors, have my evil fortress be a bright and happy place, and make all of my minions wear “World’s #1 Dad” shirts. Or “World’s #1 Mom” shirts, because my legion of evil wouldn’t sexually discriminate. Sexual discrimination was just terrible, and my legion was evil, not terrible.

Back in the real world, Dust just looked at me as I closed the door behind me. “Something wrong?” I asked.

She nodded. “Can’t find Bigs. I checked around, found a back door leading to a back alley, but he appears to have walled off the alley and turned it into a little empty garden.”

Don’t you need a permit to mess with things like that? Those two were clearly criminal masterminds. “So, no sign of them?”

Dust looked over her shoulder to a large crate. “Found a few locked boxes and, uh... Well, there’s this big locked door in one of the side rooms.”

“Hmm... and you think he’s hiding in there?” She didn’t reply in any way. Oh, God. Really? This is about me killing ponies, isn’t it?

“C-can we talk for a moment, just you and I,” she asked.

Well, I was hoping to hold a seance to call up the ghost of my long-dead the rapist, but I guess just the two of us works. “Of course, Dust. You know I’ve always got time for you.” Except, you know, when we’re chasing down witchdoctors.

“It’s about—” she hesitated “—what you did back out there.”

Called it! You owe me ten Marken, me. Woo, these Equestrians are so predictable! And I thought I dealt with this problem. “You mean, that they are now dead, right?” She nodded, biting a wingtip. “You are disturbed that I did it, correct?”

Same physical response as last time. “It only really sank in as I was standing there, listening to you and that buck talking.” She heard that? Wonder what she thought about it. “I know you said that you were prepared to ‘defend to their deaths’ back there in Sleepy Oaks, and I just sort of thought that was a metaphor.” She licked her lips. “Even when Cards killed that guy, that was an accident. And with Jeepers?” Dust shuddered. “But with those two stallions? That was...”

“Partially premeditated?” I offered, and she didn’t reply. Use your charisma here, Government Boy. Make her see it your way. “When ponies talk about heroes, what do you picture?”

She hesitated. “I imagine chivalrous knights in shining armor, rescuing fair maidens from towers, fighting dragons, romancing beautiful princesses. Isn’t that what you picture?”

That was both oddly stereotypical and the kind of myths associated with patriarchal cultures. Weird. I put a hoof on her shoulder, and she didn’t flinch. “I was once told that this world was no place for a hero. For a while, I believed them. I witnessed atrocities and horrors, have endured physical, mental, and emotional agony the likes of which your Equestrian mind is utterly powerless to comprehend. I have seen the home I grew up in destroyed by demons, its meager halls decked with the gore of ponies I’ve never met. I have seen and received the best this world has to offer, and I have seen and experienced the worst this earth has to offer. I have experienced great joy, and I have been on the verge of suicide. Attempted it, even.” Dust blinked at me. “I have had my heroic journey, and I have learned my heroic lessons.”

“And... what did you learn?” she asked timidly. Being timid did not suit her at all.

“I learned that the heroes of your fantasies are myths. In real life, a hero comes in many forms, but the kind of hero I like to try to be is one who is willing to do bad things so that others may remain pure, innocent, or just plain unharmed. I was trained and taught that in order to be this hero, I had to be willing to end the lives of evil people.” Or, in today’s case, the lives of ponies just a few shades grayer than me.

“I’m sorry to say that while we live in a world teeming with monsters, they are not storybook monsters, villains who are evil just because. You are not fighting some evil threatening to destroy the world, I don’t think; we are simply fighting ponies whose goals end up hurting good folk, and I cannot stand by that. But to defeat bad people, you have to be willing to be bad yourself. The question is where you draw the line.” I was silent for a moment. “Where do you draw the line, Dust? For you, what is ‘too far’ for the sake of preserving all that is good?”

She looked at her hooves. “I never wanted to hurt ponies.”

I rubbed her shoulder. “Hours ago you told me I was strong of heart. Well, my heart is capable of doing most anything save for two things, two things so utterly horrible that to even want to do them would be a sign that I was evil. They are where I draw the line.” She gasped as I grabbed her hoof. “Lightning Dust, I would not ask that you follow my path. I know I am on a dark path that ends with me landing a cozy spot in Hell. I am not asking that you take lives as I do, only that you know that when I take a life, it is because it is the only, most practical option. This is something I can do that neither you nor Cards could willingly emulate.”

Dust swallowed. “What made you go down this path?”

I paused. “Because I probably have masochistic self-destructive tendencies mixed with a hero complex and this strange thing where I put others before me, even if it means I’ll die or get hurt because I just want to help.” She blinked, and I sighed. “It is because I said ‘no’. I wasn’t born to be a hero. I wasn’t born with some mystical birthmark foretelling greatness. I was never part of some great prophecy. I was not born for greatness. I am not the ‘chosen one’, nor the only one capable of wielding some epic power. In fact, I don’t have any power to speak of. I’m just a normal guy capable of saying ‘no’. No, I will not allow monsters to destroy my home. No, I will not let you get away with such evil. No, I will not stand by and let an innocent be abused by some aristocratic ass, even if he is a Duke.

“That is what it is to be a hero, Dust, to declare ‘no’ when you see something wrong, and fight against that which is wrong. I’m not standing up right now to some epic, world-eating monster, I’m standing up to some crazy duke, standing up to just another pony. I went down this path because I can’t shut my mouth and let evil go unpunished.” I sighed. “It is all I know how to do anymore.”

“And that means you... you have to kill?”

“It is something I have done since seconds after my birth, when bearing me killed my mother.” Her eyes widened. “It is something I will have to do until my world comes to an end. I have this problem with wanting to help everypony, and it has landed me on this road I now walk. So I ask you, Lightning Dust, Ace Reporter, if you can accept that about me, about what I have to do to ensure that the pure and good like yourself can sleep soundly at night.” Also, I don’t want to keep having this conversation every time I need to kill somepony. I’m already annoyed.

There was a long, long silence. Then she looked into my eyes for the longest time. If not for my whole argument essentially boiling down to “Hey, I kill people; is that cool with you?”, it might have been a touching, personal moment. And the way she stared into my eyes might have been romantic. But as it turned out, the problem at hoof did involve getting over a very basic social compunction: not to kill. There was nothing romantic about this moment. There was only Lightning Dust’s thoughts and my words.

She nodded. “For you, Government Boy, I will. You stand by me, so I should stand by you. I-it’s the least I can do, right?”

Still clasping her hoof, I brought my head down and kissed it. She gasped in surprise, pulling her hoof back. “Thank you, Miss Lightning Dust. I know I practically come from a different dimension than you, and my methods violate your Equestrian sensibilities, but I assure you that they are the only way in this world.”

Dust took a step back, a slight flush on her cheeks. “I-I-I-um-well-I.” She stopped and collected herself. “Good. Now, can we go open that locked door and find these guys?”

“Of course, just give me a moment.” In that moment, I went out of the room, found that security stallion, then shoved him into the closet with his dead friends. He openly wept their names as I closed the door and locked it. Back in the backroom, I followed the mare to a heavy-looking door and pulled out my tools.

Tick. Tack. Tock.

Lock opened, door ajar. I stood up and put my tools back, looking down into the dark basement. There wasn’t much light getting into the room from out here. “Well, shall I go first?” I asked.

“If you want,” she said in hesitant tones.

I took a few steps onto the creaky wooden stairs. There is so going to be a trap down here. Now then, I think maybe I have a lamp somewhere in my—Dust gasped, and the next thing I knew, I was lying at the bottom of the stairs on dark, cold concrete.

“Ach,” I groaned, moving my various body parts to make sure nothing was broken. Thankfully, nothing broke, but now my legs were screaming as I felt them wetten with blood, and the rope bruise around my neck protested my actions. “You trip?”

She moaned. “Yeah, sorry. You hurt? I’m fine”

“Not hurt, just a bit sore. And it’s no problem, accidents happens.” At least you didn’t accidentally kill me, and I can’t afford to get mad at you at this exact moment. I moved my forehooves around as I felt for something to gauge my bearings with. I felt at something warm and soft and—

Dust yelped, and I felt a hoof buck me in the shoulder. “What the hell was that?!” As it happened to be, that thing I was feeling happened to move just when Dust had kicked me.

“I was feeling something and then you kicked me,” I said.

“Um... you were kinda massaging my cutie mark,” she replied, and I blinked. “Kind of a sensitive area, GB.”

“Sorry...”

“No, no, no, you couldn’t see. And neither can I.” She mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

With a sigh, I managed to find my way onto my hooves. “Hold that thought,” I said, looking out into the darkness. In a few seconds, my eyes adjusted enough for me to make out shapes. A few more seconds and I could see well enough to help Dust up. “There, on your feet.”

“Feet? That’s an oddly poetic term,” the mare muttered.

“Hooves, feet, Hände, Fäuste, Hufe, Füße—similar enough. Ask a dictionary. Not poetic, just me being more literal than I need to be. Solarische words are a bit odd.” I pointed at her. “And before you ask, solarisch is Teutsch for ‘Equestrian’.” I looked up the stairs, then I looked down the stairs. We were not on the real floor. In fact, it was just a little flat area before the stairs turned ninety degrees to the right and went down for what looked like another story. “Hmm. Looks like we have more stairs to go down.”

Dust groaned, hanging her head. “Great. Just great.”

“What, you’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

She let out a mirthless chuckle. “Who, me, the girl who spent most of her life in a flying city that had a critical shortness of dark, enclosed spaces, and instead has an overabundance of open skies? Not at all.”

“Good to know,” I said, and made my way down the stairs. Dust didn’t trip this time. This bottom floor was as real as the bits of random, unidentifiable junk lying around it were. I looked out across the room at a large, thick-looking window next to a metal door leading into a dull-lit chamber. There was no other way out of the room save the way we came, and this door was surely a trap. I contemplated dragging that security stallion down here and tossing him into the room to test it, but Dust would probably react negatively to that. Of course, I could’ve just sent Dust in there first, but that option was less-than favorable.

I grabbed a wooden mask off the wall and flung it through the door. Nothing happened, but I did notice an opened door in the chamber. “Okay, I think he’s in there,” I said, pointing into the chamber.

“Um, you first,” Dust mumbled.

Sighing, I walked up to the door. I looked around for any sort of tripwire or way the door could be shut on me, because I knew that was totally going to happen. It was too obvious not to happen. I drew my sword and stabbed at the air around the door, including bits on the inside of the room.

“What are you doing?” she asked as I sheathed my blade.

“Checking for traps.” I thought for a second. “Invisible traps, too.”

“Traps? It looks safe...ish.”

I gave her a dry look. “I get the feeling that Chausiku doesn’t read enough to get original ideas. On the other hoof, I’m pretty sure this is the only way to get to those two.” I put a hoof to my chin. “I wonder who built this basement. Diamonds dogs?” I recalled Dust mention that Songnam had a network of tunnels under the streets dug out by diamond dogs at the Duke’s command. Was this little basement a part of them? It just seemed a whole story deeper than any basement would reasonably be. “This would be much easier if I could somehow roll my dice to check for them.”

In the glow from the room, I could see Dust give me a weird look. “Dice? You gamble?”

“I gamble with my life every time I take a step forwards, but no. I was referring to, uh... role-playing games, the kind where you sit around with character sheets and roll dice to determine how well you’re slaying monsters, occasionally using math to make sure your character is as awesome as you want him or her to be.”

She blinked. For a brief moment, Dust couldn’t seem to figure out if she wanted to look betrayed, appalled, or just plain shocked. “That sounds kind of... nerdy.”

“Hmm. Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Rather proud it of, honestly. Get together with a few friends and play an imaginary campaign, slay made-up dragons, and level up your characters while getting the best armor and weapons. Life was a bit boring back then; between that, school, and working with a politician in the Reichstag, there wasn’t much to do.”

Her jaw dropped. “I-but-you-I-what?” she stammered, and I shrugged. “But-but that’s so nerdy, and you look so...”

“Look so what?” I prodded.

“I... you don’t look like a nerd at all! Nerds don’t look like you, nerds are, like, scrawny, short, have acne, wear glasses, can’t even talk to girls, and are just uncool and unattractive. No self-respecting girl would be seen near one.”

“Wow. I had no idea Equestrians would have such an... anti-intellectual attitude. Because what you did right there was just plain stereotyping.” I cocked a brow. “And what did you think I did when I was a colt?”

“I... I don’t know. Maybe played hoofball?”

I laughed. “I don’t even know what the sport is. In fact, I don’t know the first thing about sports.” Dust tilted her head, a baffled look on her face. “Seriously, I don’t. I can guess which side is which. Don’t know the names of any teutschen sports teams, nor where they play, nor how to play those sports.”

“I just-I just can’t believe you were a...” She shook her head. “Never in a million years would’ve guessed.” Dust looked around. “You look nothing like a nerd.”

“That’s nice,” I said, and trotted into the little chamber. “Wait. Why did I do this?” I asked as the large metal door closed itself. “Oh, hey, look. Cliché.”

Dust galloped over to the window. “GB? GB? What’s going on, GB?” She pounded a hoof on the window as the room outside lit up, torches on the walls seemingly lighting themselves. The other door in the room, I noticed, had also closed. Yippee. “GB?!”

A deep mechanical sound came from the metal walls of the chamber as a new window appeared in the room. It was at about knee-level; Chausiku looked out at me through it, an annoyed look on his face. “Finally!” the little fetus shouted as Dust shouted questions. Like Dust, his voice was muffled by the window. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been standing here, waiting for you to just walk in through the nice door? You ponies have no sense of decency, let me tell you!”

I looked around the room. “This is either the part where you try to kill me or you tell me your evil plan and then try to kill me, right? Because I’m curious, what are you doing down here? I imagine you’re in league with the Duke, right?”

Chausiku flustered as Bigs shifted his weight. “I have you in my trap—you dare mock me?”

I shrugged. “Of course I dare. What would I be if I didn’t?”

He sighed and adjusted his little white hat. “Okay, fine. Be that way. But tell me first, Max, have you ever heard of enervation? Not many have.” I gave a so-so shrug of sorts, and he smiled. “See, it’s this strange little force. Comes in a few different forms, they say. Very poorly understood, since it doesn’t occur naturally.” Bigs touched something on his side of the window. A strange black medal on the ceiling began to glow, bathing me in a pink light. “I got my grubby little hooves on a very, very strange talisman, one capable of generating little enervatic fields, and Bigs here just switched it on. And it will probably kill you.”

“What?!” Dust yelled, pounding on the glass.

A dark expression on my face, I stared at Chausiku. “Oh, yeah. I think I know of it, but our term is ‘Miasmatische Trübung’. Or ‘Miasmatische Lähme’, depending.”

He laughed and said, “Your lady, Bigs, and I will be fine. But you? Tsk tsk tsk. At the very least, you get to be my very first live pony test subject, and I do so want to figure out if the legends are true.”

More staring at Chausiku and Bigs, my look slowly shifting to a glare. Dust yelled, “Hold on—I’ll find you a way out of there!” She spun around and repeatedly bucked the window, the glass unfazed by what were doubtlessly powerful strikes.

I didn’t move, just glared at the zebra. Bigs frowned and asked, “Are you sure it’s working?”

“Of course I’m sure!” Chausiku snapped. “We tested this on animals; by now, his mind should be decaying. He should be getting paranoid, violent, even schizophrenic!

“Why are you doing this?!” Dust demanded. “Stop it—you’ll kill him!”

Somehow the fetus heard her, and he replied, “Well, there aren’t many avenues of employment for one such as... uh, ourselves. If I gotta be a little morally gray to put food on my—our table and do good, so be it. And for your second point,” he went on, shaking his head, “I’m not too sure what it’ll do to a fit stallion like Max there. This is my first test, and... my employer was wondering what the answer would be. I don’t want to dissatisfy the one putting that food on my plate.” Chausiku shrugged. “Sorry, kid.”

The little talisman in the ceiling pulsed and hummed, its pink light never once weakening. Dust, panting hard, stumbled to the window. She leaned on it, putting a hoof up to the glass, watching me. “I’m sorry,” she said, barely audible through the glass. I looked at her, shrugged, then went back to staring at the zebra. “I’m sorry,” she muttered again and again. Then, in a sudden burst of energy, she began pounding on the glass. “Break! Break damn you, break! Dammit, I am not losing you, GB!”

A minute went by. Dust couldn’t continuously keep up her furious assault for that long. She practically collapsed against the glass, nearly panting her lungs out.

“Um...” Chausiku droned, beads of sweat on his forehead. “You should really be in a bad way, Max. Like, mentally ruined. I know that this kind of enervation wouldn’t really physically ruin you, thanks to my tests on pigs, but...” He gritted in his teeth and in a bout of rage screamed, “Why aren’t you convulsing in mental anguish!?”

I felt a lone vein pulsing irregularly by my injured wrist. Four unusual pumps and then it went back to normal. I shifted my weight, trying to find a stance that didn’t hurt my legs too terribly. My Eisernes Kreuz jostled as I turned around and smiled at Dust, then I looked over at Chausiku. “Are we quite done here? I just figured out a way to get out.”

Bigs and the fetus both blinked at me. “What?” everypony but me asked in unison.

“Uh-huh,” I chirped, pulling out my dagger. “Zehn Marken say that I can throw my dagger up and break that talisman in the ceiling... eventually.”

“You’re bluffing!” Chausiku snarled.

“I don’t think that’s the right word, my friend.” I nodded. “Bluffing would be like saying, ‘If you don’t do this thing, I’ll kill your daughter.’ Meanwhile, I don’t have your daughter. I made a bet that I can do something, so that’s not really a bluff. I mean, were we playing some sort of card game, making a bet might be a bluff, but—”

“Stop lecturing me!”

I tossed my dagger up. It missed, and I had to jump out of its way while catching it. “Okay, take two. Eventually, I’m going to hit it. So, turn it off and open the doors.”

“Never!”

“Whenever,” I sighed, throwing the blade up again. Missed and caught it. Another throw. “I get the feeling that if I had retained my knowledge of juggling, I’d be more fit to do this.” Tossed and caught. “So tell me about enervation, Chausiku. I don’t really know much about it.”

The fetus slammed a hoof against the glass. “You are being bombarded by alpha enervation! Your brain should be leaking out of your skull right now!”

“What does it normally do?” More tosses, more catches.

He gritted his teeth and growled. “Alpha enervation affects the mind. Causes aggression, loss of reasoning and generally impaired judgment, paranoia, schizophrenia—mental trauma! Brain hemorrhages! Aneurysms! Something!”

“Yep, sounds like Miasmatische Trübung.” Also sounds like Sleepy Oaks just a little, especially what Deeohgee mentioned about the place. Perhaps it was there before or something, which prompted most everyone to act like jerks and lynch me. I wonder... Frowning, I tried to get a better angle. “And who gave you this medallion thing up there?”

“Eat shit and die!”

“That’s nice.” A toss. “Ooh! I dinged the side!” A catch. A throw, a crack, a pop, a showering of pink sparks, a sheathing. “There it goes!” I proudly declared as the torches flickered. The door inside the room clicked.

“No!” Chausiku shouted. He proceeded to scream obscenities mixed with his descriptions of how what I’d just done was impossible. I ignored it as I tried opening the outside door to avail. Trying the internal door actually got it open. There was some sort of failed safety feature at work here, I was sure.

“GB?” Dust asked from the window.

“Hey there, Miss Lightning Dust,” I said with a smile. “You just sit there and look awesome. I’ll be right back, okay?” She nodded. “Neat.” I trotted through the opened door and found a T-junction going left and right. Chausiku was somewhere to the right, which meant that to the left was where all the interesting stuff was.

So left I went. The hallway went on for a few yards before turning left again, ending in a wall. On the other side had to be the backroom, I figured. Why did this place even exist? I raised a hoof and pushed on the wall, and it fell forwards as if it... as it actually was a thick wooden stage prop. Dust peered back at me through the newly exposed doorway.

“Huh,” I muttered. “Wish I’d known about that earlier.” I knew having the front entrance to your evil lair be a testing chamber was stupid. I stepped onto the back of the false wall and gestured for Dust to follow me. “Come on, Ma’am. We’ve got a wizard’s ass to kick.” She blinked, rubbed her eyes, blinked again, then galloped after me. Before I could lead the way back into the tunnels, Dust reached me and nearly crushed my lungs in a hug.

“Okay, let’s go!” she cheered as I coughed for air.

A moment later and we were charging past the opened test chamber door. As Dust went by it, she froze and shivered hard. I paused to close the door because its openness was annoying me, but Dust already had a small nosebleed. “Anypony else got a headache?” the mare muttered as she collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath. Dust clutched her head as she rocked back and forth, groaning.

I just sort of stood there and blinked. “What’s wrong?” I asked, and Dust only shivered and moaned. “Miss Lightning Dust? Frau Blitz Staub?” Second response, same as the first, only she ruffled her feathers. It was as if a great chill had washed over her. Great. I glanced at the door, muttering, “Ist es Miasmatische Trübung?”

Dust took several sharp, sharp breaths. She rubbed her eyes as she continued shaking. “I think I just caught epilepsy...” she moaned. In all honestly, she’d gone from healthy and sporting to looking like the ebola virus came to her house, broke all her furniture, and kicked her ass bloody with the promise that it’d be back soon for its goddamn money.

“Hold tight, Dust. I’ve got you,” I said, picking the mare up and putting her onto my back. Sure that she was secure, I trotted down the hallway, short sword drawn. There were doorways in the little hallway, one at the end of the hall, and one on my upcoming right. The right one looked like my best bet. Mindful of the lady on my back, I ducked through the doorway and found a narrow set of stairs going up. At the top was the little room the zebra had been in. From my position, it looked a bit like some kind of cigar lounge, the little chairs, lamps, and odd few magazines. There was a little table with two Voixsons on it.

“Stay back, you freak!” Chausuki shouted at me, Bigs holding a sword in his mouth. They cowered in the farthest corner from me. I turned to them and smiled. “I-I don’t know what kinda freakshow you are, but you’re not gonna kill us!”

“Hey, do you know what happened to my associate here?” I asked, pointing at Dust, who groaned.

Chausiku, his neck twisted towards me because Bigs was directly facing me, swallowed. “She took a full blast of alpha enervation. My controlled enervation only lasts for a few minutes, but I hit you with literally everything the talisman was worth. By the-by the time she ran past it, the enervation was at half the strength it’d been at, further weakened by being farther from its center of effect and having lost all concentration!”

“So, is she going to get better?” I asked with a hopeful smile.

Bigs’ knees shook. He couldn’t talk with the sword in his maw, so Chausiku needed to speak for both of them. “You’re a monster, that’s what you are, Max! There’s no way you should even be standing. You were exposed to enough biomagical contamination to kill a hydra! What the hell are you!?”

“Ich bin ein Teutscher,” I growled, “ein Mann aus Stahl.”

The fetus elbowed Bigs, and the body turned slightly, giving him a better view of me. Chausiku squinted at my chest, then swore. “What is that thing on your chest?”

“Hmm? My Iron Cross?”

“Oh Celestia, no! No! No! No! No!” Chausiku begged hysterically, his head frantically shaking. He repeated “No!” over and over, Bigs’ knees shaking. “Oh, I’ve been an idiot! How didn’t I see that until now?!”

I tilted my head to the side. “Huh?”

“You can’t possibly be one of them!”

“One of whom?” I asked.

“A servant of the Devourer of Souls!” He wiped his brow. “Vikuta! The Northern King, the invincible slaughterer who led the Legion of the North. I thought he was a myth, just a legend told to foals to make them go to bed, to keep ponies from going east across the sea!”

I laughed. “Vikuta? You mean, König Viktor, King Viktor, the greatest of leaders, mightiest of heroes, and most brilliant of politicians? King Viktor, the pony whose selfless actions were directly responsible for saving the whole world? The very same pony who turned the Reich into the unrivaled superpower it is today?”

Chausiku swallowed hard, sweat dripping off both him and Bigs. “Oh Celestia, no... no... no...! He can’t be real! You can’t be real! You’re a myth! A horror story! You... you... if you’re here, then... then Equestria is doomed...”

I took a step towards him, and Bigs flinched. “Well, I do put the rave in depraved, after all,” I chuckled. “So tell me: will the girl recover?”

“I... I... I don’t-I-don’t—maybe! The talisman didn’t work with proper enervation, its effects just don’t last as long! Tests on hogs show they make it okay, b-b-but ponies ain’t piggies!” Ponies ain’t piggies, a little voice in my head snickered. “I-if her exposure was short enough, she’ll be fine... okay? Fine.”

“Good to know,” I sighed with relief. “Do you work for Duke Elkington?”

“I dunno, maybe! Some guy from the government pays me to do what I do, and I don’t question it, alright?”

“So, what do you know about your mysterious benefactor?”

“That they have power, political power,” he said so fast I only just barely understood him. “Lots of money. Open-minded. Knows I’ll keep my mouth shut, that no one will miss me if I die. Must have access to some pretty scary magi, often consults me on dark magical arts, and—” Bigs elbowed Chausiku. “He’s... you’re right, Bigs.” The fetus steadied himself. “I might not be a good zebra, and neither is my brother here, and we might mess with the laws in what we do, but we’ll be damned—damned—if we let you monsters destroy Equestria.”

Bigs charged. With an almost casual thrust, I impaled Big’s chest, the short sword clearly going into a lung. He screamed, gurgled, and fell to the floor. Chausiku, facing the ceiling, whinnied and neighed in terror as his brother died. I put a sword to his tiny, tiny chest.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Where did you learn to use the darker side of magic?”

“He-he who walks in the light,” Chausiku coughed. “The mad dealer... The dark tarot... Mom’s words... Old legends... Guesswork... A black book...” And with that, the fetus closed his eyes. Sighing, I pressed the sword into his body, crushing his entire chest beneath the sword.

“Well, that was needlessly cryptic,” I groused, looking around the empty room. “Why does everyone die before I can get anything truly useful out of them? Why can’t I just once meet a bad guy who can tell me everything I need to unravel the villain and save the day, and then he dies? And you know, that’s just rude of you to attack me before I can think of any clever puns, liiiiike...” I pretended to stab at and kill Chausiku again, then said in a deep, scratchy voice, “Welcome to the abortion clinic.”

You’re going to Hell for that. Like, they’ll need to make up an entirely new level of Hell just to put you in. It’ll be dark. And smell vaguely of cheese. And tomatoes, because you hate tomatoes.

For some reason as I looked at Chausiku, I had the strangest desire to surgically remove (read: brutally hack) him off Bigs, attach him to some strings, and turn him into a dapper puppet. I imagined myself taking my new puppet up to a children’s hospital, where I would find the most depressing ward, burst in, and yell, “Hey, kids, who wants to see a dead fetus!?” Then I’d beat somepony’s abusive mother half-to-death with Chausiku’s body like he was some kind of rubber chicken and—what the hell was wrong with my mind?

Dust groaned, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her legs shifted around as her tail curled itself around my upper leg. Stepping away from the dead witchdoctor, I sighed, “Quit it, Dust.” She only snuggled up to my neck in response. Rolling my eyes, I trotted over to the two Voixsons on the table. The zebra might be dead, but perhaps his things could point me in the right direction. One of them was labelled ‘Shipment Order # 321’, the other was ‘The Good Fight’. I pressed the play button on the second one.

Chausiku’s voice crackled to life. I thought it amusing that the now-dead fetus’ own voice spoke out loud enough for his own dead body to hear it. “It was dark, we were hungry, and it was raining. A black buck came out of the fog, wearing a black suit, his pale green eyes almost glowing in the streetlight. With a kind word he held out a hoof to Bigs and me, offering us a way out of the cold... Mother once told us she’d said ‘Fuck the world’, and Bigs and I were the product of the resulting pregnancy. Hell, I am learnéd in the darker art of magic because it was all a monster like me, like us, was fit for in this world.

“But this buck cooked us up a fine meal himself, and Bigs and I cried. He was the only one to ever treat us like a... like a person, like an equal. It was the greatest meal Bigs and I ever had. All it was were caramel-covered carrots and... some other sweet things. I asked why he helped me, and he told me, ‘Because I’m trying to save Equestria.’ I asked what he meant, and he told me that it meant putting smiles where frowns once were, filling stomachs that once were empty, making warm those that were cold, healing those that were injured and sick.

“I told him that I wanted to do this, to ‘fight the good fight’, as he called it. The buck smiled, told me that in this day and age, the only ones that are fighting the good fight anymore are those who work for Duke Elkington. Equestria’s greatest heroes nowadays are not the kinds of heroes that Equestria needs. If Equestria was to thrive, if we were all to smile earnestly, were all to be warm with full-bellies and be without wounds, we would have to be more than just people: we had to be the heroes Equestria needed, not the ones she wanted. He praised Princess Celestia’s name, but admitted that our beautiful, wise Princess is too kind, too nice, too loving, too good to do what Elkington is willing to do. He said that he envied the Princess, but if we wanted to serve the Princess and the kingdom, we had to work alongside Elkington.

“I told him that I wasn’t daunted, that I would do anything for the good fight... One way or another, I admitted my knowledge of the dark arts. The next morning, he gave me a staggering amount of Bits, told me to open a shop where I could ply my crafts. I opened up this dark magical store, and my rather unique business boomed. Soon, a mare came to my store at night, offering me a job with Elkington.”

Chausiku sighed. “I never learned the name of that buck, could never find his house after that night. But wherever he is, I want to thank him. Because of his kindness, his charity, a monster such as me now works for Elkington, now fights the good fight.” He hesitated. “And if I have to do dark things for a better future, then by Princess Celestia, I will.” The recording whirred out.

I sat there in thought. He’d said he wasn’t sure if he was working for Elkington, but that was clearly a lie. In fact, that recording raised more questions than it answered. Fighting the good fight? Was that what Elkington thought he was doing? If he thought himself so good, why was he using enervation against Sleepy Oaks? Assuming that was what he was doing. It made some sense, but then why wasn’t Cards or that nice bartender or Dust affected by it? This whole damn country, and this damn city, and that damn Duke! Ugh.

Pushing the thoughts to the side, I walked over to the dead zebra and rifled through his robe’s pockets. My talisman was in there, plus twenty Bits and a strange key. A moment later and I set Dust down on one of the lounge chairs, though her resting body seemed to fight me, her tail and arms still wrapped around parts of me. I picked up the zebra and dragged his body out of the room, setting his back against the interior metal door leading to the enervation chamber. I didn’t want his body to stink up Dust’s sleep.

God, everything was so damn depressing and serious now! It was as if killing bad guys was no longer as hilarious it used to be, so I resolved myself to putting the zebra into various silly positions until I was less depressed by everything. It turned out that with the right bodily cuts and creative bending, you could totally make it look like Chausiku was Big’s tiny, tiny prostitute wench. I was just about to go upstairs, get the rest of the dead bodies plus that one living guy, then bring them down here in an attempt to make it look like they were playing strip poker when I realized that, no, that would just be creepy.

So, I trudged down the hallway and checked that one door I hadn’t gone through. Locked. Of course, I just pulled out the zebra’s key and it opened the door without a problem. The other side reminded me of a metro tunnel, only instead of where the train tracks should have been, there was only a dark river of sewage flowing by. I gawked at it. “Oh my God, such absurdly spacious sewers actually exist outside the confines of an uncreative Spielmeister’s mind!”

I explored around the dark platform but found no way out but through the way I came. I entered back into the basement because I’d be damned if I had any more adventures in any more goddamn sewers. I didn’t care if Princess Celestia was trapped down here, willing to marry any proud stallion who rescued her and thus make him a sexy Prince of Equestria, I was not going into those sewers. Plus, I was pretty sure Celestia didn’t put out, especially not for stallions that caught dysentery from all the raw sewage they had to wade through to save her life. Also, elves. There were probably elves or something in these sewers because the stupid Spielmeister liked elves, and I hated elves. Rule #32 of adventuring: Kill all the elves. Well, no, rule #32 for me was “I cannot buy any animal in groups of 100 or over”.

“What the hell am I thinking about?” I said, closing the sewer door behind me. “I think I need pills or something.” I sighed, “I already miss Paladin Cards. Wonder what’s she up to now?” I trotted up the stairs to the little cigar lounge and found Dust asleep on the soft chair. I went up to her and knelt. “I hope you get better soon, because I already killed the one person I’d punish for hurting you. Or two persons, I’m not really sure what the correct pronoun to use for conjoined twins is, you see.” There’s still Elkington.

Her bloodshot orange eyes creaked open. “Hey there, GB,” Dust said, reaching out a hoof for me. She grabbed my cheek and smiled. “Why does my head hurt?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said.

“Oh... okay.”

I thought for a moment. “Dust, how often does Equestria experience multiple murders in dark magic shops?”

“I don’t think ever,” she mumbled.

“Would you like an idea for a great story?”

Her eyes perked up. “Yeah.”

“Report on the story of the strange killings in a dark magic shop here in Songnam. Report on the strange dark labs he had underneath the building, the dark purposes. Report that nopony knows who the killer was, but that the killer had slain a zebra working with the dark arts. Question who this killer was, their intent, if they’re a hero or a monster.”

“That’s...” She paused for a moment. “That’s freakin’ brilliant.”

“You wanted a story, Dust. This isn’t the story, but it’s a story, hmm? One that’ll surely put you in the spotlight.” She smiled, then reached out for me. “Um, something up?”

“I don’t like it here,” she said, looking out the windows and into the basement room beyond. “I wanna go back to the hotel room. Please, can you help me up?”

I playfully rolled my eyes. “Oh, I’ll do you one better,” I said, picking her up and putting her onto my back. She hugged my shoulder, tightening her legs against my sides. Her tail swayed around my backside as if searching for something. Before leaving, I grabbed the Voixson labeled ‘Order #321’, figuring I’d listen to it back at the hotel room.

“Hey, GB,” she yawned as I trotted out of the lounge, “where’s your tail? Isn’t it uncomfortable to jam it under all that clothing? Like, doesn’t it chafe?”

“Maybe, but I don’t have a tail,” I chuckled.

“What?” she gasped. “How is that—”

“We’re big on self-mutilation over in Teutschland, I suppose. In order to fight better, I had my tail removed. They do it at the end of any law enforcement or military training. After all, the tail is easily grabbed, so if you get rid of it, you get rid of a potentially critical weakness.” I recalled how I’d grabbed Cards’ tail when she tried to run away from me back in that museum. That was a perfect example of why I had no tail, that no one could do that to me. Dust didn’t reply after that, just sort of buried her face in my neck. Before I was even out of the basement, I heard her let out a cute little snore.

As I reached the storefront, I recalled the stallion in the closet. He was a loose end, he could talk, had certainly heard me use Lightning Dust’s name. I couldn’t let him live. Pulling out my knife I crept to the door, trying not to wake Dust. She wouldn't approve of this, I had no doubts, but if she wanted a good story, she couldn’t have any survivors that’d question it.

“S-somepony here to help me?” the buck asked as I opened the closet door. His face was stained with tears, and he’d somehow managed to arrange his friends’ bodies into respectable positions.

“Yes,” I said, slashing his jugular, and hot blood spurted across my emotionless face. “You can call me Herr Sandmann, and I bring you a dream.” Just like that, the loose end was tied. Dust would get her story, her reward for helping and trusting me so far. She would be happy. I would be happy. Cards would probably be depressed because she’s kind of a Debbie Downer like that. Everything would work out in the end.

I looked at the buck’s dead, muscular body. It did look like they were all taking some sort of steroids, at least a little bit. I frowned hard. If they all took steroids, that meant they probably had tiny penises. On the other side of things, I had never once taken any performance enhancing or muscle-building drugs... Did that mean that, by means of me being utterly unremarkable, I now had a titanic unit by Equestrian standards? Something about that thought made my skin crawl, so I closed the closet and walked out the front door. I had the mental image of a mare seeing me naked and screaming in horror, “It’s a monster!” To which I replied, “No, it’s not—that’s how they’re supposed to look!” I shook my head to get rid of the image.

Then I remembered that everypony was naked here, and that I could actually check my theory just by looking down at them. However, after brutally killing them, checking the size of their... masculinity seemed decidedly like a dick move, no pun intended. Oh, and it was also creepy of me. Instead, I wiped the blood off my face, quietly thanked the stallion for his sacrifice which would improve Dust’s live, and left the zebras’ ghetto.

|— ☩ —|

“Île-de-Nippun,” I muttered to myself, staring at the strange characters upon a little wooden building. They looked like the children of what happened when hieroglyphics got laid by a tic-tac-toe board. Night sky above me, I made sure to hide my Iron Cross under my shirt. A garden with patches of bamboo flanked the little path leading up to the building, I noticed as a little pale-blue mare opened the sliding wooden door and stepped out.

She turned from the door, saw me, and gasped. Not only was she a bit short, her eyes were... different in shape than my own, a trait evolved to help in an environment far, far from here. There was no doubt in my mind—she was eine Nippönische. “Oh, hello there, stranger,” she said in a warm but vaguely cautious tone. “Can I help you?”

“Nippunais, correct?” I prodded, the sleeping pegasus on my bad moaning softly.

The little mare nodded. “That is what I am, correct. Are... are you looking for my father?”

Behind me, the dark streets of the Île-de-Nippun felt almost abandoned. Songnam was falling asleep, readying for the next day of partying. “I heard he was something of a sage, the one who knows the legends from a hundred years ago, and that this was place was a kind of museum. I found myself curious and, despite the hour, was wondering if I could learn anything of those legends. If not, that is fine.” I walked here for nothing! “I simply got lost and arrived here late.”

She relaxed slightly. “Well, Father is asleep, but—” she hesitated “—but I am his apprentice. I was just about to water the garden, since I forgot to earlier, but I suppose I know the stories as well as he.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ayame.” She bowed her head. “And yours?”

“Folks call me that government boy, so you can just call me Government Boy.” I smiled. “Oh, and ignore the lady on my back. She got tired on the way here, so I offered to carry her.” I approached Ayame.

“Yes, and so you wanted to hear the stories?”

I wanted to understand how you, the losing side of that war, see things. “How did your people get to Equestria? You’re clearly not natives.”

Ayame magically picked up a watering can, gesturing me to follow as she went about her gardens. “It was about a hundred years ago, longer than anypony here can remember,” she said, watering a bed of flowers. Does it help at all to water flowers at night? “We came from boats fleeing a great monster the likes of which is only perhaps rivaled by Nightmare Moon, like many other peoples who fled the East and came here during that great war. There were only mares and foals on our boats, because the great monster executed all males. They traversed past aquatic beasts, pirates, and the vast ocean before crashing into Equestria, where the sun herself took us in, and so have we been ever since.”

“Executed all the males?” I asked, following her down the little garden path.

She needed. “Our stallions were often the ones who fought the great evil, our mares staying home and keeping the nation running.” Ayame looked at me with an almost sad look. “You know, our people used to have an emperor.”

“What happened?” Ooh! I loved this part of history class.

“The great monster himself took the entire imperial family and brutally, publicly tortured them to death for so-called ‘crimes against life’.” She sighed. “The last emperor himself helped us flee. He—alongside what was left of the imperial army, mostly our great-grandfathers—defended us after the Night of Tears. They paid in blood to allow us to escape, for the Legion of the North does not know defeat, does not know mercy.”

I fought the urge to smile. “Night of Tears?”

Ayama shuddered slightly. “Our homeland of Nippun is set on a series of large islands. We had never known a foreign threat because of that. That is, until the great monster and his Legion of the North came. In a single night, they ended thousands of years of peace and prosperity. In a single night, the Legion of the North invaded Nippun.” She looked at me. “They slaughtered mothers and fathers without hesitation, enslaving any child they deemed young enough, killing those too old to serve them. The great monster rained liquid fire from the sky, burned our homes. With an impossible speed, they stormed across our home islands, murdering any they saw. The earth was stained red, the rivers drowned in blood. That was the Night of Tears, because our nation was butchered to death in but a night. Yet the great monster wasn’t fast enough to stop my ancestors from fleeing, though he was fast enough to slay our emperor and great-grandfathers.” Ayama shook her head and went back to watering her flowers. “There is a reason why the sun herself does not bother with the affairs of the East—because it is ruled by monsters that would only hurt good ponies.”

“You speak often of a great monster. Who or what was this?” I asked. Strange how they view us literally coming in and saving the world from Nippön’s tyrant monarchs whose armies raped and pillaged peoples on two different continents.

“We call him... Vikuta, the Devourer of Souls. His symbols are the black falcon and this strange black... cross. He was the greatest of monsters. If not for the mercy of Princess Celestia and the braveness of my ancestors, we would be dead and—why are you smiling?”

“Because you tell the story so well, Fräulein,” I purred, and she went pale. “And it’s not Vikuta, his name was, in Equestrian, King Viktor. Those from whom you’ve learned your legends were rather biased, you see,” I said, pulling out my Iron Cross. Her jaw dropped, her knees shaking. “And they weren’t the ‘Legion of the North’; our army is ‘die Mobile Infanterie’, the direct translation being the ‘Mobile Infantry’.”

“You-you-you-you’re one of them... Impossible!”

“Impossible? No. Highly implausible? Perhaps. See, I’m a Teutscher, and that means I’m the good guy. We slaughter those who would do evil, such as your ancestors. We came in, stopped evil, and also got rid of your super annoying lettering system. I mean, really, I’m all for cultural relativism and such, but even I have to admit that your system of writing was just laughably inferior to an alphabet. That’s why if you go to Nippön today, you’ll find only proper alphabetical characters. Also, lots of teutschen military bases, because even after pretty much purging half your nation’s population and destroying your entire religion, replacing it with our own faith, we still don’t trust you. Plus, naval bases in Nippön allow us to project our power throughout the South Seas.”

She gawked at me, lips quivering me. Ayame had already dropped her watering can.

“Nippön’s a nice place, really, even if the people there are still brutally, brutally terrified of us Teutschen. I mean, I can’t blame them. Some historians have compared what Viktor did to Nippön to spanking a baby with an axe.” I laughed at that mental image. “Still, it was the right thing to do.” I tipped my hat and hid my cross. “Dankeschön, Frau. Your recounting of your history was most fascinating. Oh, and you can’t prove I was here, no one will believe you, and if you tell anypony about me, they’ll think you’re crazy. After all, I am just a ghost.” I pulled out a golden coin and gave it to her. “For your troubles, Frau.” And with that, I stalked off into the night.

As I walked through the streets of the Île-de-Nippun, I found myself dwelling on how not even history was immune to bias. Oh King Viktor Pendergast, greatest of heroes, yet too the so-called Devourer of Souls. Then some drunken mare ran past me and screamed, “I have combined a wrench with a spade! I am a genius!” That was also when I remembered that because I hadn’t been mugged, I owed the voice in my head some money.

|— ☩ —|

I set Lightning Dust down on the hotel room bed. With deft care, I put her head on the pillows and covered her up. As I went to pull away from her, the mare groaned and reached out a hoof. I ignored it as I stepped out into the main room of the suite. The main room was composed of a little kitchen and a small den with a sad-looking couch on it. Aside from the entrance, there were three doorways in this room: one leading to the master hotel bedroom, one leading to a bathroom, and one leading to a smaller bedroom. This suite was clearly meant for a small family, and I supposed that’s why we’d been given it.

I walked over to the couch and poked my head out the window near it. Far below me, I could see a couple swimming in the illuminated pool, flirtatiously splashing one another. I could never see why anyone would do anything romantic in pools: at their cleanest, public pools were filled with piss. Yes, I love you, mare, thus I shall splash you with mildly-toxic, certainly filled-with-urine water! Love me! Stupid young couples in love... I wasn’t bitter or anything because my first foray into romance completely collapsed because I chose my country over the girl, I swear! She was even cool with it, if more than a little creeped out, when I covered my living room with pictures of dead and mutilated victims whenever I got too, too obsessed with solving a case, which was super understanding of her and a totally rare must-have in my line of work. But I didn’t have any problems about how my own actions lost me that relationship. So, no bitterness there. None.

Now, I was bitter over certain things relating to Weihnachten, the Hallowed Night, Teutschland’s precious near-end-of-year celebration. All I wanted for Weihnachten was a goddamn hug from Daddy, but no! Oh, Daddy took me to church that morning, but nothing else... In fact, that was it: as of right now, I was officially blaming my father for everything bad I did. Oh, I killed five people (or six, if Chausiku and Bigs counted as two people) tonight? That was because my father never quite knew how to deal with single fatherhood, not for, you know, any sensible reason.

That’s stupid. You’re stupid.

“Shut up, you’re not real,” I sighed as I reclined onto the couch. If Mom were alive today, what would she have said about all of this? Probably ‘Help! Help! Get me out of this coffin!’ And then she’d suffocate to death because coffins don’t have much air in them. Then she’d come back to life again, only to die again. And that’d happen for a few more times until she slowly went insane. Then I’d dig up her body and say, ‘Mom, I’ve come to—’ And then she’d bite my neck because her insanity turned her into a crazy zombie-lady. Four painful years of the rapy later and she’d be capable of talking at a four-year-old’s level, but she’d never get over the post-traumatic stress disorder and would keep biting me every time I got near her. Also, my father would somehow find a way to choke to death on a spoon, just like Celestia was probably doing right now.

I rubbed my eyes and face. “Wonder if Paladin Cards is doing alright,” I muttered, looking at my legs. They still stung, so I dragged myself to the floor, my back to the master bedroom as I removed my duster and took off my bloodied shirt and ripped shorts. The bandages were sullen with blood and specks of grime. I sat there in my underwear, wondering whether or not I should remove the bandages and replace them with fresh, new ones. Ultimately, I decided that I should, and in a few minutes I had.

“Shorts are ruined,” I muttered. After a thought, I pulled out the Voixson from earlier, set it on a little table, then collapsed down onto the couch. I just laid there as I thought about tonight. I had stopped dark magic that seemed important to the Duke, then learned that there were Nippönische in Equestria, ones that never were properly helped by the Reich. While the Nippönishe stuff probably wouldn’t ever help me, I liked knowing it. It made me feel like a right proper explorer. Now, all I had to do was figure out just what the hell Elkington was doing messing around with Miasmatischen Trübung.

Sighing, I hit play and let Shipment Order # 321 come to life. Maybe it’d help me do... something. I didn’t know. The Voixson crackled to life. “Yes, the request,” the recorded stallion said, and my ear perked up.

“You really want such dark charms?” Chausiku asked.

The stallion hesitated. “Yes, in the form of earrings. I need to be able to use them in case something goes wrong, so some sort of remote activation before they are removed by the wearer would be nice.”

“I could make so that if removed without your approval, they’d also go off.” Chausiku sounded confident to me. Not so confident now that I put your dead body into a sexually compromising position, huh?! “Something of a deadpony’s trigger, too. Once you activate it, it’ll be a timed charge. Unless you set it otherwise, the only thing to make it go off earlier would be if they were removed. Would that be satisfying to you, my friend?”

“Yes, just so long as they’ll help me.”

“Don’t worry,” Chausiku chuckled, “it’ll be just as effective as holding a sword to the mare’s neck. I hope that you get this evil mare and show her what for.”

The stallion nervously chuckled back. “Yes, for we must do our part to fight the good fight.” The recording whirred to death.

I sat there for a few seconds. I sat up, I looked at the Voixson, my ear twitched, and a little sense of horror welled up in my gut. That voice... it had to be Social Grace’s voice. Those earrings he wanted must have been meant for Cards, one way or the other. Of course, because no one could possibly like Cards, she was too... Cards-y. While it raised questions such as “Were they meant for Cards specifically, or just for any girl he needed?” I figured it was the second one, since we hadn’t been in Songnam long enough to attract any real attention. Social Grace had to be evil, and that meant one thing and one thing only, a meaning that demanded vengeance.

The waffles had lied to me!

Author's Note

Footnote:

Sorry this chapter is so long. It caught a case of chapter cancer, where it didn’t want to end until it was ready. Sorry. Funny thing is, I was gone for three days this week, and yet this chapter is still somehow the longest by far.

Oh, wait. I made a level-up joke in here somewhere. Uh...

New Perk Added: Stealth (Rank 2) — Bravery and chivalrous combat are for losers and little girls! You are now twenty-five percent harder to detect when sneaking, because you’re a coward! (Your father could never love a coward!)

Screw it. I’m just gonna make a level up joke every chapter ending, because making fun of other stories in the fandom is something I can only do in the footnotes. Plus, it’ll be fun trying to create strange and funny perks!

Chapter 11 — Knights

Chapter 11: Knights

“Isn’t there... somepony else who could... take over the jousting demonstration with you?”

“Well, this is fantastic,” I grumbled, looking up at the large castle-like building before me. By ‘castle-like’, I meant that it was built to look just like a small castle, and built by somepony with poor imagination. It had a little moat all around it, a drawbridge, faux turrets and ramparts, torches, and an assortment of random banners hanging on the exterior walls. About as stereotypical as could be imagined.

The sign for the place advertised it as “Modern Times Dinner & Tournament.” I really, really hoped that I’d go in and find bloody gladiatorial combat in the building’s advertised arena, but I knew better. The little brochure about it that I’d nicked from the Ritz’s front lobby advertised it a dinner theater featuring “the best in modern knightly combat—sword-fighting, jousting, animals!” Worst of all, in little print on the back and bottom it read “Nopony and no beast harmed during the show.” That pretty much ruined my hopes of bloodsport. It did, however, advertise “A feast for a king! Our four-course meal will be sure to satisfy even the hungriest knights.” But to my utter horror, the entire menu was vegetarian!

Earlier this night when I left my hotel suite, snuck into the kitchen, and set fire to the hotel’s entire stock of waffles—thus achieving my syrupy vengeance—I hadn’t seen a single article of meat. It was almost as if Equestrians didn’t consume the flesh of the dead. But that idea was nuts. Songnam must’ve just been one of those places.

Modern Times was in this fancy little corner of Songnam, and, according to the note Cards left Dust, Social Grace had taken the deputy mare here as the last part of their decidedly lavish date. Grace had apparently been keen on trying to impress Cards with his family’s wealth, because it really showed on the night’s plans. Hell, a single adult ticket for Modern Times alone cost some sixty Bits before tax, and I had no idea whether or not that was a good deal. So... for all I knew, Grace was a cheapskate. I really needed to learn the value of Equestrian currency in relation to Teutschland’s own Marken. But that was for a later time, because I had forged a confederacy with Cards, a confederacy that was right now sucking on the chocolatey nipple of time if I didn’t save her.

The listing for today’s shows noted that there was a show going on right now, and they didn’t sell tickets this late into the show. I looked at the large banner strung above the door which gave tonight’s date. So I did the only reasonable thing a perfectly law-abiding normal pony would do: I went around to the back and tried to sneak in through the performer’s backstage. All around, it was designed like the castle it wanted to pretend it was, down to the backdoor with the lone, armored, and bored-looking guard standing at it.

“Pardon me, good lady,” I said, trotting up to her. Strange that a mare is the lone guard here. I expected a stallion or two.

The guard looked at me. There was a surgical scar on her gray cheek, I noticed. “Hmm? What do you want? This ain’t the entrance; that’s ’round front.”

“Oh, no. I’m no patron, Miss,” I said with a smile. With hoof raised for time, I pretended to fumble with my waist, then shakily pulled out my sword. The weapon was sharp and had a pointy end, which basically meant it was good enough for me. “This is for one of the actors. They needed it, and I ran all the way here to deliver it.” You’re not winded enough to pass that lie off.

“Don’t tell me somepony actually forgot their sword again,” she groaned, facehoofing.

I shrugged. “They don’t pay me enough to really care.”

She snickered, and opened the door. “Yeah, I hear that. Look, just run on in and give it to that idiot.”

“Thank you, Ma’am,” I said, sheathing the blade and scampering in.

“See ya around,” she said with a wink before closing the door.

I rubbed my forehead. Can’t believe that worked. You are a lucky pony. I looked around the little backstage area, trying to figure out where to go. The waiters’ place or the kitchen would probably lead me to the arena’s seating, I figured as I walked through the temperature-cool halls. There was a little sign on the wall, and I blinked at it.

← Wenches

Knights →

↑ Office ↑

“Wenches...” I mumbled. “The hell does that mean in this context?” I went right to the knights. The place was a little corridor with dressing room-like places labeled for various colors, Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Black & White, and Red & Yellow. Clearly, the pony who’d named them all was the most creative pony who ever lived.

A tall green buck ambled into the Black & White room, chugging down a bottle of Juggernog. He took a heavy swig as he surveyed the dressing room. “Shee-it,” he groaned, his armored plating jostling. Well, it was partially armor, partially just soft padding. It was clearly just meant to look like medieval gear, and it was certainly the polar opposite of teutschen armor.

“Pardon me, sir,” I prodded, walking up behind him.

He shot me a ticked-off look. “What?”

“Are you the Black & White knight?”

“Ayep. What of it?”

“What are you doing here, sir?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Brief recess as they do some performance stuff outside. Need to find a picture of a girl. I selected her already, though I forgot what she looked like, and I got paid a bit on the side to select her as the maiden I dedicate the combat to. Hoping to win tonight.” He smiled, rubbing the back of his head. “Why the hell did I just tell you that?”

I noticed the wingéd helmet hanging via strap from his shoulders. The symbol on his breastplate was a golden eagle of some description. “Say, do you always wear your helmet during performances? Like, nopony knows your face?”

The stallion nodded. “I guess so. But look, this ain’t the time for q—” I slugged him in the nose, and he fell to the ground, nostrils bleeding. Quickly, I dragged the body into the room and shut the door.

A few moments later and the knight was naked, tied up, gagged, and firmly shoved into a closet. It took a little work to fit into it, but I managed to wear his armor and helmet, even equip his sword and wear his wooden shield. While the sword was made of metal, it was really dull, probably done on purpose.

I approached the dressing room’s vanity and paused. There was a little picture of Cards on it; to help identify the black-and-white photo, somepony had circled her face with red marker and written “This one” by it. So, Social Grace had bribed this knight into fighting for Cards’ honor? What honor? Kicking ponies in the groin as she did immediately disqualified you from the notion of honor. But before I could wonder too hard, someone knocked on the door.

“Come on, you’re gonna be late!” a mare hissed from outside. Tucking Cards’ photo into a pocket, I trotted outside. The little yellow mare grabbed my hoof and pulled me down the hall. “Dammit, I am not gonna be your Celestiadamned squire if you keep this shit up. This job is dumb enough as is,” she growled. I kept my mouth silent as she led me through the torchlit hallways. She glanced back at me. “Oh, what’s that? No snarky comeback? Good. Maybe you’re finally learning some damn manners.” At last, we arrived at a thick wooden door.

Through my wingéd helmet, I peered at the door, then at the mare. “Well, go on, then,” she said. I made to move for the door, but then the mare rose herself up and pecked my armored cheek. With a wistful sigh, she mumbled, “You’re lucky I love you.” I hesitated, and she rolled her eyes. Smacking my armored haunches, she commanded, “Go on out there and give ’em hell, cowboy!”

I went through the door and came out in a dimly lit room with a dirt floor. A buck galloped up to me with a wooden lance. “There you are!” he said, equipping me with the flimsy weapon. “Go on out there!” The buck pointed me towards a heavy black curtain on the far side of the room.

With a nod, I trotted through the curtains. I blinked as a crowd roared with approval at me. Stretching out around me was a small, entirely indoor hippodrome. Ponies sat all around the seating, each row of chairs resting neatly behind a long, slender wooden table. Colored lights illuminated six different parts of the hippodrome, parts whose top wall was decorated with a noble houses’ symbol. There were five armored ponies standing in the hippodrome, each set before an illuminated row of seats, save for area lit up black and white. I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out where to trot off to.

“Ah!” a stallion’s soft voice boomed out from above. Jerking my head back, I saw a little balcony above where I’d entered where a stallion and a fair mare sat in little thrones. “Last but not least, the black and white knight is ready!” The crowd roared as I arrived at my post. “My good nobles,” the stallion went on, “the time for the tournament is nigh. Tonight, we shall see who amongst our brave knights is mightiest. And as your King, I say—” He choked as a hoof emerged from a little set of curtains behind the thrones. “Uh...”

Then a white stallion wearing a pristine black suit emerged, taking a position next to the so-called king. He gazed out and around the hippodrome. There was a fiery quality to his amber eyes as they looked straight into me. The smile on his face said at once ‘I’m having fun’ and ‘I run this show’ in the most inviting yet subtly unnerving way possible, like some sort of BDSM-obsessed lion tamer.

“Now, now, children,” the stallion said in a silky voice that I instantly recognized, “how are we all doing?” My legs stung as I tried to stop to my trepidations, the eager pounding of heart making the cuts bleed. God, they more than likely needed stitches. “Well, I was just in the neighborhood, my king, and thought y’all could use a bit of spice in your lives.” He stepped out to the front of the balcony. After taking a bow, he announced, “It is I, your friendly neighborhood Duke Elkington, the Lord of Marcia and Ruler of Songnam, at your service. Pleased to meet you.”

The entire hippodrome roared with approval. They stomped their hooves, screamed, and cheered. Even my fellow knights exchanged approving nods. He’s a bastard! Don’t approve of him. I glanced over my shoulder to the Black & White rows and saw them. Social Grace and Cards were sitting in the front, the mare wearing a blue dress and... earrings, two on the same ear. Then it hit me, and the blow knocked the wind out of me.

I had a shot at interrogating Duke Elkington. I had a shot at saving Cards. If all went according to plan, I had to win this little tournament to get anywhere. The universe was arbitrary and contrived, so I put down twenty Marken on the chances being mutually exclusive. So, if given the choice, would I get Elkington, or would I save Cards?

Also, dammit—everything was getting all serious and boring again. I thought about kittens covered in spikes, doused in liquid fire, then forcibly taught how to tapdance to sexually provocative music. That cheered me up. In fact, if I could randomly kill any animal, I’d kill me some dolphins, because dolphins were assholes. Seriously, dolphin males often killed baby dolphins for fun, and dolphins thoroughly enjoyed torturing fellow marine mammals to death. Dolphins were actually terrible creatures.

Elkington magically grabbed the faux crown of the acting king and put it on his own black mane-topped head. “Coup d’état, friend,” he said with a shrug to him. “Thanks for the crown, but this kingdom today is King Elkington’s. Wanna be the heir apparent? I’ll wrestle you for it.” The crowd collectively chuckled.

Or maybe I should follow Elkington home, dress up as a sexy clown, and scare the hell out of him in his sleep.

Sexy clowns exist?

We’ll find a way...

The old king laughed heartily. “Welcome, Du—I mean, King Elkington.”

“That’s right, children! See, I was just over in my fortress of winning when a little birdie urged me to come on down here and see the brave knights of the realm duke it out for our amusement. Nothing wrong there, is it? I see fun, I want it, yeah?” The crowd cheered. “That’s how we do here in Song City! Now then, children, tonight’s fight is going entirely off the rails. Who will win? Who knows! Who wants to fight first?”

I rose my hoof and waved it around. Elkington looked at me and smiled a charming, winning smile that he’d probably been forced to practice since he was a foal. “Black and white knight, Sir Readynoble!” Wow. My name is stupid. Why couldn’t I have impersonated a cooler knight? “Any others? Yes, you, Sir Iron Pride!” The red knight was raising his hoof. Dammit, I want his name! Ponies came out from behind the dark curtain I’d entered from, carrying what looked like chest-high chess pieces. They arranged them through the center of the hippodrome, placing them down in the dirt until they formed a line. A moment later and they had roped them together so that they formed a jousting fence. “My brave bucks, take your places!”

Iron Pride trotted over to the far side of the trace and readied himself. Wondering if there was any chance I could actually kill Iron Pride with a shoestring, I trotted up to the opposite side. I looked over at Cards, the smile on her face, her date smiling dreamily at her. I could imagine easily that he was wondering how he’d hurt her, and not at all about how I was going to castrate him with my bare hooves.

Wait. I don’t know how to joust, I thought, fiddling with the wooden lance and trying to get it in front of me. In Teutschland, honorable knightly combat was not something they ever taught you. However, we loved fighting honorable enemies—it meant our dirty, utterly “dishonorable” tactics would be all the more effective. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure how to fight dirty when jousting.

Iron Pride, a suitably red-coated buck without a helmet, smiled and waved at the red rows. He pulled a red rose out of... somewhere and put it in his mouth, wiggling his brows at the young mares in the audience. A real Prince Charming was he.

“Ready?” Elkington asked, wearing an eager grin on his face that I just wanted to introduce to sandpaper. Or a sand crane. Or a sand crane made of sandpaper. If only I knew origami! “Then on your marks, children, ready your lances...” I battled the lance to get it set and ready. This is why I wasn’t cavalry back home; I’d never make it as a member of the Mobilen Flugwaffe. “Charge!”

Red knight charged, and Black and White imitated. But my lance had apparently gained sentience and become a conscientious objector to violence. Needless to say, his lance had no such moral compunctions and, midway down the joust, impacted me right in the chest. The force was hard, heavy, and his lance shattered into so many splinters of wood like no real lance would. It was enough to tumble me onto the dirt, but I was otherwise unharmed. I found myself glad for the heavy armor as I scrambled to my feet.

A smile on his face, Iron Pride took out his sword and just sashayed towards me like he’d already won. Sadly for him, I was up and reaching for my own sword, the crowd cheering. “Readynoble, you can do it!” some cried. “Iron Pride, kick his flank!” others demanded.

“Let’s give them a show, shall we?” Iron Pride said in a surprisingly amicable tone. “When I win, you’ll owe me a beer. Beat me, I’ll buy you two.” It was in that moment that I remembered that I was not fighting to the death; this was a show, an act, actors dueling actors for fans. My more underhanded battle plans melted away as a smile formed on my lips. I nodded, raising my sword and shield.

Dramatic orchestral music played from somewhere off, probably more speakers. Iron Pride raised his sword and charged. With a deft motion I sidestepped and tripped him. His face slammed into the ground, and he came back up spitting up dirt. Now he was gritting his teeth. “Oh, just for that...” He raised his sword and charged.

He was slow, clunky, lacking agility. Iron Pride was an actor, not a pony who had to use his sword for killing every day. Rolling my eyes, I jerked my blade up and parried, showering us both with sparks. That’s when I noticed there was flint on the edges of our swords. It was a cool effect, I admit, but not good for any real swordplay.

Swing, parry, clash of blades, shield block. It was actually sort of funny how bad he was at this. So with a smile on my face, I practically dropped to the ground before ramming him in the chest from below. Grappling him, I pushed him onto his back. He gasped as he hit the ground, and I jumped off. The crowd roared with approval, even Duke Elkington joined in on the fun.

Iron Pride stumbled to a stand. He ran a hoof through his green mane, smiling at me. “You’ve gotten better!” he chuckled. No, you just suck. He charged at me, sword raised.

With a melodramatic yawn, I blocked his attack. Then I stabbed at the back of his leg. The good sport he was, he threw himself to the ground. Apparently, even without a script, there were some things you just did to make it look better. I rose my sword to the crowd. “Are you not entertained?!” I demanded, and they roared back at me. Don’t speak; they might realize you’re not who you’re pretending to be. Plus, they might notice you’re a little taller than him. “Then let me entertain you—does he live, or does he fall?” Fine, don’t listen to me.

“Finish him!” “Win!” “Off with his head!” “Hooves down!” came voices in the crowd.

I looked to Duke Elkington. “Ungula versa,” he said, his voice coming from the speakers. He pointed his hoof down.

“So be it,” I muttered, and went to Iron Pride. He made a show of trying to fight back, but being grounded, I just smacked his weapon aside. I stabbed down into his chest. Well, it bounced off his armor, but it looked cool. He feigned death as I pointed my sword up and roared a cheer. In that moment it was like I was standing in the ancient Kolosseum, it was four thousand years ago, and only so many years before the great Prophet emerged. Elkington was the ancient Imperator, his golden wreath shimmering in the sunlight. And I was a half-naked slave forced to either fight or work to death, and so I fought for the chance to earn my freedom. Actually, no, that sucked, and that train of thought collapsed. I wasn’t anypony’s slave!

My demented fantasy was so rudely destroyed when Red’s squires came out and helped Iron Pride to his hooves. “Nice work out there!” he chuckled to me, still trying to look dead as the squires carried him away.

“And so Sir Readynoble wins this fight!” Elkington laughed. “Good show, no?”

I took a place next to where the other knights had gathered, all camped out at the far end of the hippodrome. I cast a quick glance at Cards, then to Elkington. Then the next two knights got up to fight. Green won. Then another round of fighting. Red and Yellow carried the day. Then Green fought Red and Yellow, and Green was victorious again. I really didn’t care, just wanted to either save Cards or get Elkington, then go to bed. Or the hospital. Stupid legs, stupid hole in my wrist—they’d better not get infected...

Spoiler: they’re so getting infected.

Shut up. I shook my head. Talking to myself was bad, bad, bad.

Her a little romp of celebration, Green—I hadn’t bothered to learn her name—trotted up to me and smiled. “Doing good, Readynoble?” she asked, and I shrugged. “Oh, suddenly stoic? That’s cool with me.” I looked at her and noticed slight signs of Nippönischen blood in her facial features. The various squires disbanded the jousting line markers.

Then a stallion in light armor trotted through the show curtain on the far side of the hippodrome. His squire carried a banner depicting a... Teutschfalke? The hell? He reached the middle of the hippodrome before he turned around to face Elkington. “Hail to thee, King Elkington,” he said, his voice also coming out of the speakers. I suddenly remembered how badly I wanted to hack into Songnam’s speaker system and blast some proper music.

“Ah, I see you have returned, strange noble from a faraway land,” Elkington replied in an authoritative voice.

“What an oddly complete summary of who I am,” Falcon Flag commented. If he had a name, it was now Falcon Flag. “But I am not here for this... tournament,” he spat. “No, I come now to tell you of why I have come, as well as bearing gifts from the Northern King.”

“The Northern King,” Elkington said flatly, cocking a brow. The crowd was utterly silent, probably because they were eating food. “What business has he here, I ask.”

“Lord Vaikuta knows of your realm’s status,” he said darkly. Vaikuta? Northern King? Well, ten guesses what inspired those, and the first nine don’t count. Hello, King Viktor. “And so he would make thee a proposition. The Dark Lord’s own Legion thirsts for blood, and thine innocent lands are so rich and tender and... innocent.” If I were evil, I’d make my evil title ‘The All Around Swell Guy’. Less cliché, less stupid. “So, here is our proposition: the hoof of your daughter in marriage to the Dark Lord, a union of our two kingdoms!”

The crowd gasped. Point one: that’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion in a feudal realm... does that also mean a lord’s daughter is his property in Equestria, or is this just drama? And point two: Teutschland does not work like that! We are not feudal!

Elkington looked over to the mare sitting in the throne. I’d actually forgotten she was there. “My dearest daughter, fairest maiden in the land, what would you make of this?”

“Of course,” Falcon Flag went on, “to deny would mean war between our two realms. And against the Legion of the North cannot you survive.”

Elkington slammed a hoof down. “I will not be threatened in my own court! How dare you!”

Sighing, I let the two verbally battle it out, the crowd hanging on their every word. Cards looked fine. Social Grace looked like a perfect target. Duke Elkington looked as charming as could be, but had all the appeal to me of a masturbatory sock. And I’d be so happy to take him to the cleaners myself. Note to self: ask someone why socks are fetish fuel for Equestrians. That’s a mystery that must be solved.

There was a single main patron entrance and exit to the hippodrome, which would be my main avenue of escape. So too were there a few entrances that were clearly for the mares and bucks bringing out the food and drinks. Right, so the escape was basically planned out. Now the question was, How the hell do I save Cards? Or get Elkington, even.

Apparently during the course of my internal musings, that not-Teutscher went off and it was just the green knight and I. Elkington, rubbed his head. “OoooOOoooh, look at me, I’m a fancy pants-y pansy pony from the North,” he said in a mocking tone, accompanied by a little twirling dance. The crowd exploded in laughter. “If our beloved Maîtresse du Soleil were here now...” He shook his head. “You two, ye knights of the realm—Dame Cherry Berry and Sir Readynoble.” Wow. ‘Cherry Berry’? And here I thought my real name was stupid... “We won’t let threats from the North stop our proud feast, shall we?” The crowd voiced its approval for more fighting. “Then let us continue, my dear children!”

The squires came out and again set up the jousting line in the center of the hippodrome. Cherry Berry gave me a wink. “Your ass is mine, hotshot.”

“You hitting on me?” I replied, trying my best to imitate Readynoble’s voice. Thankfully, the wingéd helmet muffled my voice, as it probably did for Readynoble himself, so my voice wasn’t all too defined.

She snickered and went off to the far side of the hippodrome.After a squire helped attach a new lance ono my armor, I went to my side. Jousting! Second match, same as the first, and I was soon lying on the dirt with splintered bits of lance all over my body. God, I really hoped someone in the audience got a splinter from that, the splinter wound got infected, and they died horribly of gangrene.

The squires came and removed the chess pieces, leaving the hippodrome just for the Dame and I. Cherry Berry strode over towards me, her sword clenched firmly in her earther jaws. Groaning, I ambled to my hooves and pulled out my sword. “Let’s rock,” she said, and charged.

“’N’ roll,” I replied, dropping down and ramming her chest with my shoulder. The blow knocked the wind out of her. A shield bash to her face later and I’d bet she was glad she was wearing a mouthguard, but she held onto her sword. The crowd was happy, I was happy, Cards seemed amused, even Social Grace seemed pleased with everything, the bastard. I looked over at Duke Elkington, a knot in my stomach wondering how I could get close enough to him.

Somehow, the first non-clown-related solution that came to my mind involved asking Cards if she was lactating. And if not, the plan then demanded that Dust and I work to trick Cards’ body into doing so. The plan ended with yogurt and Cards crying in the corner, so... how did this help me fight Duke Elkington—

The crowd cheered as two hooves introduced themselves so vigorously to my head that, from the safety of being flat on my ass, I wondered if I’d broken my whole freakin’ face. I was not glad that I had a mouthguard at all, mostly because I didn’t have one at all. Oh, hey, look! Little Lightning Dusts were flying around my head. Wait, no, hallucinations of naked girls flying around your head was generally a bad thing. “There a the rapist in the house?” I muttered, watching Cherry Berry panting.

She smiled like the Devil as she watched me. “So, you wanna play rough, hotshot?” the mare asked. She stepped towards me and lowered her voice. “Then let’s play.” When a girl can hit you like that, it made you wonder just who was the genius who ever denied girls the ability to serve in the army. Good ol’ King László, de-sexually-segregating the Mobile Infantry since 1974!

With a supreme effort, the Lightning Dusts still flying around my head, I ambled back up. I swatted away the little pegasi with a hoof just as Cherry Berry swung her sword. Hell no, I wasn’t taking any more Scheiße from a girl named “Cherry Berry”. If she beat me, I’d have to give up my right to being a Mann.

I rolled to the side and affixed her a glare so hard you’d think I was trying to use my super secret heat vision. (I didn’t have heat vision.) “Du Lappen! It. Is. ON.”

In real life, sword-fighting wasn’t always as glamorous or as awesome as they make it out to be. Truth was, if the combatants have a good idea about dodging, sword-fighting turns into less of combat and more into so much awkward flailing. And if I were to describe our fight, it’d be “awkward flailing”. Embarrassing, silly, nopony really touching each other, and filled with grunts—like really depressing intercourse!

“Fuck it,” she spat, sweating dripping from her forehead. She sheathed her sword and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Juggernog. “Time to finish this baby,” Cherry Berry said, then chugged the bottle dry.

“Wait. You were drinking that?”

“Yeah,” the mare snickered. “Guess I need the rest of it. You’re getting good, hotshot!” She bristled, shivered, shook, then smiled wide at me. Stupid uncontrolled substances! A squire came up and took the glass bottle from her, and Cherry Berry grabbed her sword. “Come on,” she laughed through the sword in her maw, “hit me!”

“Not taking that bait,” I said calmly.

“Okay!” she chirped, and quickly slugged me in the face

I stumbled back in surprise, dropping my sword. “Ow, my dick!” Stupid fake armor! But... Juggernog is.... holy hell, that’s a powerful drug. No wonder she bucked me so hard little Dusts appeared! “You punched me right in the face-dick!” Great, now I’m having trouble figuring out where male genitals are located.

She dashed to my side and bucked me so hard that I was pretty sure I’d just popped a lung. This wasn’t just acting anymore, was it? “I’ll teach you a lesson for leaving me for that slut!”

Oh. Great. Readynoble is one of those guys, and Cherry Berry is his... Why did I have to impersonate this stupid knight?! She dove at me, but I still had a shield and the presence of mind to use it. Even through the shield, I felt the blow through my whole arm. The crowd roared with approval as my hoof and her nose lovingly embraced each other as hard as they could. Her face didn’t love my hoof, and I could feel blood leaking through the bandages on my wrist, but at least she was forced to drop her sword.

Cherry Berry smiled at me. “Damn, hotshot, you hit like a freight train. You been workin’ out? All your nights with that whore?”

I was just about to tell her not to say words like “whore” and “slut” because they demeaned all females and that she had no right to judge anyone else for their sexual habits, but then she ducked to my side and kicked me right above the left knee. With a scream, the leg went numb, and she punched it hard for good measure. There wasn’t enough leg armor! I tumbled to the side and to the ground, feeling the tears in my flesh bleeding out through the bandages.

The mare stepped on top of me, a decidedly evil smile on her face. “Payback’s a vindictive bitch, and, hey! So am I.” I twitched, trying to get feeling back into my leg. She giggled like a filly in a candy shop. “I just dead legged you, silly!” Cherry Berry lowered her face to mine and whispered, “That means you’ll be needing crutches for the next few days! Ooh, and lots and lots of pain!” She clopped her hooves together. “Isn’t this exciting? Now you only have four working legs to stomp on a girl’s heart with, like a normal pony.” Was that a penis joke? “So, how does it feel, hotshot?”

“I’m a peachy as can be, love,” I lied. From the groaning tone in my voice, I was either in some extreme pain or extremely constipated. And it wasn’t the latter.

She shook a hoof in the air, laughing as the crowd cheered for her victory. Really, I didn’t need to win; I didn’t even know why I was out here. What was my plan, exactly? But this Miststück had just made this personal. I grabbed her arms and spread them apart; she fell on top of me, allowing me to headbutt her before rolling over and putting her onto her own back. Going to get a headache.

Cherry Berry gasped as I slugged her in the jaw. But with a blow to my chest, she took hold of action. She rolled to her feet, and I tried to imitate but failed when my left leg remembered how to feel, and, like an Equestrian to socks, had a sexual fetish for pain. I nearly collapsed to the ground; she nearly collapsed my windpipe with a swift blow. A crippled limb, bleeding legs and wrist, armor way too heavy, and up against a chick high on combat drugs, a smart pony would just give up. A stupid pony jabbed the point of his hoof into the bridge of the drugged mare’s nose. Needless to say, I was not very clever that day.

It hurt to punch her. It hurt to headbutt her. It felt so geil when she stumbled back with a bloody nose. It didn’t feel so good to limp after her, blood soaking my bandages. Chivalrous, knightly combat was one thing, but here in the dirt and grime, fighting with bare hooves, I knew the advantage was mine. Just like versus Glasses, I knew that real fighting like this didn’t last for more than a few seconds on average; a few seconds was all you needed to kill; ponies were, when you got down to it, surprisingly weak, flimsy, and breakable. But I didn’t want to kill her, just make her hurt.

She swung; I blocked with a hoof. Another try, same result. Third try, no difference. The definition of insanity... I mused, stabbing the point of my hoof just below her jaw. Cherry Berry gasped, and the crowd whooped and hollered. “I’m on Juggernog,” she coughed, “how the hell are you—”

I grabbed her face and, twisting her whole body against mine, slammed her head into the ground. “Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof,” I chuckled darkly. In just a few more hoofy dates with her face, I’d broken a cheek, given two black eyes, concussed her, made her bleed, made her hurt; more importantly, the acts had made my hooves hurt. It was like her bones were denser and harder than a pony’s should be. Juggernog was one hell of a drug and it needed its list of ingredients published.

Sweat dripping off my forehead, I stood up over her body, trying to hide my limp. I rose a bloody hoof into the air and screamed, “You have been entertained!” The crowd roared with delight and excitement, cheering the name of my colors. Black & White, again and again. On the other hoof, the squires standing around the hippodrome looked shocked and appalled. They certainly must have known what had happened down on the field, the audience probably didn’t.

“What... are... you?” Dame Cherry Berry asked, barely audible over the stamping of hooves and cheers.

I looked down at her and said, “Ich bin ein Mann aus Stahl.” I’m more like an abused househusband standing up to his substance-abusing wife, come to think. Squires rushed up to carry Cherry Berry off the battlefield. I saw Cards standing up in her row, furiously applauding alongside her date. A black and white squire, not that one mare, came up and gave me a flower. “For that mare up there, right?” I asked, and she nodded.

“You know the drill. Give her the gift, take the photo, and get ready for the next round,” she said.

“Next round?”

“We still gotta fight that evil dude from the North, plus his two squires. Did Berry hit you so hard you caught amnesia?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out just yet,” I muttered, and hobbled over where Cards and Social Grace were. My dead leg wouldn’t properly bend at the knee. I swore under my breath as I tried to hide the rather obvious limp for all I could, ignoring the blistering pain and the wet feeling of blood. When I got to the hippodrome wall, that nice squire helped boost me up over the wall.

I arrived just in front of the first raw table, Cards eyeing with a giggly, girlish glee. It was almost like I hadn’t murdered her best and only friend a little over twenty-four ago. She didn’t look down at the blood on my legs or hooves, just at my clean breastplate and helmet. I could see some of the waiters or whatnot coming down, one of them with a holding a large camera .

I gestured for Cards to come up to me. She glanced at Grace, then skipped up to me. I knelt down and gave her the rose; she grabbed it and put it behind her ear. Trying not to alarm her, I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pointed to the pony coming up with the camera.

“Lady Cards?” I asked her in a hushed tone, trying to hide my voice. Why are you disguising your voice?

She looked at me, sparkles in her eyes. “You know my name?”

I nodded. She looked so happy on her date, the little twinkle in her eyes. “I have a message from a friend.” Then, like being told by your lover that he secretly had herpes and he caught it from a lesbian with tentacled genitalia because he’s into the weird stuff, it all came crashing down. “Dust is unconscious, that Government Boy is half dead, and Social Grace is trying to kill you.” The ponies got here and, with their large camera with its huge flash disk, took our picture. “Don’t take off the earrings, because if you do, you’ll die. Seriously.” Her expression collasped into a well of blank horror.

I contemplated doing something violent to Social Grace while his guard was down, but that probably wouldn’t end well for me, I figured. With Elkington here, I was sure Songnam Security was skulking around the place.

In any case, I wasn’t pulling any stunts with my dead leg. I really hoped Cherry Berry was hospitalized, because I wasn’t going to wear me no crutches. “Duke Elkington,” I imagined myself saying, hobbling into his throne room on crutches, “I’ve come to stop your reign of evil! Just-just sit there. My leg isn’t what it used to be, okay? So, hey! You wouldn’t hit a cripple, would you? Because a cripple would totally hit you!” It wasn’t a very proud fantasy.

After managing to get myself back into the hippodrome, I looked to the little curtain where I came in from. Pathetically limping along the wall, I made my way for it. My bags were still in the Black & White dressing room, because it was sort of conspicuous to carry them out here with me. I needed a Muntermacher injected directly into the swelling muscled above my knee, the only shot I had at un-crippling the limb before the wound really set in and went beyond healing serums.

“A most... brutal show, wouldn’t you say, children?” Elkington remarked, and the crowd all agreed. I just limped along, thinking of all the ways it was possible to make a duke cry ‘Mommy!’ A bag of crushed glass and a bottle of crushed hopes and dreams came to mind quickly. “Another round of applause for our bravest of knights, Sir—”

“Stop!” a mare screamed at the top of her lungs as I was almost home free. Everything fell silent as a little yellow mare came out from the curtain, a bruised green buck leaning against her shoulder. Scheiße. “Stop this farce!” She pointed at me. “This buck is an imposter—the real Sir Readynoble is right here!” The crowd gasped.

“Hmm, the plot thickens,” Elkington mused aloud. “You there,” he said to me, “who are you if not Sir Readynoble?”

Does he think this is a part of the show? Roll with it! I fiddled with my helmet enough where I could speak clearly but not reveal my face. More drama that way. “I am but a poor peasant pony from the fields.”

“Wait, no!” the mare yelled, but her voice was drowned out over that of Elkington.

“Ah, a peasant defeated all our knights?”

“Blue blood is no sign of finesse or skill.” Do not declare the revolution to be at hand. That’d probably break this illusion. “In truth, I am no mere Equestrian.” Elkington leaned towards me, a clearly interested look on his face. I cleared my throat, deepening my voice and slipping out of ‘Equestrian accent’ mode. “I am from ze Kingdom of ze Nors, mein Herr, und I have come to prove myself before ze crown of zis lahnt.” God, that accent is stupid. Your own countrymen wouldn’t possibly speak Equestrian with that dumb accent, right?

“You are a pony of the North?” He visibly fought to keep down a smile, pretending to be serious.

“Zis is vat I have said, ja?”

“Don’t listen to him! He’s a crook! A monster!” the mare continued to yell, but she was utterly ignored.

The Duke looked out over the crowd. “What do the good children of my fair country think?” The crowd’s response was mixed, some cheers, some boos, and Cards looking horrified at Grace. “Looks like folks know what to make of you. So, what business have you here, brave buck?”

“I have come...” I paused. Why was I in Equestria? Really, why was I here? To kill Elkington? No, that’s not why I really came. To see Celestia? No, that wasn’t right; that was more of an afterthought. To teach everypony the meaning of love by introducing them to other, non-sock-related sexual fetishes? That was too good for these damn Solari. I... didn’t really know, did I? You’d think that after spending years of my life just going east and reaching this fairy tale kingdom, this Märchenreich, I’d know why I’d come, but no.

So I just said the only thing that made any sense to me anymore “...to battle evil, to bring light vhere vonce zere vas only darkness, to protect ze freedom of every pony... und to fight ze good fight. Vhat better vay to do zis zan to prove myself before ze lords of ze realm, ja? ” This accent makes me feel sick. It’s so... horrible. To remind me that I was totally badass at speaking Equestrian, I muttered under my breath, “Squirrel.”

A part of me was already planning my vengeance for Equestria. See, there was this one board game I loved to play that involved leading armies around and conquering stuff and other awesome military stuff, plus internal politics, but whatever. I might have even had the game and pieces in my bag. Point being: I was already planning to brutally, brutally enslave Equestria and teach them all to have a fetish for mares in stockings and corsets and thongs, like normal ponies were into. So long as the dice were in my favor, Equestria was nothing compared to whatever historically anachronistic nation I chose to play as.

Elkington nodded. “Well then, all who are willing to fight the good fight are welcomed in the court of—” he chuckled “—King Elkington. I don’t suppose you’ve had a meal yet this night, have you?”

“Zat have I not, mein Herr,” I admitted, not untruthfully.

“Would you care to dine in my good old castle? Those who fight the good fight are like brothers to me.”

Wait. Is he hitting on me? And hitting on me in a way that suggests I’m his brother? So he’s incestously hitting on me, then? Oh god! “Servus Humillimus Domine Spectabilis,” I said, bowing my head. “Noble Lord...” If he’s for real, this means that there’s no way for you to save Cards. I totally called it, you stupid arbitrary universe. Pay up the twenty Marken.

Cards could handle herself, right? When her courage was up, she was capable of breaking my shoulder with a wooden baton. If her spine was up to it, she had the potential to kick all kinds of ass. Cards was no damsel in distress; she was a mare on a quest of vengeance. And Social Grace was a pansy compared to a mare like Cards.

Elkington was inviting me into his own realm, presenting a golden opportunity to put the bastard right where I wanted him. I didn’t know if I’d ever have another shot at this. So, just abandon Cards to her fate and go off with the Duke? Seemed easy enough. And if Cards died, she died; the task of my angel was easily more important than her life.

“Yes?” Elkington prodded, leaning towards me. A part of me hoped that he’d fall off the balcony and into an inexplicably placed tub labeled ‘venomous reptiles’.

“Noble Lord, I would be most honored to attend your own personal feast.”

“Ah, what excellent news!” He clopped his hooves together.

“But I must decline the offer,” I said, and sighed. It was... it was probably a trap anyways. I wasn’t going soft! “I don’t like you that way, not enough for a dinner date, at least,” I finished, and the crowd actually laughed.

Elkington frowned. “Well now, that is a shame. See, I was most curious as to who this strange knight was who can fight and wants to take part in the good fight. However, you aren’t a part of the show, and without the protection of being under my metaphorical wing—” he tapped a hoof on the balcony “—I’m afraid there’s nothing stopping Songnam Security from having to arrest you. I truly am sorry, strange warrior.” From the far side of the hippodrome’s entrance came a small number of Songnam’s finest.

“This is racial profiling!” I yelled out.

“My offer’s still open, for the record.”

Well, great. That was what I got for trying to be the good guy. Like a cute, pathetic, dying puppy trying to chase his tail even though he’s been cut in half by a particularly heavy door, I raced/hobbled for the exit curtain. “Vive la révolution!” I screamed because I just really wanted to sound badass.

“Finally!” the yellow mare groaned. “Arrest this jerk!”

“Screw you too, Madam,” I replied, running past her. That damn leg really didn’t want to work for me, but, thankfully, I had three other limbs to make up with. It didn’t help that one of those limbs was bleeding heavily, or that another one had a mostly healed knife hole through it. But Songnam securityponies had four legs, which was something of an advantage over crippled ol’ me.

I galloped through the little backroom, searching for the door out. All I had to do was remember where the yellow mare had led me. Thanks to a God-given sense of “I can remember things from a few minutes ago”, I ducked and weaved (slowly, painfully) through the back halls. And there it was! Black & White room! Panting harder than I should have, I raced and raced and was almost there and then I was—

A hoof grabbed me by the neck, moving into a headlock, and dragged me into the wrong room. As I was thrown to the ground and the door closed, I read with horror that this was the Green room. Scattered empty healing potions labeled “For Sports Injuries” sat around the vanity, I noticed. The next thing I noticed was the peach-coated mare straddling me, keeping me pinned under her armor.

The splattering of images and noises that ran through my head were too pathetic and messy to be considered thoughts. Nevertheless, they conveyed enough meaning to me that I could formulate the correct phrase to describe what I was feeling just now: Well, I’m going to get castrated. It’s been fun knowing you, genitals.

Cherry Berry, looking less beat up than before, gritted her teeth and looked down at me. “You beat up Readynoble, tie him up, lock him in a dark closet, impersonate him, and go out on the field!” she yelled in my face. “Then you somehow completely kick my ass with a dead leg and when I’m Juggernoging?!”

Well, that was it. I was screwed. Exactly how screwed? That’d be determined by my actions in the next few seconds, but I estimated it to be between ‘definetely’ and ‘holy shit!’ “I can explain!” I blubbered.

“That’s hot!” The mare grabbed the wings on my helmet and forcibly tore the headgear off. “You’re hot! Kiss me!” With forehooves pinning my arms, it was rather hard to defend myself as she tried to kiss me—well, lick me. All I could do was look away, clench my mouth and jaw, and try not to cry for my mother. “Oh, so that’s how you wanna play this game, is it?” she giggled, taking her lips away from my literally licked lips.

“I-I-I-I,” I stuttered, watching her remove her armored breastplate and toss it to the side. A part of me found it amusing that the closest thing to pants Equestrians wore was in their archaic platemail. I didn’t realize that she’d let go of my hooves to remove her arm until she’d pinned my hooves again.

“So. You like to tie ponies up? Kinky... I like to do that, too...”

I can see why Readynoble left you, you psycho! “I need an adult!” I whinnied.

Cherry Berry let out a wicked laugh as she undid the bun in her hair, letting her long champagne-colored mane down. “I am an adult.” I heard Songnam Security race by the door, and I sort of wished they’d check in here. She leaned in close to me. “Now, isn’t this romantic, my sweet? In the thick of it, hounded by the law, and two lovers in the act...”

“This is not love, this is rape, and this is not a good thing!”

She giggled. “You’re so cute when you’re being funny.” Cherry Berry slapped her cheek. “Who am I kidding, you’re always cute!”

I’ve only known you for a few minutes! “You’re crazy!”

“Crazy in love,” she crooned.

“This is not love, this is you raping a crippled stallion! You’re a rapist!” And I’m morally obligated to kill those.

The mare pouted at me. “What do you mean? Girl can’t do that to guys, they don’t have the parts; only bucks do.” She winked. “And I know how bucks work; guys are always eager; they can’t not like it. Everypony knows that.”

“That is a terrible double-standard and you should be ashamed for thinking it,” I practically shouted back. Only ‘practically’ because I still didn’t want Songnam Security to come in here and beat me up. I squirmed under her, trying not to move my pelvis too much because of just where she’d straddled me. “And it horrifies me that the Equestrian culture honestly holds this wrong, wrong belief!”

She blinked. “You say that like you’re not an Equestrian.”

“I’m not! That Kingdom of the North? It’s based off a real place and that’s where I’m from! Let me go! Lass mich los, du feiges Schwein!”

“Oh. My. Celestia!” Her eyes went wide. “I can’t wait to tell my friends about my super sexy foreign boyfriend!”

‘Super sexy’? Well, now I can safely conclude she’s delusional, too. “Nein, das sollst du nicht!”

“Nine?”

“Nein!”

“Eight!” she chirped.

“No, ‘nein’ is Teutsch for ‘no’—I’m screaming ‘no’ at you!”

She gave a wicked giggle. “I know just how you make you scream yes.” Cherry Berry slid her hooves down my body and then to her armored pants. She engaged herself in the process of removing them. But now my hooves were free, and I wasn’t having any more of this Scheiße.

I punched her straight across the face. Cherry Berry gasped as I punched again. In a second, she was on the ground and I was standing. “Oh, have I been naughty? You know, you can always just spank me,” she cooed with a lecherous smile. I saw a little wooden bowl of fruit sitting nearby and remembered that I was a unicorn. After improvising the bowl for a weapon, I bashed it across Cherry’s head, sending little fruits flying around the room. “I... like it when you... play rough,” she groaned.

“Yeah, well, I don’t like you,” I replied, breaking the little bowl over her skull.

Cherry had been trying to get back up, but the second blow knocked her to the ground. She let out a sniffle. “What’s-what’s wrong? Am I-am I not pretty enough for you?”

I gave a heavy, exhausted shrug. “No, like so many of you Equestrian girls, you’re very pretty. It’s just that you’re nuttier than a bag of peanuts used to murder a walrus—in short, you’re crazy!” I pointed to my chest. “I’m crazy, too. But when the crazy guy thinks even you’re too crazy, that’s when you know you have a problem, you psycho bitch!” I looked at the ground and saw a rope. Of course I picked it up. “Oh my God, you actually have a rope in here. Was this for me?”

She shook her head. “For us.”

I punched her again. “Now it’s for you,” I said, and went about hogtying her. When all was done, she was all secured on the ground, and I collapsed against the wall, panting. “You’re a complete monster.”

Even though she was tied up and lying on her stomach, Cherry inched towards me, looking not unlike a caterpillar. A Cherrypillar! With hope-filled eyes, she looked up at me. “So. I forgot to ask, but you’re single, right?”

Teeth gritted, I bucked her in the face with my good leg. Cherry screamed as the blow pushed her to the side. It took her a few seconds to gather herself up enough to look at me, blood and tears running down her face. I said, “Every single one of you Equestrians are crazy. Each. And. Every. One. Why?!” I took a breath. “And yes, I am single. Unless you count that one weird time I got turned into a girl and, because of an incredibly obscure tribal practice of that one tribe, I ended up married to the lesbian daughter of the Warchief. That was weird. I really prefer having male tools, really. When they bleed, I’m supposed to go to the hospital and I know there’s something horribly wrong. Not girls, though.” I pointed at her. “And for the record, that’s not sexist: it’s just an observation.”

“You’re married?”

“No. God, no. It was more like... engaged against my will. They didn’t have the words to distinguish marriage and engagement. Thank God that Mister Welch was some kind of omniglot.” I shook my head. “But that doesn’t change things between us.”

“There’s... there’s an us?” she said with a flutter of lashes. Her eyes were too puffy and teary to really pull off that look. Unlike Dust, she didn’t look all that cute when crying. “Do you think you could, maybe, help get the rest of this armor off?”

I kicked her in the side and coldly replied, “No. In fact, the only reason you’re still alive right now is because I don’t have the energy or care to kill you here and now. Really, I came here to save the life of one of my confederates. Save the girl, save Equestria, you know? But... that plan fell down while having an erection, and then its penis fell into a hole suspiciously labeled ‘dick cutting-off hole’.” I put a hoof to my chin. “You know, a nurse once told me that if you were you to cut that part off a stallion during such a time, it’d take about a minute for him to bleed to death. So. Does that apply to this metaphor here, or am I just reading too far into my own metaphor?”

“Uh...” She blinked at me. A moment passed, nothing really happening. Then the Cherrypillar inched towards me. I was about to kick the rapist in her face again when she said, “Your hooves are nice. Did you... did you get a ponypedi?”

“I got a ponypedi and hooficure earlier today, yes. Then I got myself all groomed up, brushed my teeth thoroughly, and shaved. I also have a suit being pressed, but that’s another story. I have a few suits, but I was feeling angry after seeing a certain brand of cigarettes, so I relaxed in a spa and got them done there and then.” She just blinked at me, confusion bubbling onto to her face. “I like to feel clean and rested, Ma’am. In fact, tomorrow, I’m going to get that suit back and wear it. After all, ladies adore a sharp-dressed stallion.”

“I just adore you.”

“That’s nice, Ma’am.”

“And so polite, too. You sure you don’t wanna gimme a hoof with this armor? You can keep the ropes on.”

I facehoofed. “You know, if we lived in a weird gender-swapped universe, you’d be an utterly monstrous figure. You tried to rape me, Dame Cherry Berry. That’s not cool, and your insistence that girls cannot commit such vile acts is utterly horrifying to me.” I paused. “Do all Equestrians believe that?”

Cherry Berry hesitated. “It’s just kinda inherently silly to think a girl could do it,” she said in tones that told me she wasn’t lying. She was wrong, of course, but wasn’t lying.

That rose several questions in the mind, the foremost being: is Equestria matriarchal or patriarchal? After that little comment of hers, I knew that Equestria wasn’t purely gender equal, no. That deed tended to occur in sexually unequal societies. I recalled the story I’d once read in a textbook about a general fighting an ancient, now-exterminated tribe; in his report, he complimented in a backhanded sort of way, “No matter how brutal these savages are, at least they never lay a hoof on captured mares.” Ugh, battlefield sexual violation. I was glad that was instant grounds for a summary execution, and somewhat proud that Teutschland was the first nation to ever instate such rules. I bet Equestrian romantic comedy plays thought that female-on-male rape was hilarious, the sick fiends.

I considered asking the Cherrypillar which gender Equestria favored, but something about her eyes still pleaded with me to take her pants off, and that didn’t exactly inspire me to think she’d actually know anything about that. So I had to indirectly poke at it with a stick. “Is female promiscuity in Equestria seen as bad and shameful?”

The Cherrypillar blinked. “Um, sorta. I mean, it kinda is.” She looked away and muttered, “That’s why I needed to teach Readynoble a lesson for messing with my heart.” She perked up and she said in a decidedly girlish voice, “But now I have you, so it’s all better now! Plus, you kicked his ass for me.”

Right, enough being serious and contemplative. Her bloody, teary face was starting to annoy me, anyways. I stood up, putting as little weight onto my dead leg as possible. Deep breaths, I crept up to the door, the Cherrypillar silently watching me. Okay, it’s been long enough for Songnam Security to have wandered onto other parts of the building. Quiet as a ghost, I opened the door and peeked around. Empty, and the door to the Black & White room was open and ponyless.

I snuck across the hall and into the proper dressing room. Ah, my bags were right where I’d left them, hidden slightly behind an armor stand. I got them out and set them on the floor in front of the vanity. Taking deep breaths, I dug through my bags until I found what I was after, the Aufputschmittel I’d contemplated using earlier. It was a large syringe carrying an almost glowing red liquid, the cap still on. I fished through and pulled out two leather belts. That was all I needed.

Now with my equipment, I needed to remove my armor. I began with breastplate for mobility’s sake. As soon as I managed to get it off, somepony whistled. I jerked my head around to see the Cherrypillar inching through the door. When she looked at my bare breast she paused. “What’s wrong with your chest?”

Rolling my eyes, I walked over and shut the door. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to do that and now the Cherrypillar was looking at my breast. “Nothing is wrong with it,” I hissed. The only reason I didn’t shove her back into the hall was because a hogtied knight outside the dressing room would probably look conspicuous. With a mind set to ignore the hogtied mare, I went back to trying to remove my armor.

She asked, “Well, what the hay is it?”

“Something.”

“I mean, it’s like you’ve got a cutie mark on your chest!”

I sighed as I removed my shin guards. If only they had real armor to defend my upper leg. “Your language has no word for it. The closest term you have would be ‘ritual self-mutilation’.” As I removed my leggings, Cherry Berry crooned in a low, breathy voice. And as she saw my underwear, she let out an annoyed groan.

“You know, I could have helped you get that armor off,” she commented, and I shot her a murderous look. The mare looked less and less like a caterpillar to me and more like a sushi roll. If I tossed her into the Île-de-Nippun, would they eat her, or was I just being racist?

“Hey! Just sayin’...”

Stretching my injured leg, I looked at the injury itself. The flesh was definitely swollen just above the knee, and it hurt so much just to look at. I grabbed one of the belts and fastened it into an absurdly tight band just above the wound; with the other belt, I did the exact same just below the knee. There, now the wound was isolated from the rest of my body, at most by a factor of eighty percent. That was twenty percent worse than I’d’ve liked, but it was what I had to work with.

I picked up the little Aufputschmittel and pressed the needle to the very heart of the swelling. The needle stabbed easily into the muscle, and I watched the red fluid empty the syringe. It flowed smooth, and I felt a hot, hot burn as the stimulant worked its magic on the muscle. It felt like what happened when a fire ant queen fell in love with you and decided to move into your house against your will; she ate all the chips and snacks, then dug a nest just above your knee; and the pain was the agony of the painful ant-breakup when she realized you weren’t a sexy fire ant. Of course, I also grunted like mad.

“Are... are you okay?” Cherry Berry asked in worried tones. Her body language told me she was doing her best impression of a dead crab.

“Shut up,” I growled. “God, every time you speak, I feel like my blood is turning into roaches.”

“So... does that mean you don’t want a hoofjob later?”

“I would rather masturbate with sandpaper than have any sort of intimate contact with you! You don’t realize how heinous, evil, and vile you are! I mean, are you stu—no, let me rephrase that. You are stupid!”

“You know, I am hot, young, juicy, and willing. What’s the damn problem here?”

I flexed my leg. The knee worked, the leather belts had contained the Aufputschmittel and healed the dead leg, though not at all the bleeding wounds from earlier. “Because you’re a crazy pony! Even if for some unthinkable reason I decided to willingly lay with the girl who tried to rape me, I am absolutely positive I’d end with being very incredibly unsatisfied with you, and more than a little disgusted with myself.”

The mare blinked. “Un... unsatisfying?” she said in a weak, shaky voice.

“I flat-out refuse to accept anyone has ever slept with you and afterwards concluded that ‘yes, this was a satisfactory experience’. I mean, not even in terms of sex, I mean in terms of anything at all. You are a sick, twisted, narcissistic, sexist witch who thinks only of herself. I don’t care if you were the queen bitch of Equestria and the sun herself, what I’m telling you is the honest-to-God truth! By the Prophet and her holy virginity, you have less charisma and sexual aptitude than Cards! And it’d take more than just a sexy look and lifting your tail for me to even contemplate entertaining the notion that you were anything but!”

Cherry sniffled, her lips trembling. “You... you... you don’t have to be so mean about it,” she whimpered, and burst into tears. “I was just trying to make you happy!” she cried. “Trying to show you how much I love you!”

“I mean, I guess there’s something uniquely and morbidly fascinating about you. With you, it’s like watching a rat in a maze, but the maze is just one circular loop, and the rat’s really stupid and not getting it. I’m just like a scientist here, and I’m just staring at it, thinking, ‘This has absolutely no scientific value, but I can’t believe this goddamn rat doesn’t get it yet.’ That’s me, and the rat is you. And rather than a circular loop maze, it’s the fact that not only do I not love you, I don’t even like you, nor even tolerate you, and the mere concept of intimacy with a foul witch like you makes me want to vomit blood from my eyes!”

She tried to fight the tears back, but failed and only cried more and louder. “Are you happy now? You made a grown mare c-c-c-cry...”

I rolled my eyes and grunted, “I don’t care.” With a sigh, I undid the leather belts before my leg actually died from lack of oxygen flow. The swelling looked much, much better, and I fancied I could walk on it without limping. Oh, the joys of a teutschen healing potion: you were never more than one injection away from getting back into the fight—outlawed in civilian markets!

Massaging my former leg wound, I pulled out my clothes from the bag. My bandages could be changed later; right now, I needed to get out of here, needed to find Cards, needed to get back to the hotel room, needed to go to bed. I started with my pants, I ended with my hat. All suited up, I equipped my sword’s sheath and strapped the dagger’s sheath around my bleeding wounds.

Cherry Berry, mewling on the ground, watched me stand up and stride to the door. “I-I know what I must do,” she whimpered. I paused, looking down at her cold eyes. “I’ve got to—” she choked down a sob “—got to win your heart, earn it, not take it. Please, please, just... just give me a chance.” I moved for the door. “At least tell me your name, please!”

I regarded the pathetic bundle of fur, rope, and tears on the ground. “My name is Carlos Bond von Bismarck Montoya, and I kill dogs and eat demons for a living,” I said as I opened the door. “Ich bin ein Mann aus Stahl.” And the door closed. Then I popped my head back into the room for a just a second and said, “Now then, I must leave you forever because I suspect that some ponies in togas are plotting against me.”

There. And we all lived happily ever after. The Cherrypillar was clearly off her rocker, and it was probably far crueler to her to let the damn mare live, so live she did. In any case, if I had tried to kill her, I knew that something odd would have happened that would have involved Songnam Security bursting in and fingering me for attempted murder, because the universe was capricious like that.

But now that I was out of that armor and had all my gear, I needed to get back into the hippodrome’s audience, assuming they were still there. At least nopony but Cherry Berry had seen my face and associated it with the pony under that armor, so I was probably safe being in that regard.

Pressing on through the halls, I eventually came into the little area with the ‘wenches, knights, and office’ sign. “Oi!” a mare shouted from the wenches’ hallway. Two mares dressed in the the uniforms of Songnam Security charged up to me. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Hmm?” I hummed with dull interest. “Oh, I’m that guy you’re trying to arrest. You can tell by the armor I’m wearing, the fact that I’m running away from you right now, and my outrageous accent,” I said amicably, standing still. “I most certainly don’t just work here or anything.”

The tan mare, the one who shouted, looked me over. Her gaze lingered a second too long over my haunches—no doubt curious about my pants but choosing to say nothing—before going back to my face. “Yeah, yeah, real funny, wise guy.”

“I try,” I replied, tipping my hat as they walked down the hall and towards the back entrance. I wondered if that one guard mare was in any trouble for letting me in. When I was sure they were out of sight, I trotted down the wench’s hallway. I needed to get to Cards before the show ended. In fact, it was probably already over and everypony was leaving. Double time it, me!

The wench way had a few different doors down it, so I picked the big double doors. That somehow ended up with me barging into a room with ovens, metal stoves, pots, pans, cabinets, counters, and all things cooking-related. Oh, hey, look, the kitchen. As the sliding double doors behind me closed (and hit me on the ass), I stared out at the five tired-looking ponies wearing chef hats, then to the four security ponies that had been either loitering around or chatting with the chefs.

“Howdy, folks,” I sighed with irritation as I walked on through. If I acted like I belonged here, maybe they wouldn’t stop me. “Sorry for barging through. I’d figured you’d be almost done in here. No trouble, hmm?”

A security stallion took a step towards me. “Where are you going?”

I shot him an irked look. “Exactly where I’m told to go, officer. Unless that’s a crime, sir, I’m not being paid by the hour.” How do wages in Equestria work, even? “Got a problem with that?”

He put a hoof on my shoulder, stopping me. “As a matter of fact, it’s not. But that is no way to speak to an officer.”

I sighed, eyes to the ground. “Look, sir, I’m sorry. But my wife left me this morning for the gardener and I just found myself a single father.” And Cards isn’t my daughter, I swear! “I’m a bit stressed out, okay, sir? I’m sorry.” Also, I almost got raped, and that didn’t help my mood, either.

“Oh...” he said, offering me an empathetic look as he took his hoof of my shoulder. “I... I understand. Son or daughter?”

Cards. “Little filly. Feisty one. She once got me this watch for my birthday, a-and I didn’t know where she got the money for it from. Her mom would never...” With a nostalgic smile on my face, I looked at my hooves. “And she says to me, ‘Porn. I sell hardcore porn.’ And it was just the cutest thing ever, and my heart exploded. I know I shouldn’t encourage such things, but it was too adorable for me to scold her for it.” I walked towards the double doors on the far side of the room, eager to leave.

“Wait a minute!” he exclaimed. “You’re not wearing a watch!” Scheiße! Forgot to put that back on! “No true father wouldn’t wear a gift from his daughter! You’re clearly a—” A metal pot hit him upside the face. Then it hit him in the forehead. He yelled as I picked up a large wooden spoon and beat him against the neck with it. Dammit, I was dual-wielding a pot and spoon, now I was a badass!

“Clearly a pony cooler than you!” I said, knocking him to the ground. I hurled the metal pot into a chef’s face as I picked up a rolling pin and slammed it lengthwise into the neck of another officer. She collapsed onto the ground, choking and grabbing her throat. “Sit down.”

The other two security ponies charged me, batons raised. One of them even had the audacity to jump onto the little counter in the center of the room and run at me. I rewarded her cool but impractical move by breaking her elbow with the rolling pin, and she tumbled off the counter. The last one, also a little lady, got a hit off on my poor, poor shoulder, the blow making me drop my weapons. And I was doing so well, too!

Doing what I could, I grabbed a strange metal bowl with a little handle from a stove and proceeded to repeatedly introduced it to her face. I didn’t notice until it was all over her fallen body that the bowl had been filled with a strange red liquid. I licked the bowl. “Huh. Tomato bisque,” I muttered. “I just beat a mare half to death with a bowl of tomato bisque.” She twitched. “And her lack of pants makes this completely dignified.” I looked at the horrified chefs, then at a closet. In a minute, the chefs and barely conscious guards had been safely locked away.

So far, so good, I thought, leaving the kitchen. I went through the little hallway, trying to find a way into the hippodrome. “So. You goin’ to see the game tomorrow?” I heard a stallion asked.

“Who, me?” a mare scoffed. “Why do you ask?”

“Well... it’s the Songnam Seraphim versus the Mare Orleans Mustangs. They say it’s going to be the biggest hoofball game of the year, two rival teams duking it out for the championship. y’know?”

“Sounds cool,” she sighed mournfully.

“A-and it’s just that I... I...” He took a breath. Then he said really quickly, “Glitter, I really like you and have two tickets to the big game and I heard from your sister that you liked hoofball and I was wondering if maybe you’d go out with me tomorrow to-to-to the game and, uh, yeah.” Silence reigned over the hall as I trotted through. “I-I mean, i-its cool if you don’t—”

“Hey,” she said in a soft voice. “Shut up.”

As I turned the corner, I spotted two securityponies guarding a doorway. Well, supposed to be. One of them, the mare, was pushing the buck against wall as she kissed him, and he kissed back. So cute. The buck saw me and gasped, the mare also taking stock of me. Like two teens caught in bed with their pants off, they jumped up and tried to pretend they weren’t doing exactly what they had been doing.

I merely smiled and said knowingly, “I didn’t see anything.” They just stood at attention with red cheeks as I sauntered on by. The doorway they guarded led me into the the hippodrome’s audience. A few ponies walked around and cleaned up, but they looked like employees. The only ones that looked like guests were the small family heading out the large open doorway. I followed them out and found myself at the top of a large staircase leading into a large room filled with ponies and novelty Modern Times Dinner & Tournament merchandise, plus the knights (sans the Cherrypillar and Readynoble) giving out autographs.

Cards and Social Grace had to be here, dammit! Where? Where? Where? There! A white mare with black-with-red-streaks hair wearing a blue dress was being escorted around by a dapper stallion in a white suit. Well, the odds of seeing another white mare with a mane like that who wasn’t Cards were ridiculously slim in my book (which probably meant that this mare wasn’t Cards and the universe was just screwing with me, but whatever). She and Grace were at the far end of the lobby area, going straight for the exit. I raced through the crowd to get at them.

“Alright, we got everypony here?” a stallion asked a small crowd of foals and teens. They all nodded and mumbled ayes. “Ah, good.”

I froze and pointed at him. “Oh my God, it’s you!”

The bartender looked at me, his eyes wide. “It’s you!”

“Why the hell aren’t you back in Ponyville, harassing travelers and generally being a crotchety jerk?”

“It’s the Clan Marekenzie reunion, ya bastard! And what are you doin’ here?”

“I’m trying to save the world, you crazy pony.” I took out a gold coin and threw it at his face. “There. I have few Bit but enough raw gold coins to completely tank the Equestrian economy by flooding the markets with gold and lowering its value as a whole, damn you!” I shook my head. “I don’t have time for this, but I do hope the slightly off-center painting is driving you batty.” I galloped away, trying to get to Cards and Social Grace.

At the entrance area, the tellers’ booths purposefully resembled little keeps. No Cards or Grace here. I raced towards the large front doors, which was more an open slit of wall leading out to a drawbridge. The ponies, I suddenly noticed, were all wearing paper crowns of colors matching the knight teams. Keen. As I reached the doorway, I stopped. There was a torrent of cold, cold air billowing down on me from seemingly nowhere. Stepping outside, the air got warmer. Air conditioning magical talismans? These damn Equestrians, their magic was going to be the end of them all. Still, no Cards or Social Grace.

Wait, there! They were walking together towards a parked carriage pulled by... two stallions? What the hay? A carriage pulled by ponies? Did Equestria have slavery or something? Serfdom? Well, if Equestria was apparently a feudal realm, serfdom didn’t not make sense. But serfdom seemed off, and there was a probably another, more rational—albeit stupid—explanation. whatever the case, I galloped after the two, determined not to let them get away.

The carriage-pulling stallions tipped their hats to the duo as Cards and Grace stepped in. I saw Cards hoofing her right ear as she sat down, but she never once looked out and saw me. “Alrights, bucks,” I made out the carriage conductor say, adjusting his blue peaked cap, “we’re off to the Ritz.”

Wait, what!? No, I just came from there! I don’t want to be almost raped for nothing! As the carriage took off, I so awesomely tripped on my own hooves and rolled across the sidewalk. “Scheiße!” I hissed, looking up and watching the carriage race away. Growling teutsche obscenities, I jumped to my feet... only to step on my duster’s tail and fall face-first face onto the ground. Today was just totally my day.

By the time I got myself onto my hooves and ready to go, the carriage was a way’s away. I certainly wasn’t catching up to them before they got there. That meant I was walking all the way to the Ritz. Again.

“Why can’t I just get a damn break?” I sighed.

|— ☩ —|

So dark, so depressing, so tired, but Social Grace needed murdering. The little receptionist mare, a different one that the one from before, hadn’t taken too much convincing and undertoned threats before she gave me the number of the room Social Grace was staying in. And, hey! Guess what? It was the the goddamn penthouse suite. No, not just a room on the top floor; his room was the small house on the Ritz’s very rooftop.

Now, I had gained something that might sarcastically be referred to as “cardio” during my lifetime, but, Scheiße, running across a city and then climbing several flights of stairs was going to give me a heart attack. That is, the kind wherein your heart stopped working, clawed out of your chest, then beat you with a 9-iron until you accepted its demands to let it rest. You couldn’t say no to your heart, because then you’d die.

With any luck, Cards would be back in her hotel room, and Social Grace was mine, all mine. The doorway to the penthouse looked only too inviting compared to the green gardens outside, the moonlight dancing through them like a floozy whose STD test just came back negative, the bags under my eyes baggy enough to store said STD tests.

If Cards was actually back in our hotel room, would that be worse? I sighed. “Great. I’m just going to go back to the room and find Cards dead, her head exploded, and Dust catatonic on the floor, aren’t I?” As if to answer my question, I heard a decidedly feminine, Cards-like voice shouting from somewhere inside the penthouse

Shaking my head in annoyance for her actually going home with him, I ran up to the door and tried it. Locked. Natürlich. Knife and lockpick out. Tick. Tack. Tock. Lock picked, and in I stormed, though I took the time to close the door because open doors made me nervous. I entered a foyer (this damn place had a foyer?), and the voice came again from what looked like the living room (it had one of those, too?). I ran for it, there was a damsel in... distress...?

I stared past the flipped couch at the stallion cowering in the corner, covering his face with his forehooves. In front of him, panting hard and pressing a baton against his neck, was Cards. The elegant dress she wore earlier was now torn into so many strips, the earrings still in her ears.

“...’cause you listen right the fuck here, you sonofabitch!” she screamed into his face. “I’ve had it! You think I care about dying anymore? My life ended yesterday! Sweet, innocent little Cards died when the light in his eyes went out—you think I care about dying anymore?!” She let out a howling-mad laugh, then brought the baton down across his face, knocking him to the ground. “I’m done with being pushed around and told what to do! My whole life, ponies told me what to do, except him. But he’s dead now! And now Cards is dead! I’m just what’s left, and if you think for just one fucking femtosecond that you can control me and tell me what to do, too, you’ve got a another thing coming!” She kicked him in the groin, and he squealed in pain. “And that other thing coming,” she said darkly, almost calmly, “involves a lot of screaming from you.”

Well... this was different. This was the Cards I’d first met, this was the Cards that broke my shoulder and tried to crush my testicles into a fine paste. There was the question of where that baton had come from, but screw it, this was awesome. Kind of precious in its own little way, too. If only I had some popcorn.

“You... you don’t seem to understand,” Social Grace groaned.

“No, you don’t seem to fucking understand!” She smacked the baton against his ribs. “I don’t care if I die, you’re not controlling me, telling me what to do, and certainly not sweet talking me into your bed!” Cards kicked his family jewels again. “Know what? I really hate your face, and you were never all that hot in the first place. I’d sooner touch myself to that government boy’s face than yours!” Ouch. Burn.

“I—”

“Shut it!” A blow to the face. “You know, it’s a sign of just how fucked my shitty excuse for a life is right now when the only one being genuine with me is that one bastard who murdered my only friend! Right now, Gracy, I’m queen bitch of the land, and you’re gonna tell me what I want to know.”

“Or what?” he coughed. “You’ll torture me? Kill me?”

Cards looked down at him with a hard expression. “Torture you?” she scoffed. “And become more like him? No; then he’d win.” Me? “So here’s a novel idea, you listening?”

“No, you listen, girl,” he said with a crooked smile. Grace’s horn flashed, and Cards was screaming on the ground in the next moment. Panting hard, he stood up, then coughed up blood onto the floor. A ragged look in his eyes, he went on: “I don’t really care. In truth, I do like you, Miss Cards. You’re cute and feisty, and everything I said to you has been honest, but you’re working against the good guys, girl. I don’t know what lies you’ve been told, but Elkington is trying to save this nation. We’ve accepted that what we must do terrible—” he coughed up more blood “—terrible things for Equestria and our Princesses, but our love for them is so great that we do so willingly. You don’t understand that you are the villain here, not the hero. I’m not going to tell you things, you’re going to tell me things.” Cards stopped screaming, resolving herself to twitching like a charred victim of electrocution.

I tried to whistle for his attention, but failed because I didn’t know how to whistle. One of these days I was going to learn how to whistle, probably when I wasn’t trying to save the world, which meant that I would never whistle. I watched as Grace slowly strode up to Cards, and the little mare crawled away from him, none of them even looking anywhere near my direction.

There was another couch in this room, one that was sitting upright and was facing the fight. With a shrug, I made my way casually over to the couch and took a seat. Sighing, I leaned back, tipped my hat forwards, stretched my arms over the back of the couch, crossed my legs, and watched them go at it. As it so happened to be, the little area the couch was in was poorly lit. There was a certain je ne sais quoi about sitting there, counting the seconds till one of them noticed the stallion watching them. I even had time to take out my sword and set it across my lap.

“Now you listen here, Miss Cards,” he said smoothly, kneeling down before her. “Unless you do exactly what I say and help me capture your companions, those earrings you so graciously accepted and put on will do... certain things to you. Nasty, terrible, painful things, even. And, see, I’m a nice guy, but if you push me, well... then I might have to get a tad bit mean. Don’t make me have to be a mean colt, dear.” He stroked her cheek. “I really don’t want to hurt you.” Rather than calm and evil, the tone of his last sentence almost made it sound like he was pleading with her. He clearly had never killed before.

“H-hey...” Cards mumbled from the ground.

“Yeah?”

“Blow me,” she whispered, and bashed the side of his neck with the baton. He yelled as she struck him again. Can fillies say that?

Social Grace stumbled backwards towards the couch. As his purple eyes drank in my sight, he shrieked, “Who in Celestia’s name are you?!”

I smiled. “Oh, I’m just a stray dog,” I said casually, grabbing him by the neck. “And dogs are oft to eat little shits like you; it’s why you should never kiss them.” And with that, I leapt up and tackled him to the ground, not even caring that my sword went scattering. He struggled below my weight, and Cards panted in the corner. “No, wait, that’s a terribad one-liner. I-I’m sorry, can we do that again? I was trying to think of them, but instead I got caught thinking about socks again. Here, give me a second to think of a better one, then we’ll try that again. Because, you know, if I don’t say witty things before a battle, I’d just be a morally questionable thug, not a hero.” I picked my my sword and sheathed it. It took me a few before I thought of a good one.

I stood up and jerked Social Grace up with me. “Vive la révolution,” I growled darkly, and tackled him to the ground again. I looked up at Cards and added helpfully, “See? Now I’m both a hero and fighting the oppression of the aristocracy. I’m like that one pony who stole from the poor and gave to the poor, except not at all and that I kill people.” Grace groaned, and I slapped him. “Hey, pay attention! I don’t talk just for my health.”

Cards somehow got to her hooves and took hard, stumbling steps towards Grace, baton raised. Grace, on the other hoof, laughed at me. “You’re her friend, r-right? Yes, of course... Maybe if she won’t listen, you will.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” I casually replied, as if discussing the weather.

Grace seemed to stumble at my response, but he collected himself. “Unless you do exactly what I say down to a T, Cards is going to die. Horribly. Those earrings in her head are enchanted to kill her, and so unless you want her to die, you will obey me.”

“You phrased that in such a belligerent manner. Did no one train you in the art of coercion?” I shook my head. “And for that matter, why should I believe you?”

He smirked, and Cards collapsed to the ground with a shriek “Because they’re already working. You’ve got five minutes before the girl dies. You can either obey me or let her die. If she removes them, she dies. If I die, they go off fully and she dies. You have two choices. Better choose fast.”

I bit my lip, looking over at Cards. She was rolling on the ground, clutching at her head. It wasn’t hard to recount Chausiku’s words from the Voixson. He wasn’t joking, wasn’t fibbing, wasn’t bluffing. Obey or let her die. Those were my choices. But even with the pain she must have been feeling, Cards refused to stay on the ground.

“F-f-fuck... him,” Cards growled, a spark of pink energy arcing between the earrings. The knife around my leg itched. Cards. If she removed them, if he died, if I did nothing, she died. Obey or let her. Earrings.

“Come on, you stupid sonofabitch,” he goaded through gritted teeth. “Her life or your obedience. Choose, dammit! She’s not removing the earrings! Two options! Make the right one and she lives, wrong one and she dies.”

Cards collapsed to the ground again, screaming and thrashing, blood leaking from her ears. Her horn suddenly went dark, dropping her weapon. Gurgling in agony, she look at her baton, concentrating on it with what was clearly every bit of energy that brain of hers was capable off. All that came out was a little, depressing fizzle of sparks. Tears of blood cried from her tear ducts, mixing with actual tears as she sobbed a pitiful, heart-wrenching mewl of pure animalistic terror. It was the sort of sound that made me want to jam a sword through her eye and into her brain, ending her misery.

I looked down at Grace, looked at Cards, looked at where the knife was, at the mare’s ears, back at Grace, at the muscles and flesh and cartilage holding his ear to his head. One of these days, I was sure to actually get a black and white decision: Choice A with pink bunnies and cute girls in unreasonably skimpy bikinis at the beach, or Choice B with spikes and the Cherrypillar. Oooh, the tough choices in life!

Grace gave me a ragged, but almost pleading smile. I bet that Hurensohn would just love it if I jammed a fork into his eyeball and then slammed it in so I could ride him like a butterfly, and he’d probably get all kinds of hot if he lost an... ear... A thought came to mind. A terrible, dark, desperate thought. It wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t even sane. It was what I had to do. It was what I was going to do.

I took a third option.

Cards... Cards... Cards... Bleeding from her tear ducts and ears, sobbing, and legs shaky, she refused to remain still. I got off Grace and he leapt up, scooting his back against the couch. Cards fought and bit her lips until it too bled; her efforts to fight were herculean; even so, she was utterly unable to resist when I grabbed her, put her on her back, and pinned her beneath the weight of my much larger body.

“You can’t remove the earrings!” Grace shrieked. “If you do, you’ll kill her!”

“I’m not going to remove the earrings,” I said darkly, pulling out my knife. The earrings were stuck into the outer-middle of her right ear.

A proper hero would probably now say something about choices, think something deep and introspective about the choices we make, how they affect ourselves and others, ultimately writing a little essay to justify himself. They would distract themselves from the task at hand with philosophy and half-baked ideas about morality and heroism, about life not being about easy choices, and about sometimes having to make those hard choices for someone else’s good.

Me? There were no such moral justifications for my actions running through my mind like a witness preparing a false testimony. There was no philosophy to explain what I had to do and why it was the only choice; there was only what had to be done. There was only me, there was only Cards, there was only the knife.

The ear wasn’t exactly the sturdiest part of a pony. Attached only by cartilage and some muscles for movement, it was easy to cut off. With one hoof, I made sure to force Card’s head against the ground, and with the other I pressed the base of her ear against her head to keep from simply ripping it off; with my teeth, I held onto the top of the ear; with my magic, I brought the sharp end of the knife against the base of the ear.

There was no dignity in what Cards then did. She screamed at the top of her lungs, nearly deafening me with her strident shrieks. The mare thrashed uselessly under my body, pinned too well to ever hope to free herself, and against my teeth, she didn’t even have the hope of wiggling her ear away. Cards begged and cried and cried and begged not to do what I was doing. “No! No! Please, no! No! Don’t do this, please!” She was like a broken record, repeating various renditions of the same begs.

“May God in Heaven have mercy on my soul... because the Devil in Hell shall have none,” I whispered through the ear in my teeth. And with that, I adjusting the position of the knife, no longer planning on just looping the entire thing off. The screaming continued, she whinnied and neighed and flopped her body in terror, her eyes unable to leave mine. If the eyes were windows into the soul, I was hanging Prussian blue curtains...

The knife plunged and pierced directly through her ear. It took as much effort as doing the same with paper, even if this method was significantly harder than just lopping the ear off. I twisted the knife and sawed and sawed and sawed. Blood everywhere. The ear was on the head, and the head bled like a whore. With the cut I had made—the cut I was making—I estimated she’d lose maybe an eighth of a pint of blood per minute. Cards screamed about her ear, her words garbled by chokes and sobs, but I gathered something about going deaf. That was normal; the body was defending its ruined ear, temporarily deafening it.

With a meaty sound, the blade came out of her ear, mere eyelashes away from the lower of her two earrings. With the first part of the incision made, I could now cut out the other part of her ear, removing that without having to remove the entire organ. Her screams became just a single, neverending garble loud enough to wake the dead, and then deafen the dead. Even Social Grace was screaming. I adjusted my bite, keeping the flimsy ear as taut as possible as I brought the knife back for round two.

The flesh split like a teenager who just found out his girlfriend was pregnant as the blade cut through her ear, severing and tearing cartilage. I could physically see unbridled terror in her eyes as it happened, as her blood filled my mouth, as the ear failed to flitter away, as I did the deed. Each incision, even the slightest nick, brought a wave of fresh blood from new wounds, created fresh screams; but I wasn’t making slight nicks, I was sawing at her ear with a knife designed for hurting and cutting, not for surgery. I didn’t have a medical degree, either, and the ragged cuts testified to that. It split, it parted, it bled, and it made a slight meaty sound that, in any other case, I might have found pleasant.

And then it was over, my mouth drowning in the mare’s coppery blood. I wiped the blood off my knife using bits of her tattered and soiled-with-blood dress. Begging God for forgiveness, I grabbed my prize and stood up, sheathing the blade. It was just a bloody little chunk of ear with soiled white fur that had been pierced by two earrings. Cards’ ear, bloodier than a newborn, was still mostly intact, no matter how red it looked. I could see the blood coursing beneath her skin bleeding out the ragged cut in her ear.

I gritted my teeth at the screaming, bloody, helpless excuse for a mare. She clutched her bloody ear, and I knew there was no possible way she was applying enough pressure to stop herself from bleeding out. But at least her tear ducts were no longer bleeding. Still, I estimated at least half an hour till she stopped bleeding on her own, and that was time she didn’t have. I fished through my bags and pulled out a dark orange syringe filled with a clear solution. Good enough.

Then I grabbed her arm, forced it down and still, and injected her with the Aufputschmittel. It wasn’t the kind that healed; this was the kind loaded with vitamin-K. In about three minutes, assuming I didn’t overdose her and cause her to die, her ear would clot enough to stop bleeding. I capped the needle and stored it; it would, after a thorough cleaning, come in handy again. Oh, and I really needed to rob a hospital for more medical supplies.

Social Grace had apparently thrown up off to the side in horror. What was with Equestrians and vomiting at the sight of a little violence? “You have made a grave mistake this day,” I said with an almost supernatural calmness. Lyra’s description of me went through my mind as I said, “And I just so happen to be the director of my own little funeral parlor.”

I floated the ear piece before me as I slowly, casually sauntered over to him. “See, where I’m from, we have this little thing called ‘justice’. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? And see, we like to punish people that do wrong and evil, like yourself. Serial killers? We encourage the victims’ families to take an active part in the execution, and there was always something about allowing rape victims to stone their rapist to death, that never failed to put a ‘job well done’ smile on my face. As for ponies like you, well...” I stopped right before him, crouched down, and lowered my voice. “We purge the mage. But I’m feeling mighty poetic today. How long until the earrings would have killed Cards?”

Grace stuttered to respond. “A-a-few more minutes, I—”

I grabbed him by the jaw. “Open your mouth, it’s time for poetic justice,” I said sternly, still as calm as before. When he failed to instantly comply, I shoved the back of his head into the wooden floor. I spun him over in order to grab the back of his head. No time wasted before I violently shoved his mouth into the floor. “Open. Your. Mouth,” I demanded sharply. Weakly, he complied, and I flipped him onto his face. I grabbed his chin and held it open as I brought Cards’ ear to bear. He tried to close his teeth only too late, myself already magically shoving the chunk of ear and earrings down his throat. A natural reaction exploited; he couldn’t help but swallow the bloody ear.

“Wha-wha-wha?” Grace blubbered, and I only smiled warmly as he began to twitch.

“There. A taste of your own medicine. Now, here’s the deal,” I replied: “you tell me what I want to know, and help beat you until you can vomit those earrings out. If not, well...” He twitched more violently. “What do you know about enervation?”

“The hay’s that?” he coughed. It didn’t feel like he was lying.

“Okay then, why are you trying to kill Cards?”

He sputtered out something, then spat up blood. It was red, so that meant it was just nasal blood he’d swallowed and regurgitated. “Bite me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” I growled. I looked over and saw into the other room. It was a fancy kitchen with hard counters with sharp edges, just the perfect place for a wet foal to play around in and—hello, foxy! An evil gleam in my eye, I grabbed the noblepony by the scruff of his neck and forcibly dragged him into the kitchen, trying to ignore Cards’ ongoing wails.

“Where...” he tried, and then promptly spasmed like a freshly drowned corpse.

“Tell me what I want to know,” I said like a perfectly reasonable pony, eying that foxy thing.

“I... I can’t.”

“Wrong answer, I’m afraid.” With all the joy of a colt with a new toy, I rammed the back of his head into the foxy thing, a large, large window overlooking the city. Outside the window was a solid multi-story drop. To my surprise and glee, little cracks appeared in the glass. Weak glass did my little heart good. “Who are you working for?”

“Elkington!” he admitted hastily.

“Good answer.” I winked. “And remember: your skin and fur are privileges, not rights. I can take them away whenever I so choose.” He swallowed. “Why did Elkington send you?” He hesitated for too long. That meant I got to slam his head into the glass again. I even punched the glass for effect. It was weakening oh so nicely. “Why?!”

“Because you came by that damn boat!” Social Grace blubbered. I cocked a brow, and he went on: “I got orders to check out a bunch of strange ponies that came into town on our boats! They’re our boats because only we have exclusive right to use them, I swear!”

“And what do you specifically do for Elkington?”

He swallowed. “I do whatever he asks me to, without question.” I watched with morbid fascination as all the blood vessels in his left eye burst, and he screamed. It was as if somepony had just boiled his eye in a pool of saltwater. He grunted furiously, failing to hide his pain. “And I’m... just doing my part... for the good fight.” He screamed as blood leaked from his tear ducts. Good Heavens, even Cards sounded less like a little girl than he did. “You-you s-said you’d...”

I waggled my hoof in front of his face. “Uh-uh-uh, I’m still a curious colt. So. Who else is working with Elkington?”

“I don’t know!” Head slammed against the glass. It cracked more and more, and I was actually hoping that he’d keep lying to me so I could do what I really wanted to do. I thought I could feel a breeze through some of the bigger cracks.

“Try that again.”

“I-I don’t! OPSEC and the need-to-know, dammit!”

“OPSEC?”

“Operations security! Silence means security! I don’t need to know, so I don’t know; makes sure bad guys like you—” Head slammed again, and blood flowed through the cracks.

“You realize that I’m the hero, right? You can tell, again, because I had the awesome one-liner. If I hadn’t had it, I’d be the bad guy here. But because I had the one-liner, I’m clearly the hero.” I lowered my voice and pressed my lips to his ear. “And the good guys always win. Why else am I one of them?” I went away from his ear, enjoying the sight of his body parts just breaking down before my eyes. For a moment, I wondered how horrible my life would be if I had a fear of blood; I’d probably be locked in the looney bin my whole life were it so. “Tell me what you do know, then.”

“That we’re the good guys!” he choked. “We’re the ones putting food on tables! We’re the ones putting smiles on sad faces! We’re the ones who build, not knock down!” He coughed more blood. “The monsters like you will be defeated. I owe my life to Elkington and the good fight, and I regret that I have but one life to pay him back with.”

“Does Elkington know my name?”

“Hell if I know. They didn’t tell me.”

“Does he know I’m in the Ritz?”

“I haven’t filed my field report yet! No!”

Good. I was still on the down-low enough, despite everything that happened today. I was just about to do something fun when somepony dragged themselves into the kitchen. Turning my head, I saw Cards, her eyes hollow, blood covering half her face, literally crawling into the kitchen. Four strips of the blue dress had been torn and woven into headbandages for the ear. I watched as she steadied herself against the doorway, using it to help herself get onto all fours.

“Goverment Boy...” she moaned, “it... it hurts...”

I steeled myself. Ich bin ein Mann aus Stahl... “I know, Cards,” I said in an utter monotone. Ich muss ein Mann aus Stahl sein. Sei ein Mann aus Stahl! I sighed, turning my attention back to Grace. “Why Cards? Why not me? Why did you try to hurt her?” I slammed his head. “Why her!?” I roared in his face.

A part of me couldn’t help but wonder if these sudden outbursts and attempts at raping me would have an adverse affect on my blood pressure. Yeah, I took as good care of myself as a pony wandering the world could, but I hadn’t been feeling too well lately, mostly because of having been lynched, had my legs torn to shreds, getting dead-legged, and almost being raped, but still.

“Because I... didn’t like the way you treated her,” Grace coughed, his other eye going bloodshot before my own eyes. “But she worked with you. I didn’t have a choice.” He sputtered and choked; it sounded like he was drowning. Pulmonary edema, I figured. He was already dead.

“And Elkington knows you’re with her right now?”

“Who else got me front-row tickets to Moderns Times.” Coughing, sputtered, hacking. He had a few minutes at absolute most because his lungs would have been filling with bloody fluids.

“Please...” Cards whispered, “don’t do what I think you’re gonna do, Government Boy.” I glanced at her, she stumbled onto the tiled kitchen floor. She look up at me and begged, “We’re the good guys. We can’t do that. Please!”

Was she arguing for Social Grace? I hesitated for a moment. Lightning Dust wasn’t here this time, and Cards already hated me. Risk versus reward. Cards lost. “Social Grace, do you have anything else to say?”

“Nothing...!”

“How about ‘goodbye’?” I asked.

“Wha’?” Grace tried, and then I shoved his head through the glass. It shattered as I threw him out. Time seemed to stand still as his eye locked me eyes, and I gave him a toothy grin. He held out a hoof to me as he fell. It was a long, long way down.

“Goodbye.” I laughed as I watched his body shrink almost out of sight and hit the pavement. My toothy grin was still on my face as I said to nopony in particular, “Oh, damn! I’ve always wanted to do that, spout a badass one-liner and then push somebody out of a tall window. It’s, like, always been a personal dream of mine. Plus, the one-liner reaffirmed my heroic status.” I looked at the window, more just of a giant hole now. “Wow. Equestrian windows are really poorly made. I mean, do they not yet have safety glass? The window just shattered into giant spears of glassy murder. If there had been a room on the other side of this glass, Grace would have just been horribly impaled to death.”

My vision poked off to the side, and I gasped. “Oh my God, a fish tank!” It was in the wall, separating two rooms, and a number of expensive-looking fish swam idly around. I trotted over to it. “Are these his fish?” Then I gasped in a high-pitched voice as I saw a black-and-white fish covered in spikes and spines. “You’re a lionfish; you’re highly venomous!” Another gasp as I saw a little eel hiding out in a rock. “An eel! I hate fish,” I cooed in a childlike voice. “Oh, I am going to kill all of you out of spite,” I went on, fishing around my bags for my crowbar.

Cards moaned. Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about her in my rush of fun. Forget? You’re a complete monster right about now. Her legs weren’t working, and she held herself up only by her arms. Tears stained her bloody face as she looked straight at me. Her lips trembled as if speaking, but nothing came out.

I walked up to the little mare who had been so strong so few minutes ago. “Cards,” I said softly, sitting down by her side.

“I... I want to go home,” she whispered. “I want to go home, I want to go to bed, I want to wake up to a dead-end job and work my shift with Glasses. B-but I’m a freak with a broken ear...”

Something snapped in my heart, and I reached out and embraced Cards in a hug, pressing her good ear against my breast. “It’s okay,” I cooed. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to help you stop Elkington, help you go home a hero, help get you a life back.” She tried to resist, break away from my embrace, but there was no strength in her. Instead, she hugged me back. “God, I’m so, so sorry, Cards. I’m sorry about your life, sorry about Glasses, sorry about insulting and making fun of you today, so, so, so sorry about your... your ear.” Everything would have just been so much damn easier if those things hadn’t happened. But what was done was done, there was no changing that, even if I could. Time traveling to fix things never worked out, anyways.

“Can you... can you fix it?” she asked with hopeful, moist eyes. “My ear, like you did with your broken leg? I-I could handle a needle through the b-bone If I...”

I hesitated for far too long. “No.”

“W-w-why not?”

Tell her the truth, or tell her a lie. Because I don’t have enough needles for you, only for me. Because I’m a greedy, selfish bastard whose own pain is worth more than yours. Because I don’t think they’d actually regrow missing parts of the body that have already clotted off so well. Dammit! I held her tighter. She looked at at me like a dying puppy. A cute, odd-hair-colored, ear-mutilated puppy. “Because I don’t think they’d help you at all here,” I said somewhat honestly. Another third option?

She didn’t reply. She only sulked into my chest. I shushed her like a father—no, like a big brother to his baby sister. God, what was wrong with me? I stroked her hair, my hoof going through both her clean hair and the hair matted with blood. She’d done a surprisingly good job with those impromptu dress-made headbandages.

“It’ll all be okay,” I told her, not sure if I believed it myself. It was just what I knew I should say. “It’ll all be okay, it’ll all be okay.” It was less for her now, more for myself. I hadn’t made the right choice with her, but I hadn’t made the wrong one, either. I had simply taken fate into my own hooves, and I had decided her fate was to be missing part of her ear. Were there even right choices anymore?

No, there were none. There were only the choices that best serviced me, and damned be he or she who was hurt by those choices. Damned be Cards, damned be Mister Welch, and damned be Equestria.

But at the end of the day, I was still the good guy, right?

And dammit! That lionfish was making funny faces at me! It needed to be murdered with a crowbar to the face.

|— ☩ —|

The slow crawl down the stairs took longer than the way up. There no longer was a sense of urgency; the vitamin-K had done its job perfectly, and her ear was no longer bleeding. The unconscious mare on my back was now permanently disfigured because of me, and that thought went through my head again and again like a broken record. I needed something to calm my nerves; ich war und bin ein Mann aus Stahl.

In the empty stairwell, I could hear every little sound as I selected an album to play before putting the earbuds in. Das Weiße Licht, a little song about the white light, played into my ears. Could Cards even use earbuds now? Of course she could, don’t be silly. Her ear canals still exist, after all. Headphones might be somewhat uncomfortable, though.

Each step took an eternity, even with the song playing at almost deafening levels. I banished all thoughts of Cards from my mind, focusing on and even singing under my breath the song.

“Hörst du die Engel singen?

Spürst du die sanften Schwingen?”

No, song. I didn’t hear the angels singing; the one I knew simply pointed me in the right directions. No, song. I didn’t feel the soft wings. I reminded myself that Celestia was going to be here soon, and just how much I wanted to see a living fairy tale, a living Märchen, before my very eyes. The song went on through the chorus, the singer certainly one of my all-time favorites. If I ever got back to Teutschland, I had to see if the band had more albums, and hopefully they hadn’t perished during the Dark Crusade; if they had, I’d deal with a few months of depression. In the meanwhile, I just kept walking.

“Hat sich das Leiden nicht gelohnt?” the song asked as I stepped onto my room’s floor. It roughly meant, ‘Wasn’t the suffering worth it?’ To answer that, I needed to ask Cards. I was ein Mann aus Stahl; I didn’t feel, didn’t suffer. But at least that lionfish had been brutally, brutally murdered.

The song went on as I opened my room’s door. With a sigh, I switched the record player off and took out my earbuds. Rather that go into the room to the left, which had a bed for Cards, I instead brought her into the bathroom. I wetted some rags and tried to clean her bloody face, even got out this herbal salve I had and gently applied it to her ear in the hopes of hastening the healing time. She grumbled and moaned, but didn’t wake up; she must have had a special talent for falling asleep during stressful situations.

Gently as could be, I carried her into the next room and set her on one of the two single beds. Like a good brother to his little sister, I tucked her in and made sure she had enough pillows before slinking out of the room.

I set myself down in the middle of the red couch and sighed really hard. With a little fumbling into my packs, I pulled out a bottle filled with a clear liquid, followed up by a crystal shot glass. “Damn these Equestrian ponies,” I muttered, “they drive me to drink.” A glass poured and a glass downed at once later and I was leaning lazily back into the backrest. “Ahhhhh, Wodka.”

Somepony opened up a door. Looking up, I saw Lightning Dust standing in the doorway to her room. I should’ve given Cards the bigger room; the injured mare needed it more. Something about Dust’s eyes were wrong—and was she trying to give me a come hither look?

“Something up?” I asked, a little voice in my head screaming at me to grab a weapon.

“It will be soon,” she purred with a wink, and my hair stood on end. I felt oddly poofy. The mare took slow steps towards me, an exaggerated swing to her hips that made me reach for my sword. Something was wrong, wrong, wrong. I saw that her eyes were red, and there was a slightly tremble to her steps.

My bag was open, and I put a magic grip on Cards’ baton to reaffirm myself it was there. It’d been put there because I didn’t know how she’d carried it with her in the first place. I sat up and asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever you want it to,” Dust giggled, and I gritted my teeth. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

I didn’t move. “Lightning Dust, what’s wrong?”

Her eyes twitched several times. “Oh, just a cold bed.” And then she was standing in front me, just on the other side of the little glass table before the couch. I narrowed my eyes as she said, “So, why not just c-c-come here, cutie?”

“No,” I said coldly.

“Yes,” she said, her eye twitched harder as she took a step towards me. “I know you want to.”

“No.”

“Lies. I know you do, I know I do,” she giggled like a schoolfilly, walking around the table.

“Lightning Dust,” I warned. “What’s wrong?”

“Come. Here,” she demanded in an authoritative voice, pointing down at the ground.

“No. And besides, you’re not really wearing the appropriate getup for this. The least you could do if you’re trying this is dress up in stocking and a really skimpy pair of panties—either red or black because I like those colors.” I shook my head. “But, even then, I’m not even in the mood.”

A memory from years back flashed through my head and my mouth decided to just run wild. “I mean, you can’t tell me that you haven’t been in such a situation before: Your boyfriend gets home, and you walk out of the bedroom, dolled up in your sexiest lingerie,” I spouted, and Dust just tilted her head in confusion. “But I—I mean, he looks at you, sighs, and goes, ‘I’m sorry, but... but not now.’ And he said it because he had a long day working on a particular case and just got out of a short stay in the hospital because he just caught a serial killer and the killer didn’t go down without an axe-fight.”

“What are you...?”

I sighed. “In short, no. In long, I have a headache.”

“Stop talking and come here!” the mare commanded.

“Eh,” I groaned.

“Come. Here.”

“I have a headache.”

“I. Said. COME HERE!” she roared, pulling out a pipe wrench taped to a spade head from... somewhere. Then she charged. Was that the same damn tool that drunken mare was ranting about? Where’d Dust get it?

“Sit down,” I said calmly, bashing her upside the head with the baton and knocking her onto the couch. Her weapon clattered to the floor as I grabbed her arms and twisted them behind her back, holding her against the couch. “Now, care to tell me why you’ve gone and entered psycho town all of the sudden?”

She thrashed and fought against me, and Dust was a tough girl, but my grip was tougher. “Eat shit! I know what you’re doing! You’re trying to kill me! Kill Cards! You lie, lie, lie! There is no Toy’s Land or wherever you’re from, only the lies of a murderer! Well, fuck you, I’ll kill you first!”

“What,” I deadpanned.

“You don’t want me to write that story! You don’t want me to do anything! Well, fuck you and the train you rode in on, because I’m writing those stories, and I’m stayin’ alive!”

Chausiku’s words echoed through my head. “Alpha enervation affects the mind. Causes aggression, loss of reasoning and generally impaired judgment, paranoia, schizophrenia—mental trauma! Brain hemorrhages! Aneurysms! Something!”

“Fuck you!” she screamed into the couch cushion. “Fuck you and fuck the Wonderbolts and fuck Rainbow Dash and fuck everypony! I’m no two-Bit, flank-spanking whore you can just boss around and control! I’m Lightning Dust, I’m a damn reporter—I’m gonna write that story, I’m gonna succeed in life for fucking once, and I’ll be fucking damned if anypony stands in my way!”

“Must you be so vulgar?” I asked, shaking my head. “It doesn’t make you edgy or cool; it just make yourself sound so childish when you swear like that.”

“Eat my cunt out!” she shouted, flapping her wings like mad. Yet another thing I had to pin down. Damn pegasi and their extra limbs and slightly different bone and muscular structure to account for them.

I sighed, rubbing my nose. “Great. Just... just great. The Princess Vulvaria of Vulgaria has gone psycho and is trying to kill me. Fantastic!”

Lightning Dust proceeded to spout off an incredibly creative rant utilizing more curse words than I was sure even existed. I had no idea you could combine “a dishtowel”, “Nightmare Moon”, and “exactly seven gallons of industrial lubricant” together like that. And I was pretty sure that Princess Celestia wasn’t into that kind of thing, because it was part of her job to never put out. I felt my eyebrows singe and the overwhelming urge to take a shower as she finished her tirade.

So I did the only thing I could think of: I grabbed her by the back of her head and slammed her face into the wall. Then grabbing her face, I thrust her head off the couch and into the carpet. A tear rolled down her cheek as I dragged body away from both table and couch.

Pinning her down, I asked, “Any better now?” She coughed. “Because I really, really just don’t want to fight or kill anymore today. I really don’t. There’s been enough violence, killing, and bleeding for one day, Lightning Dust. Please,” I begged, “please don’t make me have to hurt you. I don’t want to kill you; I want you to write that article, I want to leave you happier off than before you met me.” Because a hero has to make lives better, not worse. And if I wasn’t a hero, what was I? “Please!”

Dust blinked hard, scrunching up her eyes and grunted. When she opened her eyes, they looked softer, less murderous. “G-GB?” she asked.

“Last time I checked,” I replied with a smile.

She shakily reached up her hoof to my face. The soft look died. “You sonofa—!” Head slammed. Brain damage probably caused.

“Squirrel!” I hissed.

Dust gasped, closing her eyes even harder. “Daddy,” she whispered, “w-why is Mommy crying?” Her eyes moistened as I just stared down at her, baffled. “D-daddy?”

I searched for something to say. “She’s... she’s crying because—” I thought for a moment “—because some crazy pony killed her pet lionfish with a crowbar, but he was clearly a hero because he said ‘Now who’s king of the jungle?’ before killing it.”

She sniffled, gritting her teeth as she opened her eyes. When our eyes met, her teeth chattered like she was freezing. “Why does my head hurt?” she groaned.

I ignored the question. “Hey, you still planning on writing that story about the dark magics shop?” She nodded. “Because I’ve got another story.” And I gave her the short version of the what happened tonight after I’d left the mare on her own. “Does that sound like one heck of an interesting story?”

“Yeah,” she muttered, “it does.” Dust smiled up at me, a decidedly out-of-it, disoriented look in her eyes. “Did I tell you you hadvepretty eyes? Be-because you totally do. I just thought you should—you should know that.” Her own eyes rolled up and her body slumped.

Standing up, I watched her body for a few seconds, as if the enervation was about to turn her into a zombie. I had had enough of zombies during the Dark Crusade, and I certainly hadn’t seen any necromantic spore clouds, but at least I was inoculated against catching it. Still, I poked her a few times to make sure she wouldn’t jump up and start biting me.

Secure in the knowledge that she wouldn’t bite me, I picked her up and brought her back to her bed. I also took the liberty of tying Dust to the bed with leather belts in case she got any funny ideas. Something about the idea of the naked pegasus tied to a hotel bed put funny-haha thoughts into my mind. Shaking my head, I left the room and closed the door.

I reclined back into the couch after taking note of the dent in the wall. That was coming out of my pocket, wasn’t it? Sighing, I poured myself another shot and quickly downed it. A fire in my belly, I set about the dangerous task of thinking today over.

Farmhouses, falcons, riverboats, statues, dogs, a city without walls, this hotel, Chausiku, enervation, almost getting raped, Cards losing an ear, enervation affecting Dust. It was a lot to digest.

Another glass poured. I held the glass up and swirled the liquid around it. I thought back to that mare mentioned in Doctor Dome’s coronary report, and it reminded me of the poppet Jeepers had used. That dead mare must have been Lightning Dust’s reporter friend; had she been used as a test subject for becoming a poppet? Because that poppet looked like it’d once been alive, though her friend was a pegasus, not a unicorn... Would that have been Lightning Dust’s fate if I hadn’t shown up, to become a hollow monster or just a terrifying corpse?

Then there was the Miasmatische Trübung. No effect on me, but it affected Dust. Was the response delayed, like being slowly poisoned to death by languidly increasing doses over time? I didn’t know enough about witchcraft to speculate much there. And if there was enervation in Sleepy Oaks, but only in concentrated pockets, it might explain why some ponies were worse off than others, I thought. And what if Dust was still a paranoid, violent wreck in the morning...?

I touched my sword for comfort, deciding not to down the third shot glass. Elkington knew neither my name or whereabouts, but odds were that he knew what I looked like. Thank God I brought multiple outfits to wear. Still, Elkington might have had political strength and manpower, but I still held the advantage; I could pick and choose my battles, he could not.

My legs did me no end of woe, itching under their bandages. The left leg was only slightly less cut up now, but that didn’t do me too good. The pierced hoof was doing fine enough for now, but if I got into too many more hooffights, that wouldn’t last long. Before I thought any more, I set about redressing with the wound with fresh bandages, the old ones sullen and orange-red in color.

Tomorrow, I was sure, Duke Elkington was going to die. That thought, that commitment, alone was enough of a fire in my eyes and stomach to make me smile. Ding dong, the Duke is dead. The only problem was figuring out how I’d get close to the Duke. I stood up and walked over to the window, looking out at the city. Tomorrow, the dragon would fall. Tomorrow, I would get to the bottom of this mystery... Tomorrow, I could help Dust get that story and then some, assuring her a great career and reputation in the journalistic field. Tomorrow... I could help Cards get back her old life, give her some semblance of comfort before we inevitably parted ways.

I went back to the couch and took my hat off, placing it on the table. Deep breaths, me, deep breaths. I eased myself into the couch, lying on my back. Sleep came easy enough. It was a good night’s sleep.

It was so good because I did not dream. It was made better with the knowledge that all the waffles had been incinerated.

Author's Note

Footnote: Level up

New Perk Added: Improvised Weapon Skill — Years locked up in Adventurer Prison have made you a master of unconventional weapons. Protip: the point of this perk is to see how many different things you can kill people with!

After writing the Cherrypillar’s scene, I learned there was an actual pony with her name. So, uh, just presume that sometimes ponies have the same name, okay? Other than that, this chapter also caught a case of chapter cancer, refusing to let me stop writing until this chapter was well and truly ready.

Comments are craved desperately! I’ll lick your feet, I’ll wear a collar, I’ll do anything for a ~~dollar~~ comment.

Chapter 12 — Smile

Chapter 12: Smile

“... what just happened? Meet somepony new, check. Introduce myself, check. Sing random song outta nowhere, check. Become instant best friends... uncheck. I don’t get it.”

Morning.

The sun peeked over the edge of the world and into the little room, bathing in light the little white mare with the black-with-red-streaks mane. She scrunched her nose as she let out a little moan. With all the silence of a gaggle of strangled geese, her bruised eyelids slowly slid open. Red eyes stared up at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity, the black pupils languidly expanding and contracting.

“Great,” she muttered. “I always wake up before the sex-tastic good parts.” Her nose scrunched up again, and her eyes darted to her right and met my eyes. Her face went blank as she tried to suppress a look of horror and a vague blush.

Let’s just ignore that little comment, shall we?

“Howdy,” I greeted softly. “How are you feeling?” She didn’t respond, only gritted her teeth and looked away. “Cards, are you hungry?” The mare glanced at me, and I held out a little porcelain bowl.

“Wha’...?” was all she managed.

“It’s a bowl of honey-glazed carrots,” I said with a smile. “Still warm, and I put a fork in it for you.”

“I like honey,” Cards muttered. She looked down at herself.

“I had hoped. This morning, see, I went out to the market to pick up some things to cook because I don’t trust this hotel’s chef, what with their use of lying waffles.” A hefty silence filled the room. For the record, the elephant in the room could go sodomize himself with a particularly prickly porcupine. “How’s your ear?”

Cards sniffled and bit her hoof. “Fine.”

“Does it hurt?”

“N-no.” I watched the muscles at the base of her ear flex, and she let out a shrill squeak. “Yes...”

I sighed, rubbing my nose. “Back there in Grace’s room, you said that you didn’t care if you died. That true?”

She looked to the window. “When I was younger, I-I once overheard a conversation Mom was having with her sister. She said... ‘My vagina’s a hole only disappointments come into and only disappointments come from.’” I don’t know whether to laugh or offer sympathies. “So what do you think happens to me when you kill the only pony who was ever really a friend in life?”

“I can understand that.” I offered her the bowl again. “But you’re not going to give his death any meaning if you don’t eat something. Just because I often forget to eat doesn’t give you that right. Come on, sit up.” I helped her up and gave her the bowl.

“This is... good,” she mumbled, digging into the dish.

I tilted my head and smiled. “Well, I try to play against stereotypes, which is why, as a male, I must know how to cook really well.” Reaching into my coat, I pulled out the Colt Steelcrafts shortsword. She warily eyed me as I set the blade onto the bed. “A baton works for some things, but swords are nice. I like mine because it has a pointy end.” My eyes flicked upwards for a moment. “I mean, yeah, I stole it from a museum, but it’s just a superb weapon that laughs at light armor and scoffs at cover. Plus, that museum dressed like a slut and totally had it coming.” Stay on topic. “In any case, I thought this would help you.”

“I don’t know how to use a sword,” she said slowly. “They only taught me how to use things like batons. I’m a deputy, not a soldier.”

“Well, it’s not much different. Sure, the weight distribution is a bit different and you can stab and slice with this, but same style in practice.”

Cards looked down. “I don’t want to use a sword.”

“Why not? My sword and I are practically one, I’ve used it for so long. I’m sure you and this one will get along just fine. Also, if you want to be a hero, you generally should use a sword. I can’t say why, but unless your name is Jan Makkabäer Pendergast and you’re out hunting vampires and uniting a shattered kingdom, heroes should typically use swords. It’s just one of those rules.”

She affixed me with a surprisingly hostile look. “I don’t want to use a sword,” the mare glowered, venom dripping off every word. “I don’t want to cut ponies up like you, don’t want to stab them, hack them, disembowel them, or anything. I’m happy with a baton. I don’t want to kill ponies.”

I bowed my head. “Yes, of course. Keep the sword, though. Never know when one might come in handy for other reasons.” Cards opened her mouth to protest, but I interjected with, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask: do you think socks are hot?”

Instantly, her white face went redder than the red in her mane. The mare’s red eyes almost vanished as her pupils frantically expanded and contrasted, her breath slowing, becoming shallower and shallower until she finally hiccuped. “Wh-why do you ask?”

A casual shrug. “Because back when your father came to your house, I hid under your bed and found, aside from that rather creepy porno magazine with the pegasi, socks. Black-with-red-stripes socks, too.”

Cards gave me a face that would have really failed her at poker night, which was surprising, given her self-proclaimed affinity for card games. I could go for a game of Einundzwanzig right about now. She looked about ready to grab a pickaxe and dig a hole through the floor just to escape my blank look. Slowly, very slowly, she grabbed the blankets and dragged them over her head.

“I can still see you,” I said flatly.

“No, you can’t,” she squeaked, then hiccuped. “I can’t see you, so you can’t see me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I only ask because this question has really been bothering me. I mean, they’re socks, not erotic undergarments, and you Equestrians rarely seem to even wear overgarments as is. By the Machine Spirit, you’re all nude, yet your dirty magazines are just ponies in socks. Well, maybe more, but that’s all I saw before I got terrified and nosed the book shut. Why did you even have that?” She hiccuped. “That doesn’t help me. If I went out right now and came back wearing a—what are they called? Speedos?—if I came back wearing a speedo and sunglasses, would you feel any better? Because the only socks I have are very plain and are worn under boots, which I am not wearing.” A pause. “Hey, did you pack your socks in your bag? The bag’s right here and I could pull them out for you.”

Her little head slid out from the side of the bed ever so slowly. She reached out her hooves, grabbed her bag, and slowly slunk back under the safety of her covers. “No,” Cards said weakly.

“Hmm,” I hummed, putting a hoof to my chin. “I suppose where I’m from, the fetish gear is so, err, provocative because it exists to accentuate the parts of the girl we tend to sexualize: thighs, haunches, loins, the whole region.” I frowned. “Does that mean you tend to sexualize hooves?” A wave of horror overtook me. “Does that mean that holding hooves is like third base to you? Oh God, this morning I saw a little colt and filly holding hooves—does that mean what I think it now does? I think I’m going to be sick...

“Actually, then, how would the concept of ‘sex sells’ work for Equestria? I mean, the knowledge that objectifying mares will make your product sell better is, like, an equation ponykind has known since we first realized that our erections weren’t snakes. Ignoring, of course, how ‘sex sells’ actually doesn’t really work, since people tend to forget anything but the sexy part. So maybe that means you don’t have that problem. Hmm.”

Cards eeped as she curled into a little ball. And unless Cards had suddenly turned into a nautilus (a very disturbing thought), she was stroking her tail and rocking back and forth while mumbling “It’ll all be okay” to herself over and over again.

As I was about to continue my series of thinking-out-loud, somepony in the room over screamed. “Well, Lightning Dust’s awake,” I sighed. “I’ll go see to her. Get some rest, alright? And give your socks a rest, too, because I’m beginning to suspect why you have them.”

The trek across the suite wasn’t long, and soon I was in the master bedroom. Lightning Dust twisted against her bonds, unable to move. She kicked her legs and uselessly flapped her wings. Then she saw me and cried out, “GB, what’s going on?”

“So, you don’t remember last night?” I asked, walking up to her bedside.

She bit her lip, no longer struggling. A look of horror washed over features, her eyes widening. “I... I... you and I, we...” Dust swallowed. “I tried to...”

I nodded slowly. “Yes, you did.” She hung her head, eyes wide. “But I will admit, you are a fast, fast, and not half bad writer.” Dust have me a hesitant look as I pulled out a newspaper from my bag. I tossed it onto the bed. “It’s today’s edition of the Cloudsdale Post. Front cover article, ‘Songnam Scare’, by Lightning Dust. Even has a few photos, odd considering I didn’t know you had a camera. Not bad. Talks about the gruesome scenes tastefully, the dark arts going down, and questions the intents of the killer in such a way that doesn’t present him as evil.”

“I... I woke up without anyone, wrote some things down, flew over and got some pics, finished it up, and hired a courier to take it to Cloudsdale fast.” Nocturnal mail? “After that, things got—” she hesitated “—blurry.”

Pulling up a chair, I sat down next to the bed. “And now I’m pretty sure your editor isn’t with Elkington,” I said, and she looked at some infinitely fascinating bit of her belly. “I had some suspicions of that when you said she threw out your friend’s article, but now that doesn’t seem very likely.” I smiled. “Or perhaps multiple counts of equicide mixed with dark magic is just really hot stuff, since everypony I saw looked to be reading it. Oh, and I looked through the comics; they weren’t very funny. There was this one comic whose punchline was that zebras have stripes. It was very stupid and I died a little inside.”

I went to work untying her and getting my belts back. The first thing she did with her freedom was pick up the paper and read through her article, her grasp a bit shaky. So, alpha enervation’s mental effects weren’t necessarily instantaneous nor necessarily irreversible, it seemed. I wondered how Sleepy Oaks was handling things, and whatever that thing in the swamps was that Elkington was so apprehensive of in that Voixson.

My guess? Some sort of mystical artifact that was generating enervation, which actually made a lot of sense. Maybe a meteorite. Stranger things have happened in my life alone. The question then became what Elkington wanted with it, since good guys didn’t typically employ dark magic (or magic at all in my part of the globe).

“For the record,” I said, murdering the silence with a rubber doggie door, “it’s pronounced Teutschland, not ‘Toy’s Land’. It is a very real place, although very different from Equestria.” Dust looked at my chest, visibly gritting her teeth. “I get the feeling that those things you accused me of weren’t created then and there. In fact, I get the feeling that the enervation merely magnified fears you might have actually had until you were willing to murderously act upon them, no?”

“I... I don’t and didn’t really think those things,” she sighed sadly, still not looking me in the eye. “I mean, I’ve never heard of, uh, Teutschland, but I’m sure it’s a real place.”

“When you think of evil, really evil, what do you think about?”

She fumbled for an answer. “Well,” Dust said in a hesitant voice, “I think of Nightmare Moon, who wanted to block out the sun and bring an eternal night. O-or Discord, who wanted absolute chaos to reign supreme over the land. Those are sorta really evil.”

I smiled. “Back in Teutschland, those nightmares of yours? We wish we had it so good. The abominations the Reich fights are such horrors that the mere word ‘evil’ no longer conveys the sheer unadulterated vileness, the incomprehensibly malignant cancer of reality that we exist to stop, that we exist to protect you from.”

A hefty silence filled the air. Dust sat up, a pensive look on her face. I looked at her, the window, then settled on the door. This wasn’t going to be an easy morning, was it? It was shaping up to be a very serious, very boring morning where nothing productive got done, wasn’t it? Well, screw that notion. I wasn’t about to just sit and chat when there were things to do.

“Cards is in the other room and part of her ear is now missing,” I said curtly.

She blinked. “What?”

“Yeah, I forgot to explain that so well last night.” I shrugged. “In any case, she’s over in the other room and she’s probably trying to sift through some pretty serious mental stuff that I’m not qualified to deal with. You should talk to her, because I’ve got a holiday event thingy to ruin today.” I stood up and stretched my legs. “So, I’m going to get going—”

“What about me?” she interjected. “What should I do?”

I shot her an annoyed look. “I’d hoped it would have involved girl talk stuff with Cards in the other room. Why? What would you like to do?”

Dust sputtered out something unintelligible. She tried to speak again, the result not dissimilar. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “I want to help.”

Too bad I made today’s plans under the assumptions that you’d still be murderous in the morning. “Help how?” And I’m too lazy to really change those plans.

She ran a hoof through her mane. “I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you could write a story about Grace’s death,” I offered. “Songnam Security is all over the penthouse suite and they’ve cordoned off the part of the streets where Grace fell. They’re seriously trying to keep his death under wraps, probably don’t want to let yet another death get into the papers.” I smirked. “It is their office to reassure, ours to unsettle.”

Dust licked her teeth and hesitated. “So. You don’t want me to, like, work side-by-side today like we did last night?” Her ears sagged, an almost dejected look on her face.

“Well, no. Really, I think you and Cards can figure things out today. You don’t need me to micromanage your every movement or anything. I mean, it’s not like you need me in order to function, right?”

“No, of course not,” she said in a solemn tone. Dust twiddled her hooves and idly kicked her legs over the bedside. The mare took a long breath and closed her eyes.

“Good. So, I go out and do whatever while you be a reporter and do stuff with Cards. Sound like a plan?”

Then, all of the sudden, she opened her eyes and flashed me a winning smile. “You betcha, GB! A-after all, it’s why we’re working together and stuff: save the day and get those winning stories, right?”

I smiled back at her as I walked out of the room. “I’m glad we had this talk, and gladder yet that you agree.” I closed her bedroom door and sighed. “This will in no way come back to haunt me,” I said to myself, knowing full well it was wrong but not finding it within me to care. A moment later and I knocked on her door and told her, “Don’t come out, I want to change and I’d rather you not see me naked.”

Game, set, match. I sat down on the floor by the couch and put my bags in front of me. Outfit selected. A few adjustments later and I was taking off my shirt and duster. Because I was feeling unnecessarily dramatic, I let the coat and shirt slowly slide down my now-naked back. That’s about when I heard a toilet flush, a door open, and turned my head to see Lightning Dust poke her head out of her room. Did she even wash her hooves?!

“Uh, I’m sorry, did you say something?” she asked. She blinked at me.

“Yes,” I said in a calm voice. “I told you to stay in your room because I was changing, and in my culture, it is considered highly indecent to be seen without your clothes on. Mostly because it has a highly sexual context. So because you ladies had the bedrooms and I didn’t think Cards was going to be leaving her bed anytime soon, I told you to stay put.” I turned around. “So, please, step out of the room so I can change my underwear.”

Dust looked at my chest, her eyes lingering there. I cocked a brow and asked, “See something you like?”

“I-I-I—” She ducked back into her room, nearly slammed the door.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I muttered, and fully changed.

|— ☩ —|

“Well, I’m decent,” I called out, adjusting my tie. Dust opened the door and, with a doe-like look, poked her head out through the crack. An odd part of me speculated how easy it’d be to just slam the door and break her neck, for some reason. “So, how do I look?”

She stepped out of the room. “Um, sharp.”

I winked at her. “In this suit, I’m looking so sharp that I cut myself and have to go to a mental hospital because I keep hurting myself, but the sexy hurts so good.”

Dust hummed. “Well, maybe it doesn’t look so sharp. Needs a grindstone.”

“Aww, but I thought I looked so good in it.”

“Yeah, I’m having second thoughts about that now.”

“But a moment ago you were speaking so highly of it,” I said in a tone of mock offense. “I thought you liked my suit.”

She poked her nose up. “I am a mare. I reserve the right to be inconsistent.”

I laughed. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” She smiled awkwardly at me, and I returned the expression. I put my bags on and said, “Well, I’m off to save the day. You go off and do what you want.” I made for the door.

“Wait,” she said weakly. Dust tapped a hoof to her breast. “What was that thing?”

A shrug. “’Tis something the likes of which your tongue has no exact word for. Think of it as a symbolic self-mutilation of sorts.”

“L-like how you have no tail?” she asked, and I nodded. “How is that even possible?”

I smirked. “With some fire, some blades, and a lot of time unable to sit down. It’s standard practice whenever one joins either law enforcement or the military. Both mutilations are warrior traditions of a sort, if you want to think of it like that.” I shifted my weight. “Oh, and we consider the tail somewhat effeminate. Girls have tails, real stallions have none because they’re in the Federal Service.” The smirk on my face got dumber. “That’s why our word for tail, der Schwanz, often refers to a stallion’s bits in that context.”

“Oh...” She rubbed the back of her neck.

“So if I ever talk about my tail in a way that refers to it not being gone, I’m just importing slang.”

Dust blinked. “You’re... kind of weirding me out right now.”

“Hey, don’t judge,” I said amicably, then my expression and tone grew dark. “I’ve seen you naked. I know how you are.”

She looked at her own body. “But I am naked. Right now.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Uh, normal,” she replied, sticking out her leg.

“I thought so,” I said darkly, moving to the bathroom. “Now then,” I chirped in a now-bubbly tone, “I’m going to go brush my teeth this morning, then I’m going to set off. Have fun, okay?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Oh! And since this little suite has a stove, I made some breakfast. Try some. Cards seemed to like it.” I smiled, pointing to a steaming pot.

|— ☩ —|

The streets around the back side of the Ritz had been cordoned off something fierce. Elkington must have been on high alert. Ignoring them as they ignored me, I just looked down at the map I’d bought earlier. How the hell had it taken me so long just to get a local map? The paper showed me the street layout and important places, but I still had to scribble little notes onto it, like “The Ritz” and “Dark Magic Shop” where I thought it’d be relevant. It wasn’t as if the map would tell me the names of these places itself.

Pausing for a moment, I noted the location of the Duke’s castle in relation to the Ritz. It was at the center of an area called “Old Town”, next to the Security Headquarters and the Songnam Ducal Museum of History. It wasn’t a very close walk, but it wasn’t a very far one, either.

“Leave her alone!” a squeaky voiced yelled from down an alley I was standing by. Some nasally sounding filly simply laughed in response.

“Hmm?” I hummed, looking over my map and down the alley. Shaking my head, I folded the map up and put it in a bag. If this involved somepony’s cat, I was going to throw rocks at the cat until it came down, then ransom it off to its owner in exchange for waffles that weren’t evil. Nevertheless, I casually strolled down the alley.

“Ah, wassa matter, nerdy girl?” the nasal-voiced filly mocked.

Turning a corner, I saw three fillies, none of them facing my particular direction. The bigger one snickered with the nasally voice. On the other hoof, the other two... A little gray filly with a light-blue mane and glasses was curled up on the dark concrete, crying as she clutched thin pile of comicbooks. Her friend, a rather flimsy-looking white earther with pink hair, looked to be trying to comfort her friend.

“Just go away!” Flimsy shouted at Nasal.

Nasal seemed to find it incredibly funny to instead grab Flimsy. “Oh, so you think you’re so tough, do ya? Listen here, dweeb, nerd girl here and yaself really shouldn’t’ve crossed me.”

“But we didn’t! All we said was—”

“Shut up! Just shut your mouth!” Nasal hissed. “Here’s how it’s gonna work, ya listenin’?” Something tapped her shoulder, and she jerked her head back with a flippant, “What?!” Nasal blinked, and her eyes made the long, long hike up to my smiling face.

“Howdy there, little Miss,” I said. “Now, see, I dare think that you should stop that right now and let these nice youngs girls be on their way.”

“Y-yeah? Well, who are you?! ’S not like you can hit me or anything.”

I adjusted my tie. “As it happens to be, I am a stallion whose primary job in life appears to be punishing the wicked and evil, and generally being a good samaritan. And for that matter, I’m not even an Equestrian: diplomatic immunity to your laws.” I don’t think that works unless you’re an actual diplomat. “So, here’s the deal: you scamper away with your tail between your legs and leave these fillies alone forever, or I’ll burn your goddamn house down and frame you for arson and then stab your parents with fruit. Trust me, I can and will do it, because I just really disdain schoolyard bullies. And believe you me when I tell you that I’ve been doing bad things to bad ponies since long before you were but a drunken glint on the eyes of one of several potential fathers.” My polite smile took a level up the psych-o-meter as I pulled out and lit a match. “So, do we have a deal?”

Nasal swallowed, then scampered away with her tail between her legs like a constipated weiner dog. I shook the match out and smiled at the fillies. “Ah, I do so love making arrogant, pompous ponies wet themselves and run away. Did she hurt you?”

Flimsy shook her head. “N-no, not much. Uh, thanks for, uh, saving us and, uh, stuff.” She pawed nervously at the ground. “Um...” She quickly held out a hoof to me. “I’m Cotton Candy, and my friend is, uh, Written Word.”

I accepted her little hoof. Equestrian names really sound silly. I should consider stabbing their parents. “Pleased to meet you, pleased to help you. Mind telling me what that was all about?”

Written word sniffled and stood up. “She thinks we’re nerds ’cause I like comics.” Taking one in her mouth, she held it out to me. I picked it up and looked at it. Mare-Do-Well. Huh. I offered it back to her, and she put it and the others in her backpack. “But comics are cool,” she said defensively. “I mean, Mare-Do-Well is awesome!”

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“You don’t know who Mare-Do-Well is?” Written Word gasped. “She’s totally based on this true story from this small town a while back, and then she vanished without a trace! It was so cool and mysterious that this mare from Canterlot Comics—”

“Sugar Cane. Her name is Sugar Cane,” Cotton Candy offered. And with a proud smile ,she called, “She’s my aunt!”

“Yeah, yeah!” Written Word enthused. “Long story short, Mare-Do-Well now has her own awesome comicbook series and stalks the night and fights crime and evil and bad guys!”

I chuckled, a warmth in my heart. “Sounds awesome.” I dropped my tone to a conspiratorial murmur. “You know, I too like comicbooks.”

Their eyes widened as they asked in unison, “Really?”

Reaching into my bag, I pulled out a well-read little book. “Kapitän Teutschland,” I said with a nostalgic smile, showing them the cover. It depicted three ponies standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a semi-circle, while a dark figure menaced them from the side and an army of demons, magi, and Nippönischen—the White Legion—charged them from all sides.

With a knowing, eager grin, Kapitän Teutschland looked out at the reader, the black, white, and red colors of his uniform slightly tarnished from dust and scratches. His hoof and shield looked ready for a fight to the very end. To the Kapitän’s left was a pegasus stallion clad in a black uniform, a sword in his mouth. He was Chancellor de Gaulle, legendary elected leader of Teutschlands, and King Viktor’s right hand. The last stallion was a white unicorn with blond hair and hazel eyes, a cocky look on his face as he exclaimed, “Kerls, wollt ihr ewig leben?!” A Teutschfalke charged at the White Legion as the unicorn, King Viktor, readied for a fight.

Why were two legendary leaders and Kapitän Teutschland teaming up to fight the White Legion and Waltharius? Because it was awesome! Shut up. It made sense in context, somehow. Who didn’t want to see King Viktor spouting off badass one-liners and cracking witty jokes as he battled the Emperor of Nippön for the fate of democracy? Who didn’t want to see de Gaulle play the straight guy to Viktor’s wit as the Chancellor beats magi to death? And who honestly didn’t want to see Kapitän Teutschland beating up the greatest threat to freedom and liberty alongside those two? Well, I sure as hell wanted to see that!

I’m such a nerd.

“Whoa...” the fillies crooned.

“Hey!” Cotton Candy exclaimed. “Do you wanna meet Aunt Sugar Cane? She’s staying with us this week and my parents are out of the house for a weird grown-up thing.”

I chuckled. “Look, I’ve got places—”

They both grabbed my arm and tried pulling me with them. God, they were so cute I couldn’t say no! So, that’s how my day pretty much got derailed right from the start.

|— ☩ —|

Just as I had suspected, Sugar Cane was a big fat hermaphrodite with a flock-of-seagulls manecut and only one nostril. I hated it when I was right. Wait, no, that’s just a coat hanging on a mop. The fillies dragged me through the door as Cotton Candy shouted, “Aunty Sugar Cane! Aunty Sugar Cane!”

“Something up?” a mare called back across the house.

“Yeah, we’re back,” Written Word replied. “And we brought a friend.”

I looked down the little hallway at the staircase leading up to the second story (as if it’d actually lead anywhere else). Speaking of which, the plain white walls almost hurt my eyes to look at. I needed to play Super Interior Designer before I left this place.

“Really now? Who is she?”

“Ya mean, who is he?”

A light-blue mare poked her head out from distant doorway and said in a teasing tone, “Oh, so you’ve got a new... boyfriend...?”

I bowed my head. “So sorry to bother you, Miss Sugar Cane, but this was entirely their idea, and protest though I did, they were too strong for me. What do you feed them? Spinach?”

“Um...” the mare stammered, looking between the fillies and me.

“This is our new friend!” Cotton Candy proudly proclaimed. “He saved us from some nasty bully who tried to ruin your comicbooks, and we thought it’d be so cool if you two met each other because you’ve been complaining about being so lonely recently and—”

“Cotton!” Sugar Cane snapped, blushing. “You’re not to supposed to repeat the things I say when I get drunk and start babbling!” She looked at me, nibbling on her lip. “So, uh, are you looking for something? You seem very, err, sharply dressed.”

“Well, I have a suit and will travel,” I said. “Pretty much means I can do any job.”

“I, uh,” she stammered, then sighed.

The little fillies pulled me down the hall. “C’mon, Mister!” Cotton Candy said. “Auntie Sugar Cane, did we tell you that he isn’t an Equestrian?”

“Hello,” I greeted as the little girls pulled me past Sugar Cane and into a quaint sunlit kitchen. Did I mention how insistent these girls were? Because they readily forced me into a little wooden chair sitting by a plain wooden table covered with pieces of paper. I looked at the paper and saw sketches and outlines and empty dialogue bubbles. Curious, I reached over and grabbed a page.

Sugar Cane cleared her throat. I looked up from the paper at her. When nothing happened, she sighed and took a seat opposite me. The mare took a breath as the two fillies raced around the room, then she held out a hoof to me. “Uh, hi. I’m Sugar Cane. Sugar to my friends. Who are you?”

I reached out and shook her hoof. “Special Agent Jericho Amadeus Faust. At your service, miss.”

“Hello,” she said. Then hesitated. “Special Agent? Like... with MI5?”

“Em-ahy-five?” I asked, a blank look on my face. “No, I work—or worked—for the Reichskriminalamt. It basically means... er... the National Bureau for—” I hesitated “—for Investigating. Well, that translation might better work if it were originally Reichsamt für Ermittlung, but close enough for what I need.”

I checked my pockets, then frowned. It must’ve been in my duster or something. So I pulled out part of the coat, fished around its pockets and pulled out a black leather wallet. A nostalgic feeling in my gut, I flipped it open and saw my face giving me a confident smirk. The word “Reichskriminalamt” was written across the top, with the acronym “RKA” below it. Other bits were written around the top part of the wallet’s inside, the only things of note to me being “Spezialagent” and my signature, which, because I was an ass, had been written in another language as Ἰεριχώ. Because I just had to be that one guy who signed his name in Solonisch. God, I looked so young in that photo...

The other half of the thing was a signed authorization to carry out my job and a little golden shield topped with a wings-spread Teutschfalke. All in all, it was my proudly-worn badge. Smiling, I offered it to Sugar Cane and said, “Here. Proof of occupation.”

“Cool,” the fillies crooned as they tried to get a look at the badge.

“What’s MI5?” I asked as the mare handed me back the badge. I put it into a pocket and waited for her response.

The mare nervously looked around. “It’s this sort of, uh, inter-ducal agency headed by Duke Elkington. They only exist in a few duchies.”

“Why only a few?” To hell with being polite, this was interesting.

“Well... a few years ago, after the Nightmare Moon incident and that whole ‘trying to block out the sun to create an eternal night’ business that nopony saw coming, Duke Elkington thought it was kinda dumb to just let Equestria’s first line of defense against evil be to hope for random heroes. So he got a few of the dukes and duchesses together and formed this little organization dedicated to investigating possible threats to Equestria.”

How much do you want to bet that this MI5 represents the interests of those involved with Elkington’s conspiracy? “Is that all they do?” I asked.

“Well, last time there was this big chaotic upheaval of evil, MI5 helped keep order and protect ponies, y’know, ’cause MI5 can legally coordinate police efforts where they exist and stuff. It’s why Songnam is such a safe place. I mean, Elkington’s been trying to petition Princess Celestia to nationalize MI5 into an official government organization and stuff, but, uh, yeah.”

“It does sort of reminds me of the Reichskriminalamtes. Last I checked, the RKA was really big on protecting the Reich from terrorists attacks, hunting magi, investigating the paranormal, and fighting violent crimes, amongst other stuff. They also coordinate police forces where needed.”

Sugar glanced at the fillies as they fumbled with the room’s icebox. “You’re really not an Equestria, are you?” What gave it away? “So... what are you, and where are you from?”

“Ich bin ein Teutscher, nicht ein Solari,” I casually replied. “Ich komme aus Teutschland.” Before she could ask what that meant, I said, “I’m a Teutscher, not an Equestrian. I come from Teutschland.” The look on her face said that I hadn’t helped her much. “What do you know of the people from the Île-de-Nippun?”

She blinked at me in confusion. “The Neighponease? Well, I, uh, know a bit about them. Really love their art styles, and this little form of storytelling called a ‘manga’, which is what sorta inspired me to take a career in comicbooks rather than something confectionary-related.”

“And do you know of the so-called Legion of the North?”

Sugar nodded. “Really scary stuff, from what I hear.”

I gave her a toothy smirk. “That’s where I’m from, Teutschland. The land of Vikuta and the Legion of the North. Fun place, really.”

“Cool,” Written Word crooned, and Cotton Candy agreed.

“Of course, he was King Viktor to us, not ‘Vikuta’. And it’s the ‘Mobile Infantry’, not the ‘Legion of the North’. I swear, you can’t trust those, uh, what did you call them? Those... Neighponease... when it comes to history lessons.” I licked my teeth. “Ew, that word feels odd on my tongue, like it’s a really, really bad joke. We teutsche call them Nippönische. Much better word.”

She blinked. “I... really?” Sugar leaned her head towards me, eyes wide. “Like, really really?”

I shrugged. “Why is everypony so amazed by that? Huzzah, I was born on a different continent, grew up speaking a different language, and my Gene are probably very different from yours, but that doesn’t mean I’m some sort of exotic animal you put into a zoo, poke with sticks, throw peanuts at, and make perform silly dances.” Lyra and that reporter whose name I forgot made such big deals of it.

Sugar Cane looked around, tried to speak, failed, and rubbed her eyes. She took a deep breath. “It’s just that we don’t really get many foreigners, like, at all. I guess it makes you... I dunno, exotic or something.”

Yep. Exotic dancer. That’s me! Who wants a lapdance? No Cherrypillars allowed. I sighed. “Well, in any case, I ended up here. What can one do?”

“So. Jericho, can I, uh, call you that?” she asked.

“Well, since I’ve shown you the badge, you’ve got to call me Special Agent Faust.”

“I understand.” She repeated my name as if tasting it. “Jericho... what does it mean? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

I smiled. “I’m a Teutscher, miss, our names don’t mean anything. Well, sometimes our last names do.”

“What does yours mean, uh, Special Agent Faust? If it does mean something, of course.”

“Fist,” I said flatly. “It means fist, a hoof with a decidedly aggressive context. At least in my language.” I glanced around. “Or, as Father would say, eine Faust is a symbol of Adonai’s—of God’s—wrath, it being the the shape his outstretched limb is described as when he comes with bloodshed on his mind. And I will tell you straight, Miss Sugar, when there are those that do evil, my name is an apt description of what it is I am and do.” I shrugged. “Then again, I like being needlessly dramatic because it makes me feel cooler than I actually am.”

She nodded slowly. “So, uh, why are you here again, exactly?”

“Because he saved us!” Cotton Candy exclaimed. “That mean filly we’ve been telling you about tried to make fun of us, but then, uh, Jericho came out of nowhere and was all, ‘Leave them alone, or else!’ And it was so cool!” The other filly chimed in agreement as she tried to get onto the kitchen countertop. Cotton Candy giggled, then helped her friend up.

I shrugged at Sugar Cane’s expression. “It was because I’m just nice like that. Being a nice guy is generally the only thing I have left. Sure, I’ve crossed the world and seen it all. ‘Oh, hello there, Mister Genocidal Tyrant. Well, looks like I’ve got to introduce you to the sword. Oh, and you too, Miss Vampiric Horror.’” I chuckled warmly. “‘Good day, flesh-eating lord of carrion whose home can best be described as a ‘thirty-seven-sexual rape factory’ and whose favorite habit is to basically screw ponies over without having the courtesy to give them a proper reach-around. Say, has your carotid artery met my knife yet? Well, allow me all the pleasure!’”

Sugar Cane just sort of gaped at me.

“Honestly,” I sighed, “such a nasty world out there, and half of the time, you’d think I was the only nice guy out in the world. See, when I saw those two girls getting bullied, I just had to help them because I’m just nice like that. That’s basically what I do every day, except I often do it on far larger scales: be a nice guy and help people. In short, I don’t really know what I am, but I put myself to productive work trying to be a hero.” I smiled. “And so what do you do, ma’am?”

She blinked at me. Blinked again. Looked around and saw the two fillies nodding encouragingly at her from the countertop, then to me. Shouldn’t she tell the girls to get off the counter? Auntie Sugar Cane is irresponsible! Sugar looked about ready to speak, then she swallowed and froze.

Written Word sighed and tossed a comicbook onto the table, Mare-Do-Well, Issue #1. “She writes comicbooks,” the filly said proudly.

I looked at Sugar, and she only gave an embarrassed smile and tried to shrink away. She looked pretty much exactly like a termite choking on a splinter. And then the Queen Termite called her back and asked, “What’s wrong with you? You’re a termite. How could you possible choke on a splinter?” And so it was like she was hoping really, really hard that if she remained perfectly still and made herself as small as possible, the Termite Queen—er, that I would walk away and look for other prey.

“It’s a cool job,” Written Word added.

“But very lonely,” Cotton Candy added knowingly. “The booze doesn’t judge her, she says.”

The mare shrank further and further, every blood vessel in her face looking about ready to burst. I imagined that it’d be a horribly, horribly hilarious death. Like popping a million zits but less horrifying in every way, shape, and form. I wouldn’t really know, I never really had to deal with acne, but I was pretty sure it was because I was just slightly drier than everypony else or something. Point was, don’t drink Juggernog.

I considered remarking my thoughts aloud to her. But then I wondered what the weather was like in Hell. It was probably raining, and all of my clothes would probably get dirty and filthy and be on fire. Sometimes it was better to just keep quiet. Sadly.

“I think she’s embarrassed by her job,” Cotton Candy said. “What do you think?”

“Pssh,” Written Word raspberried. “Comicbook writer? It’s not like that’s a nerdy, you-never-find-love-with-this-job kinda job, right?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, it’s been fun learning about Equestrian culture from you, but I don’t think there’s anything here to add to my notes.” I pulled out a notepad and flipped through it. “Yep. Nothing.”

“You have a notepad?” Sugar Cane said in a quiet, squeaky voice.

I nodded. “Yes. ‘Things I Learned About Equestria: #113’. Want to hear it?” She nodded, and I cleared my throat. “Number one-one-three: Equestrians are not stupid. No matter how many times you try to convince them that suffocating them with a pillow while they’re asleep is your people’s most affectionate greeting, they will not fall for it. That only worked the one time.” The fillies seemed to find that amusing, but Sugar Cane just gave me an oblong look.

“Yours is a uniquely and creatively disturbed mind,” the mare said absently.

Adjusting my suit collar, I moved to stand. “Well, ladies, it’s been nice meeting you, but—”

“Wait!” Cotton Candy interjected, her pink mane bouncing as she trotted up to me. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

“Well, I could tell you—” I cocked a wry smile “—but then I’d have to kill you. It’s such a secret.”

“Does it involve Old Town?” the filly asked.

“Maybe,” I said, suspiciously darting my eyes around.

“Because Auntie Sugar Cane was going to the big museum up there with a friend of hers today, but her friend cancelled, but Auntie Sugar Cane really wanted to go there. They’ve been adding bunches of cool new stuff ever since they dug that tunnel and—”

“Tunnel?” I asked, and she blinked.

“Yeah, those little tunnels that connect the museum, Songnam Security HQ, the MI5 building, and Elkington’s castle. There’s a neat little tunnel that runs through them all. Ever since they built ’em, they’ve been getting all sorts of cool relics from beyond Equestria’s borders.” She bounced on her hooves. “It’s all super cool stuff but Auntie Sugar Cane ain’t got nopony to go with and only weirdos go to the museum on their own.”

Well. That was news. I knew the tunnel existed, and had seen some in Chausiku’s basement, but this was promising. Screw it, this detour was worth it just for that bit of info. Still had no idea why these two fillies were trying to play matchmaker, but perhaps this could end up to my advantage. A lone stallion in a suit was far more conspicuous than a guy on a date wearing a suit. She could be a sort of living cover, and that idea sat very well with me.

“I do like the museum.” I looked over and Sugar Cane. “Perhaps this is a bit sudden, but I don’t suppose you’d care for an, uh, escort to accompany you to the museum, would you?”

The mare ran a hoof through her sugary-white mane. “I-I wouldn’t want to impose. I mean, they have, like, a suggested donations box, and it’s pretty much ‘pay at least this much or feel really bad’ box, and I wouldn’t want to make you have to pay anything or...” She blinked. “Is that what I think it is?”

I nodded. Social Grace, it turned out, had kept a lot of money amongst his belongings. “As it turns out, Miss Sugar Cane, I appear to have a spectacular amount of self-earned spending money. So, what do you say?”

|— ☩ —|

A morning filled with boring self-exposition, raison d’êtres, explanations for how the world outside of Equestria worked later—nothing not already said at one point or another to somepony in Equestria—and we were on our way to Old Town. If I had to do so many bits of exposition for every single Equestrian I met, I was going to choke Celestia for not offering proper foreign history courses in this nation’s schools. In the meanwhile, I’d somehow gotten off on a tangent about my days playing Dunkelheit und Drachen.

“...and so at this point,” I said to Sugar Cane as we trotted down a busy Songnam street made of brick, “the Spielmeister had expected the party to come to the conclusion that killing the filly would be bad, but letting the world come to armageddon was worse—it was that kind of game—and so he thought we’d murder the little girl, thereby breaking the spell and nabbing us all the awesome items of magical doom power, helping us save the world. That’s when I, the bard who’d been silent throughout the whole discussion, spoke up and asked what the girl looks like, since all we knew was that she was little, a filly, and magically chained to super powerful magical items.”

“So what happened then?” the mare asked, stepping over a puddle. The buildings around the street, it seemed to me, were of that old look that basically said that they were rather new and that somepony was just really pretentious and wanted to make it look old and fancy.

“The Spielmeister drew us a picture of the girl. And all I could do was exclaim, ‘Oh God, she’s adorable! Can we take her?’ The Spielmeister just looked at me and goes, ‘No, she’s magically bound to all these items; you can only take the items if you kill her. That’s kinda the whole point here.’ ‘Well, that’s easy,’ I say. ‘I destroy the items and take the girl.’”

“Say what now?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I managed to convince the rest of the group to destroy the super powerful items and instead take the girl and have her travel around with us as some sort of mascot or surrogate daughter. I even got to name her Sara. After that, my group of five equicidal adventurers took time away from saving the world and looking for loot to take her to school and do fatherly stuff for her.” I shrugged. “Like this one time that she got bullied at school, and that triggered full-blown papa-wolf in me and the group, and we broke into the bullies’ houses, intimidated the living daylights out of them and their parents, and forced them to apologize to our daughter. Then we went home and made milk and cookies and helped Sara go to bed, then we went out and raided a dungeon and killed everyone.” I sighed. “It’s things like that which make me uncertain if I’d be a good parent, or a terrible one.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. As we passed by the large wooden buildings that seemed to dominate Old Town, I had to wonder, just how old was Old Town? Wood had the nasty habit of being a total trollop with termites and eventually team-killing you when it hilariously collapsed on your family. The amount of different colors of coat and mane I saw on the ponies walking the busy streets gave me a headache. That was about when we passed a brown, fuzzy cow that’d just been standing there in the gutter between the sidewalk and street.

“Moo,” it said.

“That’s niiiii—what the hell!?” I froze, counted to ten, and turned to the cow.

“Something wrong?” Sugar Cane asked.

“Yes, something is extremely wrong,” I replied, staring at the cow. The cow looked at me, well, like a cow looked at an oncoming train. “The cow said ‘moo’.”

Sugar gave me a look like a wild cat who wasn’t quite sure if it’d just seen a half-eaten tin of tuna and was now trying to solve that problem. “Yeah. That’s what cows do. They moo.”

“No, no, no!” I insisted. “It didn’t moo, it said moo. Like-like it wasn’t really a cow, just two dwarves in a suit trying to learn the meaning of love via an in-cow bonding experience, because that not only strengthens friendships but also builds a cud-like character.”

She gave me an expression so dry it would’ve killed a camel of dehydration. “What.”

“Moo,” the cow agreed.

“There!” I shouted, pointing at the cow. “It did it again. How is it doing that? Is it possessed?” I set a bag down and opened it. When I closed it and put it back on, I was wearing a clerical collar. “Don’t worry, Sugar Cane, I am a registered and ordained minister. I can legally officiate a marriage recognized by the Reich and all the federal states in her union. It was an extremely arduous task that involved years of study, strict spiritual discipline, studious introspection upon the nature of life, and hopping across a series of crumbling stone pillars without spilling a glass of water in order to reclaim holy relics—because that is how religion works.”

“Wait. Really?” she asked.

“No! It took ten Mark and an extremely silly series of events. All I had to do was go to a local government building and sign a single forms. They didn’t check that I was legally a minor at the time, either. They just didn’t care.” I adjusted my clerical collar. “Point is, I’m the closest thing to a priest your nation has. Now quick! Fetch me five liters of tar and a burning torch. We shall cleanse the world of this demonic taint.”

She tilted her head and said in a dumb voice, “What’s a liter?”

A roll of the eyes. “It is a unit of capacity defined as a reduction of twenty-eight parts in a million to be exactly equal to one cubic decimeter.” The mare look at me like she was trying to learn how to be able to learn. I sighed. “It’s worth about one-point-oh-five liquid quarts and is equal to the volume of one kilogram of distilled water kept at four degrees centigrade.”

“Moo,” the cow added thoughtfully.

“You stay out of this,” I snapped. “Demonic bovine have no business in science. Now, taking advantage of the cat equivalent of dwarfism to breed a race of short-legged anti-cats? I mean, it’s the kind of cat that is hilariously incapable of making simple jumps that millions of years of evolution have told it that it can make. Now that is science.” I heard the definite sound of clucking and was about to comment about how that was what an animal sounded like when I actually saw the chicken, and I was just struck silent. Suddenly, science had gone wrong.

The chicken was bald. No feathers. None. Just sickly reddish, leathery skin and a horrified look in its eyes, like it’d just realized just what kind of unholy abomination it was, and was really hoping that death would get the memo and hurry the hell up. I wanted to make a cock joke, but it was just too depressing to look at. This monster had clearly been created in the most vulgar of labs as scientists cackled evilly into the dark, cold night. Its maker was clearly an evil genius the likes of which had never been equaled.

“Okay, no. Not doing this anymore. This doesn’t nearly have enough surprises anymore to keep my attention.” Grumbling to myself, I removed my clerical collar, stuffed it in my bag, and walked down the street. “What those monsters need is an enema, but for their vile souls. So, like, an enema in a good way… Hmm… Strawberry-flavored…”

“Forgive me if I’m repeating myself,” Sugar Cane said, “but yours really is a uniquely and creatively disturbed mind.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I groused, barely hearing myself over all the ponies talking in the crowded street. “I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my life, and that naked chicken doesn’t even come close, but it’s up there in the ‘Didn’t Think I’d Ever See This’ folder.”

“What else is in there?” she asked, dodging out of the way of a pony with no spatial sense.

“What if I were to tell you somewhere out there, right now, is a three-inch-long leech with a fetish for your mucous membranes. Soft tissues. Like in your ear, up your nose, in the anus—all places you’d rather not have a three-inch worm with spinning daggers aggressively jutting from its face to be. Because, mind you, it doesn’t ‘bite’, per se; rather, it saws and saws and saws through your soft tissue, like a little miner happily digging away though your nose to liberate the sweet nectar of horror within.” I smiled, and she looked about ready to vomit. “And you wonder why I’m so disturbed? Well, actually, it started out because Daddy never hugged me enough, but whatever, and then it just got worse. Get on my level, girl.”

Little by little, the crowd of ponies thickened. “Well, that’s... surprising,” the mare commented.

“Surprising?” I scoffed. “Oh, I’ll show you surprising. I also do birthday parties, surprise ones. I can totally hook you up with one.” The crowd was getting so thick it was becoming hard to move. “Uh, what’s up with every—”

“GooOOood morning, Songnam!” Elkington’s voice laughed from the unseen speakers. “I take it the lot of your milling about Old Town got my invitation, huh?” Well, that sort of answers that question. “What’s that? Oh, right, there were no invitations—I just thought it up last night!” And nevermind.

Taking Sugar Cane by the hoof, I lead her through the crowd. There was more important business than whatever was going on here.

“And hoo-boy, do we got a treat for you! Last night, you see, a couple of my friends were over and, a few drinks later, we hatched an idea for a fun-filled Old Town morning. That’s why security is currently leading folks off Main Street so you all can watch. So, without further adieu, I present to you: Sapphire Shores, the Pony of Pop, and fresh from her controversial new album, L.A.M.B!”

I jerked to a stop as the crowd just ended, Sugar Cane collided with my haunches. We were now at the front of the crowd bordering a large street, no doubt Main Street. Glancing up at a sign, I saw that it was indeed... Mane Street. Well, my apologies. It was clear to me that, just as I’d thought about Watering Whole in Sleepy Oaks, Equestrians had no respect for their written language. It was further proof to me that Celestia was probably choking to death on a spoon right this instant.

“And for those of us not in Old Town, have no fear. You can hear it just as well,” Elkington concluded.

I was about to ask what the hell was going on, but that was when I saw Elkington slowly walking down the center of the Mane Street. And that was when a loud tick-tocking began playing through the speakers. “Tick tock, tick tock,” said a girlish voice from the speakers, her own ticking much slower than the actual clock. “What you waiting for?” the mare’s voice asked, and I saw the distant Duke smile.

As Elkington walked, a black cape behind him danced in the breeze. “Just on you,” he said, then he burst into song, instantly giving asides to various ponies in the audience:

“My name is Elkington (howdy, hon!)

And I am here to say (how ya doin’?):

I love to make you smile and I will brighten up your day.

It doesn’t matter now (bonjour!)

If you are sad or blue (Yo, brotha!)

’Cause cheering people up is just what Ellie’s here to do!”

Scratch that. He wasn’t walking down the street, he was sashaying, even dancing. Twirls, spins, jump, and things I didn’t know the names of. One thing I did know: Elkington was a fantastic singer. Not bad at dancing, either, if the approving roar of all the girls in Old Town was to be believed, though even his moves struck me as being sort of dull and lacking a modern flair. And in my opinion, the beat of the song was a century out of date, at least by teutschen standards. The other side of the street, the direction the Duke was dancing, exploded in a roar of confetti and streamers and white smoke.

As it cleared, a grayish-gold mare was standing in the middle of the road. At her sight, the ponies all cheered a name: “Sapphire Shores!” Her cobalt-blue mane, done up in a ponytail, swung as she took a step forwards and shook her head. Something about her white dress screamed that it was of distinctly Nippönischen design. Her voice sounded good over the speakers. And a duet was had. She started, and Elkington replied.

“So you love to make ’em smile, smile?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It fills your heart with sunshine all the while?”

“That it does.”

“’Cause what I need’s a smile, smile.”

“Given by this Duke a’ yours.”

Her own movements imitated the dance-walk of Elkington as the two approached one another. Looking past the Security forces keeping the crowd back and across the street, I saw the museum. Great. I had to listen to this song and wait, didn’t I? Looking over to Sugar Cane, I saw a huge smile on her face, but when our eyes met, she looked away. Elkington took center vocal stage again.

“I’d love to see you grin, Lady Shores.”

“Mmm—you’d love to see me beam?”

“The corners of your mouth turned up is always Ellie’s dream.”

“And if I’m kinda worried?

And my face has made a frown?”

“I’ll work real hard to turn that sad frown upside down.”

“Ellie, what kinda girl do you take me for?” she teased.

As the pair reached each other in the street, they grabbed each other’s hoof and danced, the song still going on. It reminded me of an ostrich trying to awkwardly dry hump a clown on a unicycle while on fire. And then a swarm of background dancers joined them, because why the hell not? Stupid, stupid Duke. He was being so rude and inconsiderate of us ponies trying to assassinate him!

|— ☩ —|

Like a pancake trying to convince his deaf wife about the merits of extreme racism, I sighed. But, hey, at least the museum here was air conditioned. My cover was working fine; nopony was taking any stock of the stallion and the mare that we were, not even caring that he was carrying a sword and bags.

“Oh, I, uh, am I boring you?” Sugar Cane asked nervously.

I glanced over at her, trying to ignoring the sparse few ponies walking around the museum’s marble floors. Too many of them were still outside, trying to get Elkington’s autograph. Because, apparently, aside from being evil, he occasionally did guest roles on famous albums, and so also had legions of fangirls. Who’d’ve thought? “Hmm? No. I’m just all tired from Elkington’s concert-performance-type thing. Now then, where are the stairs?”

“Stairs? Why not just take the elevator?” she asked, pointing at a set of ornate double-doors in a wall. That fancy, fancy wooden wall.

“Take the whatnow?” I looked over and watched the mare trot up to the double-door, then turn and give me an expectant expression. The doors, I found out as I reached them, were broken. I tried pushing on them, pushing harder, and pushing even harder, but nothing worked. “Uh, yeah, these are broken,” I commented knowingly. She just gave me a perplexed look. Sugar reached up and pressed a little button on a wall panel next to the door. Instantly, the door dinged and I jumped back. “Bomb! Run! Quick—and you’re not running. Are you daft?”

Rather than run, she tilted her head at me, and then the doors opened on their own. Witchcraft at work here, I was sure. “Special Agent Faust, do you not know what an elevator is?” Sugar asked.

“Judging by the doors leading into a very, very cramped room, my only guess is that it is some sort of plant that will, upon falling into its trap, slowly proceed to digest you alive.”

With a pococurante attitude, Sugar trode into the horrifying little room, and waved at me as the door closed. It dinged again. A moment went by. Confused, I walked up to the door and touched the button. A moment later and it dinged, opened up, and showed me an empty room.

A sense of dread and horror overtook me as I just stared into the bleak emptiness where seconds ago had stood a mare. She was there one second, gone another. So I did the only logical thing: I pulled out my sword and threatened the door. “Listen here, you sonofabitch, you better give me back the girl you ate, or you’ll be dealing with some serious hell.” The doors closed. “That’s it! There’s only two ways this can end, and in both of them, you die! They will have to bury you in three separate graves! And then—”

The door opened, and two parents with their small filly appeared within. Both parents looked horrified at the totally not crazy stallion holding a sword in a direction in which they incidentally were, but the filly looked at me with a puzzled frown. “Hey, I know you,” she said. “Can you tell me what a zebwa housewife suffewing fwom domestic abuse is?”

My eyes widened—“The sins of my past come to haunt me!”—and, like a micro-pig wearing a tiny raincoat, promptly rolled to the left, where I hit a large potted tree and banged my skull. “Au, du Staubsauger.” The father scolded the filly before dragging his family out of the building. A family soon to be ruined, methought.

Battered and bloodied, I stumbled back to the so-called ‘elevator’. “Let her go!” I demanded, punching the panel. The doors—having closed as I did battle with the potted tree—dinged and opened. Standing there was a very baffled blue mare with a silvery mane. “Yes, I’ve saved you!” I cried out, reaching in, grabbing her by the arm, and yanking her out. “My ego couldn’t handle losing you so early in the morning. That’d’ve been worse than that time I attended the Ethnic Cleansing awards and somehow managed to win because I accidentally destroyed an entire nation as a direct result of that one time where I was a girl and... did horrible, horrible things for a magazine because I needed the money—I put the ‘rave’ in ‘depraved’ that day. Those photos turned one poor stallion off sex for good and drove an elephant to suicide. And the people who gave me the award? All they did in life was professional rape and pillage, and in their downtime, their habits were mainly to study the betterments of rapematics and pillagology.”

“What?” she stammered.

“Point is, I saved your life.” I nodded. “This means we’re even.”

“Even?” She blinked. “For what?”

“Why, for the plot twist, of course,” I chirped. “Now, first thing’s first: how do I kill an elevator?”

“Um, sir, are you alright?” some random mare with a voice like the sound of someone repeatedly kicking a puppy against a wall asked.

I looked over and saw her little blue hat, one that identified her as a museum employee. My hoof jabbed in the elevator’s direction. “Madam, you have a well of concentrated evil on your hooves that can only be destroyed by a pony like me, Special Agent Faust.” A random bird flew into the museum’s large front windows and viscerally died.

The museum mare jumped and gasped, “What was that?”

“A bird hitting a window and dying. It was quite entertaining.” I laughed. “He’s certainly not going home to his family tonight. Or her family. Whatever.”

“Wait, what?” both mares gasped in perfect unison. They exchanged confused glances before looking back at me for some sort of sanity, which they promptly did not get.

“In any case, what is an elevator and how do I kill it? Because the last few years of my life have basically taught me that if there’s a problem I can’t solve by stabbing it a lot, it doesn’t exist. Doesn’t mean that stabbing it won’t create new problems, but just that if it bleeds, I can kill it. So, where does an elevator bleed? Or where does its evil wizard mastermind-puppeteer bleed from? I’m cool with either or, really.” They just blinked and exchanged glances. “Respond,” I said in a cold tone to the museum mare.

What followed could best be described with a metaphor: It was like a very confused giraffe made to wear a dunce cap as it was forced to learn how to tapdance and shoot-and-reload a crossbow repeatedly while balls-deep in a squealing hog and contemplating the notion of deflowering some random non-Equestrian princess; and then he wondered aloud why the idea of intercourse for the first time ‘deflowers’ and thus takes something away from a girl, and he gets smacked by the museum mare because she didn’t tolerate vulgar language on her elevator or being casually asked about her sex life in public on said elevator, even though you were just trying to better understand her culture; but it was really because she was totally a virgin and almost as bad as Cards, yet she was so engrossed in a sexist anti-female-promiscuity culture that—wait, where was I?

Oh yeah, I was riding the elevator up and down for half an hour and pretending not to enjoy it because it was powered by enchanted talismans and magic was evil blah blah blah. Meanwhile, Sugar Cane was just standing on the third and top floor, staring at me every time I came up, and more-than-likely wondering just what she was doing with her life when I was the best date she could find.

Of course, as I rode, I made up an elevator themesong on the spot and shared it loudly with the world. “Oh yeah, I’m on an elevator—it’s probably powered by sacrificing virgins! Ooh! I say, it’s probably powered by sacrificing virgins. It goes up and down, it goes left and right, but not really because it only travels in the one dimension, yeah! This is, oh, this is the elevator song.”

“Hey, buddy!” a stallion angrily shouted at me as the elevator reached the first floor. “Other ponies wanna use the elevator, too; you can’t just hog it and ride the damn thing all day!”

I scoffed. “Yeah, well, other ponies aren’t wearing fancy suits and ties, and nor do they have enough weapons on their body to make even your average sword-collecting sociopath go, ‘Damn, isn’t that just a little bit excessive?’ Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do!” We glared off at each other as the elevator doors slowly closed and I ascended to the third floor.

Sugar Cane was still on the third floor, muttering about how she really needed to go out and meet ponies that weren’t insane. She barely gave me a glance as the doors opened up. So I grabbed and her pulled her in with me. “Come on,” I said, “we’re leaving this place.”

“Oh, already?” she said in a tone of mock sadness. “What a pity our date has to end so soon.”

“Eh, it’s not really over yet.” I pressed the lowermost button on the internal elevator panel. “We’re breaking into the secret areas.”

She blinked. “Pardon moi?”

I pointed to a small sign next to the elevator panel labeled ‘For Employees!!!!’ and shook my head. “Four exclamation marks is the surest sign of insanity ever, and it’s what tipped me off to something evil being at work here. Point is, this elevator goes to the basement. Took me awhile randomly touching things until I got the basement button to work.” I gestured to a second and rather small panel. “Needed to pick the lock and punch some things.”

“Is... is that why you were really on the elevator so long?”

Elevators are fun! Why aren’t there whole theme parks of these? Maybe there is. Elevator Land! “Of course not,” I said in a suave tone. “I’m not some idiot, I’m a Special Agent. It’s... just that we call them Aufzüge... and they look and sound and act and are operated and are powered very differently than yours and it took me a stupidly long while to realize they were the same thing in function.” Elevator dinged and the doors opened out into a dimly lit concrete storage room. I fiddled with the little panel and its magical talisman before declaring, “We’re going on a super-spy adventure.”

I stepped out into the dim room, and the mare hesitantly followed me. “Um, what are doing this for, again?” No response from me; I was going to be unnecessarily dramatic about this. “Special Agent Faust, hello? What are we doing?”

With the unholy cross between a devilish grin and a Nightmare-Moon-may-care smile, I turned to her. “Why, my dear, I’m going to investigate the evils of Duke Elkington.”

She gasped. “But he’s a selfless hero!”

“That,” I assured her, “like the myth of the slutty nurse, is ultimately untrue. Trust me, when you’re a nurse, you see some pretty terrible things: lots of sickly, naked ponies covered in their own filth, so much that your whole day is basically one big turn-off. I don’t know how this metaphor applies to this situation here exactly, but it does. Elkington is actually evil and wants to kill everyone or something. I don’t really know the specifics, but I know that I’m clearly the good guy here.”

As the elevator closed behind her, I briefly but convincingly yacked on about the dark stuff Elkington was up to. I even showed her that one Voixson from Doc Dome’s clinic as proof. The thought that it was probably a bad idea to explain this all to her and that just ditching her would have been the smart thing to do occured to me; but the idea that this was just somehow cooler took that thought, beat it with a rubber garden hose, put tape over its mouth, bound its arms and legs, and then threw it into a dark cellar with the Cherrypillar.

“And so I’m here why?” Sugar asked at the end of a particularly incoherent rant.

I put a hoof to my chin. “Well, I figure it’s sort of a ‘you show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ sort of deal. Except that I can literally see yours if I just tilted my head a few degrees and pretended to fall down.”

She blushed, squeezed her legs together, and wrapped her tail around her thighs. “Um...”

Strange. They appear to take offense with actually looking at their naughty bits. Maybe you just need a lot of tact to be an Equestrian, tact which I was born without. “Now,” I said in a dark tone of voice, pulling out my sword, “I must do onto others before they do unto me.” Then I put my sword back because carrying it around for hours while sneaking around wasn’t exactly the most efficient thing to do. I had daggers for a reason, whatever it was. “So, do you want to help me investigate evil in the name of all that is good and holy?”

“And, uh, if I say no?”

“You know,” I said, “every time a person says that, be it in a theater play or in a role-playing game or a book, that just means they’re going to say yes. So, let’s go, my entirely untrained comrade.”

“No.”

I blinked. “Heeeey,” I totally didn’t say in a whiny tone that’d go well with some cheese, “you can’t break that time-honored cliché.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s a very good idea. I mean, what are you going to do, kill me?”

“No,” I replied, taking the grip off my dagger because I totally wasn’t just planning to kill the witness. “But what if you tell Songnam Security?”

“I won’t, Special Agent Faust.” She hesitated. “I sorta now really wanna get back home and write a brand new storyline for Mare-Do-Well. Seriously, I just got hit with a brilliant idea.” Sugar Cane smiled at me. A forced smile if ever I saw. “So, uh, can I go? I really don’t wanna do any super spy kinda stuff today.”

Well, the weight of my bad idea was coming to haunt me faster than had been anticipated. It had already crawled out of the Cherrypillar’s cellar and was now gnawing on my legs. I glanced past the numerous dusty crates in this little room to a door that looked promising. Killing her would have been evil at this point, letting her go stupid, and trapping her down here would’ve just created a ticking timebomb. Stupid brain!

“Fine,” I sighed. “But let it never be said that I didn’t try to create a very, very unique and interesting date. Go. I’ll just be over here, saving the world and Equestria and stuff while you go off and be boring.”

She nodded, then hurriedly raced into the elevator. I watched her push the up button and the doors closed. Then I smiled. There was no way she could have known that I’d broken the elevator before we left, and no way of knowing that it wouldn’t work and that the doors were shut. I tossed the elevator’s talismans onto the ground. Stupid witchcraft.

|— ☩ —|

The tunnels beneath Old Town were, to my happy surprise, very straightforward. Everything was very clearly indicated, several “You Are Here” maps were generously placed, and overall the lighting seemed rather nice but not too bright. And, best of all, the entire place was practically empty. Ponies that were there seemed to just be maintenence, and wearing a suit and tie pretty much meant that they automatically assumed you were supposed to be there.

It wasn’t long before I managed to worm my way into the underground of the MI5 building. It got darker here, with many of the lights off, but it otherwise resembled some sort of underground office building. The walls were of wood, the floors carpeted, and the area airy and non-claustrophobic. As I walked through the dim halls, I kept reading the names posted by all the doors and wondering why so many Equestrians had names that just sounded dumb, like “Snagglepuss”. No, really, there was a door labeled for “Agent Snagglepuss”. I couldn’t make that up if I tried.

As I kept walking, trying to find a hallway that’d lead me into the heart of Elkington’s castle, I paused. There was an office door labeled for “Special Agent Jeepers”. After reading it twice, I seemed to forget what I was doing before and instead opted to test the doorknob. Locked. Tools out. Tick. Tack. Tock. Tools begone, and door ajar.

Quiet as an incestuous chipmunk, I crept through the door and closed it behind me. “Hmm, let’s see,” I muttered, looking around the dark room. I flipped on a little switch by the door and immediately a little flame torch magically flickered to life. “Okay, a desk, a chair, a file cabinet, and photos.”

I walked over to the back of the desk. All on the desk that was interesting was a photo of Jeepers shaking hooves with Duke Elkington, the picture dated only a few weeks ago; that, and an opened envelope, a letter still inside. But before I opened it, I checked a large desk drawer—more of a small cabinet, really—and found me a bottle of superglue, duct tape, and a Voixson with a note attached.

Now, I was quite certain that with enough duct tape, Jeepers could have fulfilled the creepy rape-fantasy thing he’d clearly had. Unfortunately, the tape left on the roll was nowhere near enough tape to fasten some scared little mare—the exact mare in my head at that moment was a very confused Cards—to the wall while he creepily touched himself to their horrified screams, as I always suspected Jeepers wanted to do. Maybe that was why he had the superglue.

In any case, I set the Voixson on the table and read the note.

“J—

Last week I heard you talking about what we’re doing, asking a few questions, wondering if everything we’re doing really is for the greater good of Equestria? Well, I don’t disagree with your thoughts, but I’d try to keep them on the down-low, dig? But, well, while I was rifling through some things, yadda yadda yadda, I came across this Voixson. Yeah, Duke Elkington recorded it. Yeah, it’s as strange as it sounds. I don’t know what to make of it.

—S”

I looked down at the Voixson’s handle and saw a luggage tag labeled ‘This Beautiful Moon’, and then below it, ‘—Elkington’. “Well then,” I mumbled, glancing around as if invisible shadow warriors would jump up and punch me in the ankles and nowhere else. Happy with my scan, I pressed the play button and instantly heard Elkington grunt thoughtfully. His voice, though crackly due to what must have been Equestrian recording hardware, sounded enclosed, like he was speaking from within a church confessional. And he spoke proper, a decidedly gravely, almost exhausted edge to his voice.

“There is something wrong with my world. I know that, have known it ever since my family was killed when I was a colt.” He sighed wistfully. “The Neighponease are a fascinating people. Just the other day I was down in the Île-de-Nippun when I overheard an old sage talking about this old story from his homeland. I approached this old sage and asked him to tell me the story mano-a-mano and he responded:

“Ryokan lived the simplest kind of life at the base of a mountain. A little house, barest essentials of life, but it worked for him. One night, a thief came to him and tried to rob the old stallion, but Ryokan had nothing to steal. The old stallion, who’d been away, came back to his hut at the moment and caught the would-be thief. ‘You’ve come an awfully long way just to pay me a visit,’ Ryokan said amicably, ‘and you should not go home empty-hooved. It’s not much, but please take my monk robes as a gift.’ The thief, of course, was baffled, but he took the robes and slunk off.

“Afterwards, Ryokan sat naked and watched the Mare in the Moon. I didn’t ask if Luna was staring back at him,” he chuckled in a sardonic tone, “but the story went on. Ryokan, see, mused aloud about the thief, ‘Ah, poor fellow. I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.’ And that’s where the story ends.”

The recording fell silent, but it did not end. I couldn’t help but think it was a bit odd, but nothing really weird or out of place. It wasn’t as if this was where Elkington detailed his doubtlessly evil plan that involved a pie eating contest and trying to slut shame Princess Celestia by taking compromising bikini photos of her and turning his monarch into a sexy pin-up girl. Actually, I’d buy that. And several extras for the people back home because—

“See... this got me thinking about everything I’ve been doing for these past few years. Because, in a sense, I’m like Ryokan, and the poor thief is a metaphor for all those less-fortunate than I... No, no, no, that sounds horrible and makes me look like I’m calling them thieves. What I mean is, there are those less fortunate than I, and I wish I could... Great, I don’t know how to say this aloud.” He sighed. “Take it again.

“I work hard every day that I might, in a sense, give ponies the beautiful moon, that which is unobtainable by any means. Ignoring Princess Luna, that is. I know I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, and I know there is no solace for me when I die; but I’m trying, by Celestia, I am trying to give ponies that metaphorical moon, to make them all happy, to have them all well-fed and educated, to give them better lives than what could be had otherwise... to protect them from the unimaginable horrors of the world outside.

“I do it all because I love my country and I love the ponies—no, the people that call her home.” He hesitated, and I swore I heard him quietly sniffle. “It’s just that back in the real, non-metaphorical world, I do not love the moon... I love the sun... and I prove that by doing myself the things that would condemn her to hell, the things she must never know I do. My name is Duke Elkington, I am the sword and the shield of Princess Celestia... and I fight the good fight for her.” The audio clicked and whirred out.

Well then. It was probably just the result of really poor word choice and my sick mind, but it sounded like Elkington had the hots for his monarch. But knowing Equestria as I did, that basically meant he wanted her to put some socks on. Actually, I really didn’t know what that would look like, since I didn’t really know what Celestia looked like; all I had to go off of were ancient descriptions from over a millennium ago describing her as white and with a pink mane.

For some reason, that raised a question in my mind: namely, “What did Princess Luna look like?” If Celestia was the sun and Luna the moon, then the difference would logically be day and night, no pun intended, right?

I was suddenly struck with the mental image of a smoking hot mare, her body turned away from me as she bent forwards, but that didn’t stop her from watching me with a look that said, “I know you’re lookin’ and I won’t tell nopony if you don’t”. There was a seductive look in her eyes, a beauty mark below one eye, blood-red lips, long raven-black hair, and little red devil’s horns poking out from her head. My mind’s eye drifted to the rest of her svelte body as she turned around and gave me a better look: tribal self-mutilations like the one on my chest were all over her arms, one in the image of a swallow over her breast, and one like a coiled cobra on her side. Then there was her getup, four socks decorated with lunar symbolism, fishnets stockings, a red thong (more like red dental floss, really), a corset, and a far too mini minskirt. That’s when I noticed her red forked tail.

I blinked hard. Something was definitely wrong with me, but at least I now knew what to look for if ever I saw the so-called Princess of the Night. In any case, that line of thought miraculously got me back to the matter at hand: namely, the letter. And, predictably, that was when somepony opened the door.

A pegasus mare with lavender eyes and a grass-like coat just stared at me through the open doorway, her violet mane done up in a bun. To my dull surprise, she was wearing a suit top; to no surprise, she was sans pants. “You’re not Jeepers!” she declared, pointing at me.

“Wow,” I deadpanned, “you must be really clever. Like, ‘must have at least one eye and the basic equine ability to remembers things’ clever. Clap, clap, clap. And stop pointing at me.” I approached her and slapped her hoof down. “It’s very rude.”

“What are you doing in his office?” she demanded, gritting her teeth.

“Are you new here?” I asked casually.

“Shut and tell me—”

“Are you new here?” I repeated with more force.

“No,” she curtly replied.

“Then you should know what happens to agents who die.”

The mare blinked, looking like she’d just been stabbed. “Die?”

“He died, yes.” I rolled my eyes.

“He’s dead?”

“That is the traditional implication that comes with saying ‘he died’, is it not?”

She took several heavy breaths, putting her arm up against the doorframe to steady herself. The mare looked up at me, tried to speak, but only succeeded in choking out a cough. I watched as she stumbled past me and shambled over to Jeepers’ desk. With a sudden jerk, she looked at me and screamed, “It’s not true!”

Humming Elkington’s earworm of a song from earlier, I closed the door. “Denial won’t raise the dead. Trust me, the way he died, if he came back to life, he’d just die horribly again.” I forget. How did Jeepers die, again? Hmm... Ah, I recall! “He was stabbed in the chest after having his wings clipped.” She looked like I’d just slugged her across the eyes as she slumped down and cried. “Then he rather slowly bled to death, screaming and writhing painfully on the ground.” Tears ran down her face. It was totally hilarious. “Then—” I feigned hesitation “—he was buried in a shallow grave, where we found him.”

She just cried and sobbed, mumbling “No, no, no” over and over again as she rocked herself. It was kind of like watching an orangutan attempting to milk itself but not realizing it was a boy.

“Were you two close?” I asked.

She just held up a hoof to me. There was a golden wedding band studded with diamonds above the hoof. “My fiancée,” she sobbed. “How did... how did they find him? And... oh Celestia, how did they know all of that?”

I smiled and chuckled. “Why, who do you think killed the bastard and buried him?” Bam! Instant and totally unnecessary drama. I held out a hoof. “Hello. Pleased to meet you. I’m that government boy, as some call me.” The grass-green pegasus just looked up with a blank look. “Wanna see the knife I killed him with? And to be fair, he was trying to murder my friend. The pony had it coming, really.”

“You sonofabitch!” she roared at me, wings spread as she leapt and tried to tackle me.

Tried being the operative word. Being faster than her and already standing up, it was simple enough to bring my hoof along for a date with her now-single face and knock her atop the desk. And I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t fun to bash her face bloody with the Duke’s Voixson. Those things could take a beating!

“Any friend of Jeepers is irresponsible evil to me. And if you loved him enough to accept from him a marriage proposal, you’re either evil too or are such an idiot that you have no right to taint the gene pool of my species,” I explained as I pulled out my knife. “In either case, here’s the knife I killed Jeepers with.” She kicked and struggled against me, her wings flittering uselessly against the desk. I shrugged. “Hey, it’s a mercy killing.” I brought the blade up and st—

“I’m pregnant!” she sputtered.

I paused, the blade hovering above her heart. “Excuse me?”

“Five weeks! Please!” she begged, tears in her puffy eyes.

“His?”

“Y-yes!”

Well, that did explain why her nipples were so, uh, perky, since I was sure she wasn’t excited to see me. I nodded, then sighed. “Great. Now you’ve put me in an annoying position. See, I was going to just kill you because of your relationship with Jeepers out of pure spite, but killing pregnant ladies is sort of frowned upon. Of course, now that you know I’m here and stuff, I can’t let you go.” I almost put a hoof to my chin, but didn’t because I needed it to keep her pinned, and I wasn’t about to repeat Cherry Berry’s mistakes. “So, either I insist that I can’t kill you because—without getting into a really tricky debate which I refuse to speak on—killing a fetus and its mother is kind of evil. But not killing you wouldn’t be the smart choice here. Dammit, girl, why can’t you think of other people for just a second? Selfish witch...”

“Uh, it’s the morally right thing not to kill me?” she offered weakly.

“Shut up. I’m trying to kill you; you don’t have a say in this argument,” I hissed. “I don’t care if it’s your body thus your choice, I’m the pony with the knife and the fancy suit, which pretty much means I’m the decision-maker here.” I groaned. “Great, see, now I’m accidentally voicing my opinions on other things here and it makes me sort of look like I’m preaching to you from a soapbox. God, you’re so inconsiderate of others.

“Oh, hey, speaking of which: does Equestria have abortion clinics? A part of me wants to go to one and pick up some chicks; they usually have such low self-esteem. Even though I’ll go to Hell for it, my life is basically all about just enjoying that ride to Hell.”

“Wh-what?” she sputtered.

“Hmm... So you’re saying Equestria doesn’t? Strange, I guess they don’t have the technology—well, no, abortions have been done since ancient times. How? I don’t know, since I’m pretty sure it was before the invention of the rusty coat hanger. I recall reading that the practice was legal under imperial law thousands of years ago, and this wants me to question whether or not Equestria has the practice, and if there was ever a debate over it; and if not, then I thought it’d be hilarious to bring the topic up and set the nation afire.”

The door opened again. “Um, Agent Skylily, are you okay?” an earther in a suit asked, poking his head into the room.

Of course, I jumped with fright and stabbed him thirty-seven times in the chest. With a frustrated goal, I dragged his body into the room and slammed the door shut. “Dammit, I just keep killing Equestrians! It’s like eating a potato chip—you can’t just have one, so you’ve got to eat them all and pretty soon you feel all fat and stuff and all you’ve left is an empty bag and shame. And in this metaphor, this ends with me standing atop Princess Celestia’s body, having stabbed her exactly forty-two times.”

Noticed that I’d let the mare—Skylily?—run free for too long. She tried bolting for the door, and the first solution that came to mind was to grab her tail and yank her back. Yet another example of why tails sucked. Screaming, the jerk forced her to the ground, whereupon I promptly stepped on her throat.

“Look, I’m a nice guy,” I said, “but you’ve put me in a bind. Hmm... Aha! I got it!” She looked up at me, her eyes just spewing fluids like a particularly clogged toilet. “I’ll break your arms—err, forelegs and hindlegs, then slit your throat without nicking many arteries. You’ll be stuck here, unable to scream or escape, and I can be on my merry way. Sound like a plan?” She violently shook her head and screamed. “Fantastic!” I chirped cheerily, smiling as pleasantly as a dentist who was going to pull out some kid’s teeth today while I took out my crowbar.

Her eyes rolled up and she went silent, and I smelled... saw urine on the floor. She fainted, apparently. “Huh,” I murmured, just sort of standing there over her, trying not to touch the pee. “Well then. Can’t believe that actually worked.” Putting my weapons away, I looked knowingly at Jeepers’ desk.

A few minutes later and I had come as close to Jeeper’s creepy wall-rape-tape-and-glue fantasy as I was comfortable with. There was now a tear-soaked and reeking-of-urine pregnant mare taped and thoroughly glued into the little space beneath the desk. She’d probably starve to death from crazy pregnant lady cravings there, but, hey, it was her own fault for getting freaky with a creep like Jeepers. Jeepers creepers, for God’s sake. That was a phrase, I was sure.

Rubbing the side of my head as I looked at the dead body of that guy whose name I didn’t know but had killed regardless, I wondered if there was some way to frame Skylily for it. Translation: drag his dead body and awkwardly shove it on top of the taped mare. It was so kind of Elkington not to have built windows for these little officers. I stepped outside the room, locked the door with my pick, then, with a knife, broke the lock. It’d be a long, long while before someone came in and—sonofabitch, there were a lot of ponies out here.

They were streaming in from other parts of the underground complex, all in suits, all giving me funny looks. They hadn’t heard me threatening a pregnant mare, right? Right. Totally didn’t. Scheiße, was there blood on my suit? Hell’s bells, somehow my expertly flail-happy stabbing technique had left me clean of blood.

Acting like nothing had happened—which wasn’t hard in the slightest—I yawned and ambled down the halls. More than a few of them were giving me weird looks, but none stopped me. So I stopped one myself. “Yo, pardner,” I said, trying not to sound like a complete foreigner and totally like a local. “Where was y’all? I came ’ere and all y’alls wa’ gone, yo.”

The little earther mare blinked at me. “Um... at lunch. Sir, are you drunk?”

“No,” I said sharply, and proceeded on my merry way. Huh, it’s past noon already? Where have the hours gone? Beating up pregnant ladies and locking comicbook writers in elevators, I’d imagine.

I found a little sign that directed me to where the underground area of “Songnam Stronghold”—the name the sign labeled it as—was. There was also a little sign with a cartoonishly cute image of the Duke’s face next to a list of Elkington’s various commitments to worker safety unrivaled in all of Equestria. Horrifyingly, Elkington seemed very proud that he guaranteed fire exits to be “unlocked at all hours”, which raised several disturbing questions about Equestria. It reminded me of an idiot who opened wide his eyes, poured alcohol in them, and set them on fire because it’d be hilarious.

“Move, move, get outta the way!” two white mares ordered as they rushed down the hall. I jumped to the side and hugged the wall, thanking Elkington that he’d built such wide halls. As they ran past, I saw the medical supplies there were carrying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Something bad!” the taller of the two said as they darted around a corner. Thanks to my uncanny ability to have a short-term memory, I knew exactly where they must have been going: they must’ve found Skylily and her severely dead friend.

“Scheiße,” I sighed. I’d hoped for more time before, but, really, this was real life, and real life was good at throwing punches. Up on my left was a doorway labeled ‘Exit: Security HQ’, and it was better than standing out in the open and probably safer. I could probably find another way back into the underground when it’d be a bit safer.

Through the door was a little room with a spiral staircase. As it turned out, spiral staircases were not fun to climb when you were trying to sprint up them. I wiped sweat off my brow as I reached the top and pushed through the little door at the top. It entered into a dingy little hall with two doors, one at the end, and one to the right.

As I approached the door at the end, I saw and read the little notes posted on the wooden door.

“Dear Janitor (Seriously, what’s your name? Tell me!), we stocked you up on more bottles of turpentine. I remembered that you liked it better as a cleaning substance—I’m smart! Take care, and try to hide your alcohol better. It was just there when I tried finding you earlier. Imagine if it was one of those stuck-up jerks from high-up and not me. — JD.”

The other note one the door simple read: “Out to ~~lunch~~ ~~pick up daughter from preschool~~ ~~save the world~~ smoking break. Back in 15.” The timestamp given meant that he left exactly two minutes ago.

I opened the little door and came across a spacious little closet with shelves lining the wall and a chair propped against the far wall. Just as the note had mentioned, there were four unopened bottles of turpentine in the room, specifically, placed on the chair. There were, though, three bottles sitting at the foot of the chair: two empty bottles of beer and an unopened bottle of Bucking Bronco. I recalled the “highly flammable” warning I’d read on the bottle I’d bought for Cards, and I smiled.

Not three minutes later and I was happily looking at my newest toys: two beer bottles filled with turpentine, each with Bucking Bronco-soaked cloth rags stuffed into the bottlenecks. It was a little trick they’d taught me back in the Mobile Infantry, how to make a so-called Molotowbombe—incredibly useful when you were fighting a guerrilla war against a foe outnumbering you fifty-to-one. It was a skill that, just like the right to vote, I had to exercise. And because fire solved everything. Everything.

Fashioning them to my belt with some string I found lying about, I was all set and now extremely, unreasonably dangerous. Hopefully, nopony would look strangely at me for it, and ditto for the sword. I left the closet and proceeded down the hall and through the door, coming right out into—surprise!—another hallway. Annoyed, I pulled out a compass and arbitrarily decided to follow the hall northwards.

There were a few doors in these back halls, none of which were as clearly labeled as the underground tunnels/offices. But as I passed one red door, I heard someone shout, “Stop touching your balls!”

I blinked. What? Forgoing my better judgement, I opened the door for a peek. The door led into a gymnasium, where a mare and some young buck were. She was facehoofing, and he was sitting in a pile of sports balls, vigorously polishing them. “I can’t!” he half-shouted, half-laughed. “These balls are on fire!”

“I was born on the wrong planet,” she sighed, shaking her head.

For seemingly no reason, the buck then proceeded to flop around in the balls, scattering them across the floor. The jerky, spastic moves looked like the unholy cross between the ‘stop, drop, and roll’ and ‘the worm’ as performed by an octopus in the middle of an aneurysm. “Visual puns, my dear!” he laughed.

“Does anypony have any lengths of rope?” the mare asked the ceiling. “Because I either want to tie him up or hang myself.”

Very slowly, I closed the door and went back to walking. If these were the clowns I was up against, I was just being paranoid. I could probably take them all on with an impromptu weapon while singing a catchy jingle, like that damn song Elkington had been singing that I now found myself humming as I walked. Stupid out-of-date tune.

“Attention, all members of the Songnam Security Force,” an authoritative, probably-played-dominatrix-sounding mare said through the speakers that were omnipresent throughout this city. Wait, ten Bits said this was going to be about me. “There is a major security breach within our midsts. Repeat: there is a major security breach without our midst. All troopers are to be mobilized and ordered to be on the lookout for a suspicious-looking mare prowling through the Security HQ.” Bitch, you calling me a mare?! Just because my chest doesn’t look like a barrel of sand like every other stallion here doesn’t mean I have ovaries!

“Err, update: two suspicious-looking mares,” she amended. “One is an opal-coated pegasus mare, the other is a small, white unicorn covered in glitter, paint, and feathers. Suspects are to be considered extremely dangerous; approach with extreme caution.”

“What?” I muttered, struck with bafflement. Why did one of them sound suspiciously like Lightning Dust, while the other sounded like a thoroughly-humiliated Cards? “Tell me they aren’t...”

“Right! Right! Turn right!” a mare screamed from the around the corner of an upcoming T-junction.

“Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!” another familiar voice replied. Next chance I got, I was going to ask what Dust’s birthday was and buy her a dictionary so she could learns words other than ‘fuck’, such as ‘pococurante’, which would be an apt word to describe my nonchalant attitude at right this moment.

A metal cart traveling at unreal speeds bolted around the corner and came in my direction. I didn’t bother asking why Cards looked like she’d dressed up for and won first place in the third annual World’s Least Dignified Hooker contest as the cart rushed towards me, or why Lightning Dust was half-flying as she pushed it. Nor did I pay much heed to the telltale sound of thundering hooves coming from the direction they’d just left behind.

I simply raised my hoof, smiled, and waved. “Hey, Dust, Cards. Be back home in time for dinner, okay? I’ll cook.”

“Government Boy?” they both gasped, flying right past me.

Shaking my head, I pulled out a match and a Molotowbombe. “I’ve got you covered,” I sighed, lighting the alcohol-soaked rag on fire. The flaming parcel soared through the air, smashed into the hallway, and exploded into flames. Ponies who’d been chasing the mares screamed as the fire either got too close for comfort or pleasantly roasted them.

A moment passed before I raced for the fire. “Hey, hey, guys!” I called out in an urgent voice to the ponies on the other side of the raging conflagration. “Go back! I’ll put the fire out, just get those two!”

“But medical’s that way!” one of them coughed, pointing down the hallway. “And we got burns!”

I made a horizontal cutting gesture with a hoof. “Well, you stay there and you’ll go untreated and let those two go! I’ve got you covered, go!”

They hesitated, then the buck who must’ve been the ranking officer barked a few orders, thanked me, then ran off down the hall, his troopers carrying the wounded.

The heat of the flames licked me as they spread wildly. As it happened to be, Molotowbomben really liked to spread when used inside enclosed spaces. Who knew? “Eh, I’m sure this problem will solve itself,” I said, turning around and trotting in the direction of medical.

A labyrinth it was not, and I quickly arrived in a sterile little room with three little beds. An crème-coated unicorn with a violet mane looked up from her desk. “Shit, what’s wrong?”

“Outside!” I gasped, feigning exhaustion. “Those two started a fire—burnt ponies, a lot of them! You the doctor?”

She nodded, a serious look in her eyes. “Doctor First Aide, yes.”

Your name is something of an oxymoron, if you think about it. “Out in the lobby—but be careful! Flames are spreading like nopony’s business.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “And, really, the last thing we need is a pretty face getting burnt.” I blinked. “Oh, Celestia I’m sorry, that was so inappropriate of—”

Doctor First Aide gave me as single chuckle as she gathered up tools in a bag. “Look, you can buy me dinner when this crisis is over, ’kay?”

I blushed. “I, uh, sure, I, heh.”

As she rushed past me, she paused to asked, “Wait, do you have any injuries?”

“Yeah, some minor, minor burns pulling a mate of mine out of the fire.” I shook my head. “There are more hurt ponies than me, go!”

She bit her lip. “Look, there’s a bunch of medical supplies in the cabinets. See ’em? Grab a healing tonic or two, ’kay? Trust me, burn wounds are nasty.” Then she darted off with her medical bags. That authoritative-sounding mare came back up on the speakers and warned of the spreading fire. Strange that this building had no proper fire alarm like the ones back home.

I slowly shut medical’s door. A smile on my face, I trotted over to the indicated cabinets. “Come to papa,” I chuckled, opening the first one. The chuckle went up a few levels on the psych-o-meter as I opened the rest and took in the sight of all the needles and potions and salves and medical crap that I just wanted. I opened my bags and began shoveling in as many empty hypodermics, gauze bandages, and pink healing potions as I could.

As I stole a dark bottle of vitamin-K, I noticed a little handle in the cabinet. Curious, I opened it and was rewarded with a hidden cabinet with a Voixson in it, a luggage tag on it reading “Just in Case”. Not having anything better to do as I looted and pillaged for medical goods, I hit the play button.

“...and that means what I think it means?” a mare asked. She sounded exactly like the one from the speakers earlier.

“I’m afraid it does, Chief,” Doctor First Aide replied from the crackly recording. “You’re pregnant.”

“Celestia...” the so-called Chief groaned. “Why me?” It’s a pregnancy party! Everyone leaves depressed! “Just... just shit...”

“Well... well, I’m sure your husband...”

She snorted. “I’m not married. Do you see a ring anywhere? I’m a sundamned spinster is what is.”

“Yeah, kinda realized that after I spoke.” Doctor First Aide hesitated. “Do you know who the father is?”

The Chief chuckled mirthlessly. “Off the top of your head, who the buck do you think I’d fuck?”

“I’m, uh, ’fraid I don’t know much about your personal life.”

She sighed. “He can’t know. He cannot know.”

“Do you mean...?”

The chief sighed. “I heard there were ways.”

There was a silence. Then Doctor First Aide spoke: “Certain drug cocktails can... terminate—”

“Do it,” the chief said in that authoritative tone she’d used on the speakers. “Or make it or find it—I don’t care how much it’ll cost, I’ll pay it off the books. I made a mistake, I... wasn’t careful, and I respect him too much to do this... to do this to him. These are... this is my demon, and I must banish it myself.” She sniffled in the way that a hard mare does when she’s trying and failing not to cry. “Do whatever you have to, just so long as he never finds out, we clear?”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” she said quickly. “My lips are sealed.” And the recording whirred off.

Well now. Totaly unrelated-to-me drama. And, apparently, I now knew that Equestria didn’t have abortion clinics. That was interesting. Probably because the general lack of shirts meant that rusty coat hangers were in critically short supply. That’s not funny. You’re not funny.

“Of course it’s funny,” I scoffed. “It’s so offensive that it just stops being offensive.” No. Just no. Not funny. You’re bad and you should feel bad. “No, bad would’ve been me wondering why she used a drug cocktail when this nation probably has sports bats.” I mimed the action of swinging a bat. “Bam, right in the gut! Baby begone.” I... wow. I am thou, and thou art I, but even I’m horrified by that. I think you’ve crossed a line here. “Since when have I had a conscience?” I chuckled. “Now shut up. We—er, I’ve stolen all the stuff and need to run.”

“Hey!” a buck barked behind me.

“What?” I asked, turning my head just as a big, black buck tackled me. Using the force of his weight against him, I rolled with the blow and shoved him off. Leaping to my hooves, I looked down at his Stetson and brown vest. “The hell are you?”

“Internal Affairs,” he hissed, jumping up and ramming me against the counters. This landed us in what was literally the most awkward position ever. Both of us were standing with only two hooves on the ground, my back bent way further backwards than my spine was conformable with, and both our forehooves locked as he tried to force me further back. “And you were tryin’ to steal supplies!”

I blinked, looked down, looked back up, and frowned. “Um, can we restart this fight?”

“No!”

“Please? This is kind of weird.” I gritted my teeth. “I mean, I don’t mean to be a Negative Nancy, but right now your penis is kind of touching mine. I’ve got pants on, thank God, but it’s like your genitals are trying to fondle mine—I can feel all of you and it’s, uh, really making me uncomfortable. I mean, I don’t mean to make assumptions about your, uh, your sexuality, but this is pretty gay in the most literal way possible. I mean, I guess some guys like it.” I cleared my throat. “But, uh, most guy don’t. It was bad enough some girl tried to rape me yesterday, now I’ve got to deal with your penis trying to do the worm with mine and that’s very uncomfortable.” I glanced down again. “Huh. I can see yours didn’t undergo any male genital mutilation as a newborn.” I smacked my lips. “That makes one of us.”

He blinked. “Dude, what the—”

“Look, on the count of three, you back off, I’ll get ready, and we can start this over without penis fencing, okay?” I smiled. “You know, certain species of monkeys do that. It’s rather mesmerizing to watch.” I shook my head. “Okay. One... two... three—and you’re not letting me go, are you?”

“No dice, creep.”

I sighed. “Look, I’m an agent with MI5. I don’t know how it’ll work, but when I get out of this, I’m going to file a complaint with pony resources about you sexually harassing me. By whatever thing it is you swear by, you are going to be severely reprimanded for all of this sexual harassment.” He just stared at me, baffled. “You at least owe me an apology,” I said, sticking my nose in the air.

He gave me a blank look. “What.”

“Apologize right now and stop molesting me with your feely gentials right this instant, or else!” I threatened.

“I... or... um...”

“Or else what?” I offered, and he weakly nodded. “Or else this.” And I levitated out the knife from under my suit and kindly introduced the sharp end to his masculinity. He screamed like a little girl as he threw himself from me, letting me get back on all fours proper. “I take very affirmative action to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace,” I added helpfully, driving the point home by stabbing his jugular vein. He died rather hilariously, making me feel very smart for wearing my codpiece.

Rolling my eyes, I knelt down and wiped the blood off the knife using his vest, because blood causes rust. A rusty dagger would have been horrible. Just horrible. And, boy, was that blade getting kills today! My sword was going to start complaining that I never loved it. If swords could talk, that was, which probably wasn’t the case. Also, I closed the cabinets because their openness was driving me insane.

“Oh my goodness!” Doctor First Aide gasped as she ground to a halt in the room’s doorway.

What’s she doing back here? “Don’t just stand there!” I shouted, pointing at the guy on the ground. “Help him!”

“What happened?” she demanded, galloping over and sliding to the ground.

“I don’t know! He just stumbled in here dressed like a cattle rapist!”

The doctor put a hoof on his neck. “Oh, shit, he’s dead!”

I looked down at her arm and paused. “Are those burns on you? Are you hurt?”

First Aide looked up at me, gritted her teeth, and pulled a healing potion from her bag. “The fire’s everywhere,” she said, finishing the bottle. “I-I helped a few ponies out, but, shit, the smoke’s everywhere.” She looked down at the corpse, yelped, and crawled away from it, straight into a corner. There was blood on her hoof from where she’d touched him.

Damn, I make a good Molotowbombe. “Are we trapped in this section of the building?”

She looked up at me. “You ever try breathing in smoke as it blinds you, all the while navigating a burning building you’ve only worked at for two weeks? I mean, the places I do know are already on fire, like the Celestiadamned lobby! ”

I hesitated. “Well, back in Neuorléans when I worked with the Reichskriminalamt, a bomb completely destroyed the downtown RKA building. I was just down the street, too. All six stories of concrete and glass. Completely shattered when a magical fireball... I was one of the first respondents working to help out. Thankfully, Atemschutzmasken were standard issue for both law enforcement and military.”

First Aide blinked. “Bu-wha’?”

“The fires, if not for the smoke, could you get past them and escape?” I asked.

“I... I think. But, that’s kind of a hard thing to get rid of, the damn smoke. Can’t breathe and it blinds you.” She tilted her head. “What are you doing?”

With a toothy smile, I pulled out a black rubber mask with a thick glass visor giving one good peripheral vision when wearing. A black thing about the size and shape of a can of catfood was attached to the side—the filtration system. I looked at the door, then to the scared-looking mare in the corner. “Here.”

“What?”

“It’s an Atemschutzmaske—a mask of breathing protection.” I checked the filter. “Set for particle filtration. With this on, your eyes will be safe, and you can breathe clearly.” She just looked at me. I walked over her to and crouched down next to the mare. “Here, let me help you. Just trust me, put it on and the smoke won’t bother you, thanks to the miracle of science.”

“But what about you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Eh, I’ve been through worse. Yesterday, I almost got raped.”

“What?” she gasped.

“Yeah, that was pretty worse. Not kidding, either,” I replied. “I mean, what is about me that makes so many crazy Equestrians see me as rapebait? Seriously, everypony in this nation is crazy. Or mentally scarred somehow. Or just broken. There’s something deeply wrong with this nation is what I’m saying.” The crème-coated mare didn’t resist as I put the mask on her, tightening the leather straps on it to adjust to her smaller face. “Point is, get out of here. I’ll find a way out somehow. Now go on, get!”

“How will you get out?” First Aide asked as I helped her to her feet.

I gestured to Mister Penis Party over on the ground. “Fritz and I will think of something. Now go—people need you out there!” I gave her a push forwards, and, after a quick glance back, she ran out of the room.

With a sigh, I looked out the doorway. “Ah, you’re lucky we’re on the same team.” I walked over to the cabinets, pulled out the Voixson, and stuffed it in my bags. “Because you’re clearly clever enough to want to blackmail some pretty evil ponies. Or safeguard against evil ponies via blackmailing backdoors. Either or, really.”

Checking my wrist, I looked at the wound. It didn’t hurt so much to walk on, and the wound was still infection free. Checking the bandages on my legs, I found them surprisingly clean. I breathed a sigh of release, then frowned at the dead pony on the floor. First Aide had been surprisingly blasé about the corpse, considering Dust and Cards’ reactions to them. Then again, if Equestrian medical school was anything like ours, she’d probably dissected a dead body or two before she was given her license, so she possibly had more tolerance to this sort of thing.

Whatever. I needed to get moving. I checked my bag, walked into the hallway and—Hell’s bells, that was a lot of fire down from where I’d thrown the Molotowbombe. It reminded me of a vaguely related anecdote from a tabletop role-playing game I’d once played and didn’t like, and how I’d voiced my dislike by making enough explosives in a bathtub to destroy a small city, and then blowing my character up in the middle of the adventure. Needless to say, they never made eye contact with me ever again.

Thankfully, this place had lots of different ways to go. Like right, down in a direction labeled “Front Lobby”, which meant lots of fire that way. Oh, if only my duster were a fireproof bodysuit. Then I paused. The duster was probably a better thing to wear right now, since it was sort of fire-resistant thanks to an ingenious way of tanning and the animal the leather had come from. And on the other hoof, wearing the suit apparently made me able to go pretty much anywhere here.

Screw it, this wasn’t the time to strip down and change. Just trot down the hallway and look for a non-burning way out of this mess, like a proper fire exit. There was, much as First Aide had attested to, a lot and a lot of smoke. And then I saw it, a red box on the wall labeled “In case of fire, break glass”. I casually broke the glass and watched as it poorly, poorly shattered into tiny spears of murderous death. It was official: Equestria hadn’t yet invented safety glass.

“Hello, sweetness,” I crooned, pulling out the sturdy red fire axe. How could anypony have missed this? Ooh, and the weight was all nice and good for swinging and capable of breaking someone’s skull in half with a good blow to the face!

Lesson number one of swinging axes: all work and no play makes Jack a dull colt. Lesson two: doors were for sissies. Lesson three: walls were for sissies. Lesson four: splinters from hitting the wall with an axe going into your eyes will make even the strongest stallions into sissies. Lesson five: Equestrians sucked at building walls.

The room behind the wall—I nearly killed myself trying to squeeze through the hole—was some sort of stairwell. I walked up to the door, touched it, and found it hot. Well, Scheiße. That fire was having a field day. Worst idea today, but there was no where to go but up. Four stories higher and I exited onto the top floor. The whole floor was just offices with big, big windows.

Slinging the axe over my shoulder, since the genius who’d put it here had also given it a carrying strap, I trotted over to the windows. A large, large crowd of ponies had gathered before the building. I sighed, shaking my head. “What’s this, now?” I trotted through the empty offices and to another set of windows, windows overlooking Elkington’s stronghold. Why the hell was this building and the castle’s three-story-tall walls so close to each other? Didn’t somepony realize that all it’d take to break into the castle would be to... Oh, God, you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you? And don’t tell me no, because I’m thou, and thou art I. I hate this body. Can I get a new head, one who isn’t self-destructive and insane?

“Shut up, magical voice,” I hissed. “To the fourth floor!”

|— ☩ —|

I hate you. I cannot believe how much I hate you right now.

“Ja, ja, ja, ich weiß,” I groaned, face smashing into the stone surface.

We are covered in glass and the back of your neck is bleeding from shards of glass embedded in your skin, you retard!

“Deine Mutter ist eine dreibeinige junkie Hoe.” I pulled out a healing potion as I tried to stand up.

She’s your own goddamn mother, you savage! Don’t say that!

“Hey, I never knew the broad,” I said, shrugging. Ow. Big mistake. Glass in your skin and shrugging does not mix well. True story. Nevertheless, my ribcage feeling like it was on fire, I stumbled up to my feet and quaffed the potion. As my flesh healed, I helped by picking the glass out of my skin. “Fun fact: she’s literally dead to me.” I chugged another potion as I got the last bit of glass out of my arms and eyelids.

I literally hate you.

“I literally do not care.” I brushed shards of glass from my suit and looked around the castle wall I was on. Self-defenestration, while perhaps one of the worst ideas ever and was something I would never do ever again no matter how cool it looked, was effective. I mean, yeah, it helped a ton that some crazy intern had apparently been hoarding, like, thirty super-soft pillows in a supply closet as part of some incredibly elaborate ploy to get laid in the break room, and how I’d tied them all together and used them to soften my landing, which was the only reason I was alive right now, but details, details.

The pillows, sadly, had given their fluffy lives that I might live on to save the day. Their sacrifices would not be in vain. I looked around again, the burning building to my left, the castle complex to my right.

I wonder how Dust and Cards are doing right now. Probably being beaten by police brutality. No, wait, Cards is Police Brutality Cop. She’s probably screaming, “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” as she beats up some buck thrice her size as he cries and cowers on the ground. Classic Cards! That, or crying about missing a part of her ear. I suppressed the urge to giggle maniacally.

Down the ways on the wall was a little tower, and out from it burst a semi-armored stallion. “Are you alright?” he called out, running over to me. “Sir, sir! Are you alright?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Um, because you just jumped out of a window, fell a story, then landed on a stone wall,” he replied. “Are you okay? Do you need medical attention?”

I tapped a hoof to my jaw. “Hmm... Nah.”

“But, sir—”

“Look, there’s nothing wrong with falling out of a tall window and landing on incredibly uncomfortable ground; it’s perfectly good for a stallion. It builds character. That’s what Momma used to tell me, and then she got drunk, beat me up, and threw me off increasingly taller objects until I learned how not to be killed by gravity.” I held up a hoof to him. “Worry not, my friend, for I am level twenty bard. So then, please just lead me to the exit.”

The guardspony hesitated, hesitated some more, then indicated in the direction of the tower. “Uh, right this way... sir?”

I looked down at the ground and frowned. “Hm. It seems I’ve forgotten how to walk again.”

“Um, I, er... Look, just hang tight and I’ll go get a stretcher and take you to the hospital. Just, I might be a small while ’cause it’s a damn zoo down there!”

“There’s a zoo?” I asked, watching the earther run off. “Fine. I guess I won’t be throwing peanuts at the elephants today.” The castle’s compound, I noted, consisted of what was practically a small village of manors surrounded by walls, with a small keep as the compound’s centerpiece. Bingo. Target set. And from the look of things, all the buildings were connected.

When I was happy with how long I’d just been standing there, I set off for the little tower. Inside it was nothing special, just a little platform where you could probably shoot arrows out from. The masonry, too, was bland, unimaginative, and didn’t look nearly up to spec with fortifications back home. I bet the stone wasn’t even reinforced. It all just proved to me that Equestria would never last a day back on my home continent.

In any case, the center of the little tower was a stairwell. I quickly rushed down the spiral staircase, which, for some reason, was much easier than rushing up them. There were a few directions to go in the room at the base of the tower. The most interesting door was the one labeled “Stables”, so it was the one I headed down.

This little trip ended up with me in a living room-like place with a red couch and a fireplace and a large set of windows facing the Stronghold’s white walls. All around were rather large doors, only three of them labeled, one “Ocelot”, one “Reindeer”, and the last one “Main Plaza”.

“Ocelot?” I mumbled, tilting my head at the door. “Isn’t that an animal?” I cocked my head the other direction. “I’ve never seen a real live ocelot. I think.” Logically, this had to be remedied. Maybe I could throw peanuts at it!

“Hello, cutie,” I said as I went through the door. In the middle of the wooden floor was a spotted feline the size of a large house-cat. Sitting in between two reds bowls of water and food and staring out the windows, the ocelot looked at me. “Ooh, you’re like some kind of cat!”

Now, I didn’t know much about cats, and I knew even less about ocelots, but as I left the room, my gut was telling me that Duke Elkington needed to get some tree branches or something in that room, because that ocelot was desperate for something to play with. So, logically, I tied him up and put him in my bag, making plans to stop at a toy store and pick the ocelot up a stuffed animal after I killed Elkington. Seriously, it was like a White Legion gulag in that featureless room.

Because everything reminds you of a White Legion gulag. And those Nippönische think we’re the bad guys. Sheesh. Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t hear your horror stories over all the forced labor camps the Reich liberated!

Trying to ignore the claw wounds on my cheek, I decided that I’d had it with skulking through buildings and went out the door labeled “Outside”. As it turned out, this lead out into a wide plaza with an elaborate fountain taking center stage. A breath of fresh air from the tight spaces I’d been worming my way through for hours, or however long I’d been here.

All in all, the plaza seemed fairly empty, but also a perfect kill zone. It was just the kind of place where it made funneling enemy troops easiest, put them out in the open, and gave you the most angles of attack. The sight put a smile on my face; it reminded me so much of the capital city, whose entire city layout was basically one big kill zone after kill zone. Still, it could use some work before it even approached a feeling of real safety.

See, all around the plaza and on the buildings surrounding it was a single looping walkway raised about a story off the ground whose ends ended somewhere in the keep ramparts. Clearly, it was a final layer of defense before the keep proper was breached. Still, it didn’t stop there from being a wooden ladder leading up to it from just next to where the stable let out. There wasn’t any reason not to climb the ladder, because climbing and jumping was all I was doing today till my limbs all fell off and I hilariously ended up a quadriplegic trying to fight evil using only the testicles he trained to hold a sword.

In any case, up the ladder I went, glad that ocelots were apparently very safe to gag and thoroughly bind in your bag. Never once did I hear him growl at me. That, or he was dead. Either or. I took a breath as I surveyed the little walkway and its nice wooden roof. Many trees had been murdered for what I was slowly realizing was an ultimately unnecessary fortification. Stone and steel were the future, baby.

“What’s all this, then?!” some angry mare with freckled cheeks stormed at me. “You ain’t s’posed to be ’ere!”

I cocked a brow. “Au contraire, I’m supposed to be here. See, I’m here for a meeting with Elkington. Special Agent Faust, Reichskriminalamt agent on loan to MI5. But the director of MI5 bet me lots of money that I couldn’t sneak in here and—you’re not buying this, are you?”

The security mare pulled out a baton. “Not at all.”

“Well, then have I deal for you!” And I slammed the axe right in her face with enough force to knock her head into the ground. “A fire sale for all your axing needs! Get it? Because it’s a fire axe, and it’s in your face!” I laughed maniacally but she didn’t. “It’s funny.” Her body twitched. “Oh, hey, look—you’re dead. Awesome.” I wrenched the axe from her torn-in-half skull and wiped the blood off on her security vest. “Yeah, in a world where dipshits get killed with axes, one stallion will stand above the rest... coming to musical theaters this August.”

I cheerily trotted off down towards Elkington’s keep, humming Elkington’s catchy jingle. Only as I turned a slight corner in the walkway did I see that large doorless doorway leading down into a large building. “Barracks” a very handy sign above the doorway read. And then it got better: some poor buck had just appeared from the doorway, apparently out for a smoking break. That’s when he saw me, that’s when he looked over and saw the dead mare, that’s when the cigarette fell out of his mouth and instantly became a very dangerous and irresponsibly dropped fire hazard.

“Oh, shit!” he screamed as I charged him.

“Batter up!” I laughed, bringing the axe down on his neck. The blow both crushed his windpipe and severed either his jugular or carotid. It was hard to tell. “Hey, don’t lose your head, mate.”

“Yo, what in the hoof is going on out there?” another security pony asked, poking her head out from the opened door. That was when I looked over and saw that the doorway lead into what looked to me like an officer’s club, as well as a stairwell leading down to something or other. What was worse, the officer’s club was teeming with ponies.

I threw my body at her, slamming the axe again and again into her face until she was just a twitching body on the floor without a face at all. I looked up and smiled at all the frozen-looking ponies sitting around in their chairs, drinking their drinks and eating what looked like slop. “Hello there, everypony. I am a guest in your country, yes. And where I am from, slaying a mare what speaks before spoken to with an axe is my people’s sincerest, most humble form of saying ‘Hello, I love you all’. Because we’re horribly, horribly sexist. So, please accept this sullen wench here as my—and you’re not buying it, are you?”

“I don’t think that’s how ponies say hello in his country,” somepony commented like an utter retard.

“What the hay are y’all doing?” a very angry-looking buck with a totally badass scar over his eye demanded as he pulled out a sword. I wished that I had a scar like his. Maybe one day, maybe one day. “Charge!”

Now then, two ideas sprang immediately to mind: the smart thing and the awesome thing. One of these ideas was to jump into the fray and go crazy with an axe, since I was sure I could kill them better and faster than they could try to kill me, even though being outnumbered so badly was a death sentence. The other idea involved running. Oh, and a Molotowbombe.

Guess which idea I actually tried?

Trick question. See, before I could actually do anything, an explosion wracked my senses silly. Against all my willpower and effort to the contrary, I jerked my head in its direction. It came from the top floors of the Songnam Security HQ building, a huge fireball raising into the sky as the top two floors crumbled off the building and scattered into hundreds of fireballs pelting the Songnam Stronghold. I had no idea what in God’s name had caused the explosion—probably something evil the Duke was up to in there—but, by Heaven, it took mere seconds for so, so many things to catch fire.

God, I wished there were more explosions in my life, because a very, very primal male part of me saw that explosion and I had to struggle not to feel even somewhat aroused by it. This was why it was so hard not to look at explosions in real life. If I’d been born a girl and had seen that explosion, I’d’ve been wet enough to drown a toddler. Only my supreme willpower kept me in line.

The fires were slow, not yet an inferno, except for where most of the building had collapsed onto. Where that’d happen was a raging inferno threatening to engulf this whole castle in a great conflagration. I liked that. Suddenly everything was more fun.

Somehow in all of this, the ponies inside the barracks hadn’t done anything but stare, even after the speakers blared fire warnings. I shrugged. “You know, I always said that if there was a way to go, it’d have something to do with mares, whips, and oil. But I suppose an axe fight during a fire will have to do.”

That stallion with the cool eye charged at me. But I was just so cheery from all the sudden carnage and fire that nothing could faze me, not even a room full of charging ponies. In fact, as I swung the axe and ended someone’s life, I couldn’t help but burst out into song.

“Ich heiße Jericho (Stirb, Lauch!)

And I am here to say (Die, you sonofabitch!)

I’m going to make you smile and I’ll brighten up your day!”

The axe found its way into somepony’s withers, the blow so deep and so muscle-severing that they just collapsed screaming to the ground. Jerking the blade out of his body, I accidentally dug the pick-end of the axe into someone’s eye. Eye scream, eh? I was on metaphorical fire! Hacking these ponies apart and singing up a storm.

“With me, you’re never alone,

With you—für immer allein!

(You know what I mean?)”

The last victim—er, last evil pony was Mister Cool Eye. I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t killed him first, but there was he, standing there with a horrified expression. He didn’t even try to fight, just dropped his sword and made himself scarce. I grinned as I surveyed the carnage; apparently, a crazy stallion singing a song and swinging an axe wasn’t something they’d been trained for. Most of them were still alive, of course, too crippled in vital areas to fight, but a few were dead.

“Sir, what in Celestia’s name?” a male voice said from a corner of the room. I glanced over and frowned; there was a stairway there, and as Mister Cool Eye scrambled down it, a young buck was coming up from it.

“He’s crazy! Run!” Cool Eye shouted.

“Wait, who—”

Before the young stallion could say anymore more, some crazy pony with a smile tackled him with an axe, shouting, “Va Fangool!” The force of the tackle made them both tumble down the stairs. Thankfully for my spinal health, the stairs only went half a floor down before turning ninety degrees in the corner and going down to the ground floor proper.

Standing up and rubbing my head, I looked out at the ground floor, at all the security mares and stallions running around and shouting. To me, it looked more some some sort of bar. In fact, there was a bar counter with barpony. I idly wondered for a moment if Equestrians did barracks differently than Teutsche did.

“Somepony get this psycho sonofabitch!” Cool Eye screamed, desperately sprinting the second leg of the staircase. Problem was, you couldn’t really sprint down a stair case; you’d break you neck. So, of course, he tumbled down the, giving me an odd sense of vindication for reasons that I couldn’t quite place.

To their credit, several of the armed ponies did heed Cool Eye’s orders. Against their credit, that meant they had to charge up the stairs in what was essentially single file. My axe, though, lauded their idiocy, and I cheered them on with a song as I hacked and slashed.

“I really am so happy

Your smile fills me with glee

I give a smile I get a smile

And that’s so special to me!”

It was funny because I physically gouged smiles into their faces with my axe! My smile was at starting to break the psych-o-meter, and it wasn’t even lessened when I noticed all the blood on my fancy silk suit. Thank God I was probably the only pony in the world who knew how to get blood out of a black spidersilk suit.

They were so woefully unprepared. Had they been ready for me and not little better than the disorganized rabble they were, I’d’ve been toast. At this point, I was running on pure luck and the element of sheer audacity. The moment that got even a little organized, I was dead. I would be standing here at the bottom of the stairs and I would be dead. Still, seeing so many fallen comrades at my hooves gave them all serious pause.

Some unicorn who’d been carrying a box of doughnuts let them drop to the ground, spreading their sugariness all over the wooden floor. I didn’t waste any time in jamming my axe into his shoulderblade. “Don’t drop food—that’s how you get ants! Let this be a lesson to you. Do it again and I’ll skin you with a flensing knife, make a pair of you-shaped pajama out of the skin, then set the pajamas on fire! Oh, and speaking of fire...”

I took the liberty of pulling out the Molotowbombe, lighting up the wick, and throwing it into the room proper. Ignition. Fire. Screams. Laughter from me.

“Today is a good day to die!” I guffawed derisively, running off up the stairs and dashing back out to the walkway, knowing that the fire would distract them.

All around the castle compound ponies were rushing around. Many were trying to put out the rash of fires that’d just sprung up, most were just flailing around and panicking, the majority of them running away from the fires and explosions. After all, despite what the ZND spy handbook would tell you about distractions, why would you assume people would ever run towards an explosion?

The unseen speakers blared with a shrill shriek. “Be on the lookout for a tall stallion wielding an axe and wearing a suit!” they screamed. “If seen, apprehend him with extreme caution—he is considered armed and supremely dangerous!”

‘Supremely dangerous’? Sounds sexy. “Yeah, I’m moving on up in the world,” I replied to myself, charging down the walkway. Wait. How did they finger you so quickly? “Probably have some sort of speakers in the barracks, I’d think.”

Just like that, the exterior walkway ended, and I was now standing on some second-story balcony running around a large ballroom-like foyer room. The floor of the room was covered with all sorts of equipment, dust, loose bits of wall, and work tools. Clearly, this place had been undergoing some sort of renovation and had been hastily abandoned, probably because of the random inferno just outside.

Glancing back, I smiled as I saw flames licking the barracks building

“Halt!” a buck barked at me.

I jerked my head to the side to see a strangely familiar stallion and mare. “Hey, weren’t you two supposed to be having a date at a hoofball game?” I asked. “What a small world we live in.” Smiling jovially, I pulled out my sword. “Quick check, folks: my sword beats your batons... You know, now that I think about, most all of those security ponies whose blood I’m now covered in were wielding non-lethal weapons.” I shook my head. “In any case, I’m sure neither of you two lovebirds wants to die over some silly job, right? Right! So just step on out of the way and I’ll be going, because I’m not the bad guy here.”

The buck, clad only in his black-with-red-highlights security vest, darted his cyan eye to the mare. He looked back at me and took a breath, raising the baton in his magical aura. “No.”

“You know, I get that you’re doing this because you don’t want to be seen as a coward before your lady-friend,” I sighed, “but I guarantee you she’d be much happier with a coward than with a dead would-be hero. Isn’t that right, ma’am? You’re perfectly fine with spending romantic time and possibly the rest of your pathetic, wretched life with a stallion who was unwilling to try to stand up for something in the one hour where he was called upon, going to bed each night knowing that your partner is a pathetic coward unable to stand up to anything; and years later, when you’re married and have children, that knowledge slowly drives you mad, but by the time to realize that you’ve made a mistake, your looks have faded and the kids have gone off to college and the only one who even looks at you anymore is that damn coward; so you lie and say you’re still in love with him—that’s totally fine with because you know he’s still the best you could ever do, right?”

She blinked. “I...”

“That was rhetorical, you weren’t supposed to try to answer it!” I snapped. “Because life’s a bitch, and then you die! But do you want that death to be here and now?” Down at the end of the little balcony walkway we were on was a small set of stairs leading up to the second story proper. Glancing down at the large and rather ornate staircase leading up to the huge double-doors on the second floor, I figured... nothing, actually. I had a thought, but I lost it, and then I stopped trying to intimidate and instead attempted to remember what I was just thinking.

Somehow, the only thing I could think of suddenly became wiener dogs and feeding them to the ocelot I had in my bag. That would be the ultimate in awesome irony, a cat eating dogs. The twist was that there was no ketchup.

My internal state of mind must have shown in the fish-eyed expression I gave the two. So, Mr. Hero thought he could try to save the day and woo better his lady. Sadly for matters of the heart, it was rather hard to woo your lady when you were rolling around the ground, screaming about how there was this rather nasty gash above your hoof and you were pretty sure you were going to lose it. Also, blood.

“Rocky Road!” the mare shouted, dropping to her elbows and knees and practically nuzzling up to the bleeding stallion.

“Wait. His name is ‘Rocky Road’?” I scoffed. “What is with you Equestrians and your weird names? I mean, back in the Reich, we have names like Hans, Jan, Aloysius, Aloisia, Maria, Astrid—all of which are pretty much better in every way than most any Equestrian name I’ve heard so far.” I raised my sword. “I might as well just kill him now just to spare him the horror of having to live a life with such a dumb name.”

“No!” she shrieked. The mare leapt and threw her whole body at me. It happened too quick for me to react, and she was much, much stronger than she looked. With all her force, she grabbed me, my body crashing against the walkway railing and—no, falling over the railing.

My heart skipped a beat as I realized that this was probably it. Falling even a story was liable to kill me, all because I was having too much damn fun in the moment. Well, no whips or oil, but there was at least mare involved in how I was going to die. So, one for three was technically a failure, right?

And then I slammed into the hard, hard ground back-first. The impact, I was sure, concussed me and beat my back to Scheiße and back again, like a back-flop from, well, from a story up. I choked, a tear in my eye as the pain failed to properly register in my body. I gasped for breath, the air sucking raggedly into my lungs, the mare atop my body pressing down on my ribs. A sharp, piercing pain finally clicked somewhere in my left breast, like being stabbed by a particularly vindictive ex, but pain was good. Dead people felt no pain. Still, it was about as welcome as a leper in an orgy.

On shaky legs, the mare actually managed to stand up and then, hilariously, fall down onto the floor next to me. I moved to put my hoof over my heart, only to pause when I felt something hot and wet from the piercing font of pain in my breast. Slowly, I touched the spot, my hoof coming away soaked with blood.

“Scheiße,” I grunted, lifting my head to look at my breast. “Oh, no... no... no... no!”

It was a large sliver of steel pointing straight up into the air. It was sticking out of my breast, the top tip extruding perhaps two or so inches from my flesh. I could feel blood pooling slowly beneath me. I could feel now—and if not feel than almost clearly see—that my right lung had been pierced.

The castle’s main doors burst open, and Duke Elkington’s voice rang out, echoing through the castle. “Get the wounded in here and set up a triage with that doctor mare, stat! The castle’s the most fireproof building in the city, so you should be safe to administer care. And—” He paused as the mare who’d fallen with me stumbled to her hooves. I could see that her chest was bleeding, no doubt stabbed by the same steel in my breast. Without anything to cover that wound, I doubted she had too long to live. “By Celestia, we’ve got wounded in here, too! Hop to it, we don’t got all damn day!”

“Sir, yes, sir!” a chorus of voices thundered back, followed by a stampede of action. They were coming towards me.

So I did the first thing that came to mind. I grabbed the metal sliver with my magic and, with all my might, rolled my body to the side. Using the weight of my motion, I hit my hooves first and ambled onto my feet, the metal sliver firmly lodged in my body. I didn’t know what in the hell the metal had come from, but I could feel it sticking too out of my back, and could see spurts of blood running down it and onto the ground. I scanned the ground for my sword. Sword... sword... Where was it?!

“More?” Elkington gasped at me. “Look, I’ll go back outside and help coordinate ponies into the castle, you folks—”

“Elkington!” I shouted. I didn’t have my sword, but I still had my axe. “I know everything!” Carrying the axe alongside me, I stumbled forwards, blood beating through my ears. With the metal still in my body, I had little in upwards of a few hours left alive, even with the openly pierced lung. Using healing potions felt out of the question to me: I didn’t like the idea of getting a metal rod fused into my body, though I hadn’t the foggiest idea whether that could even happen. A securitypony got too close to me, and paid a blood price for it as I raggedly swung the axe into his chest. “Hi, my name is Duke Elkington,” I groused, “and I’m a huge fan of cocks. You can tell from my cock-tasting spit. I’m like a chupacabra, but for dicks.”

“It’s that bad guy from the intercom!” one of the securityponies blurted out. There weren’t too many of them, thankfully, but more than enough to probably kick my ass.

“What?!” the Duke gasped. He just stood there in the doorway, staring at me as I lurched towards him, shambling like a corpse. And then he pointed at me and barked, “Take him down!”

I smiled. Even with one lung, I still had some song in me.

It was not a glorified, dignified fight full of epic heroics, clashing swords, and daring heroes. The entire fiasco was me shambling along, leaving a trail of blood, haphazardly swinging the axe at anypony who got near me. The blood-soaked weapon maimed well, their batons didn’t really faze me, what with the horrendous pain of already being impaled drowning their blows out. Oddly, the singing did help, even with the punctured lung.

“Yes, the perfect gift for me

Is a smile as wide as a mile—

To make me happy as can be,

All I really need’s a smile, smile, smile

From these happy friends of mine!”

I brought my happiest smile to bear as I leered at Duke Elkington, myself surrounded by groaning, bleeding, dying ponies. The Duke’s jaw was wide open as I jeered, “Ever heard of a little place called ‘Sleepy Oaks’? I know you have! And ever heard of a little thing called ‘enervation’? I bet you have!”

He stood there as I lurched up to him, wearing a horrified expression as he surveyed the carnage. “Who in the hay are you?” Elkington whispered, ever so slowly pulling out a shortsword.

“To you? The Angel of Death, and I’m going to make you sorry you ever heard of me,” I chuckled. The chuckle turned into a wheezy laugh. “Ach, I’m sorry! This is just so cool in my mind, you know? The epic showdown between the corrupt Duke and the hero everyone thinks is the villain. Then I slay you with an axe and just watch as your dark conspiracy unravels before thine eyes—oh dear, I just said ‘thine’ on utter accident. Sorry about that. Won’t use the second-person informal again.” I smiled cheerfully. “Wow, you would not believe how much this thing in my lung hurts!”

I gazed past the Duke and watched the raging inferno Songnam Stronghold had become. Ash rained from the sky as we two ponies were bathed in the orange glow of the fires. At the sudden sound of heavy stomping, I jerked my eyes to the side, only to be blindsided by a huge diamond dog. My body tumbled side-over-side, the rod of metal in my chest thankfully staying put.

“Packmaster!” the dog whined.

“I’m fine!” Elkington snapped. “See to the wounded—they’re more important than me!”

“But—”

“But nothing! I’ll live without you, they won’t.” He turned his attention back to me as the dog bowed his head and ran off to the wounded.

Caught in a coughing fit, I struggled to stand up without tearing the rod out of my chest. The blood leaking onto the ground was transfixing to watch, but I had more important, more awesome things to do. “Elkington,” I singsonged, ambling to all fours, “the dark things you do have not gone unnoticed.” I frowned, picking up the axe. “Wish I had a better one-liner to quip before I killed you. Like... uh, ‘Father always told me to fight fire with fire, which is probably why he got thrown out of the fire brigade.’” I laughed. “It’s funny because I set all these fires.”

“What!?” he gasped.

“Ooh, ooh, ooh,” I gasped back, lurched towards him, axe in my aura, “I’ve got a good one! Elkington, the last thing I want to do is hurt you... but it’s still on my list.” I shrugged. “Yeah, that sounded better in my head. I just always figured that if God’s watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining, you know? Kind of like how I once figured that God must love stupid people, since he made so damn many. Not unlike how some people say ‘If you can't beat them, join them’. But I always said ‘If you can’t beat them, beat them’, because they’ll be expecting you to join them, so you’ll have the element of surprise. Point is, you’re evil, and I’m going to kill you for it.”

“The hell are you on about? I’m a good pony,” Elkington said calmly, raising his swords.

“A clear conscience is usually a sign of a bad memory,” I replied, swinging my axe.

He threw himself to the side, bringing his sword down in a chopping motion against my arm. It wasn’t all that hard to pivot my body to the side, absorbing most of the chop but still gashing my arm.

“Great,” I groaned. “Two large, openly bleeding wounds. Could this get any—” I heard the sound of rapidly approaching ponies marching towards me “—I’m not finished!—get any worse.” I sighed, looking out at the distant band of armored ponies running for us. “There. You ruined it.”

Realizing just how close I was to Elkington, I shot him a nasty left hoof across the face. He tried to swing his blade, but, really, hitting a sword with a fire axe really did work. His blade clattered to the floor as I chose that moment to tackle the Mistkerl. With each punch from my right arm came a splattering of blood, but soon I’d knocked him to the ground.

I took a moment to wonder how old Elkington was; he looked rather young; but then, I’d been expecting a fifty-something-year-old, not this mid–late twenties/early thirties buck. He, however, took this moment to punch my nose. I tasted the pain as I quickly pinned his arms down, watching my bleeding chest cover his suit—which was of decidedly poorer quality than my own—in bits of bright crimson.

With a psychotic smirk, I pulled out my dagger. And because it was super awesome but for no actually practical reason, I said darkly:

“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still.”

Elkington didn’t say or do anything, neither scream nor struggle. “Hey,” I said, a sharp pain—probably a mosquito or something—randomly hitting my jugular vein, “remember when I told you I wouldn’t use the second-person informal with you ever again? I have lied to thee...” I raised the knife and plunged it—okay, why did I suddenly feel so cold and sleepy?

I glanced to the right, to the fiery outside, and came face-to-face with a crème-coated mare with a violet mane, an Atemschutzmaske hanging from her neck, a terrified look in her eyes. She pulled away a large syringe from me, and I blinked as I realized she’d just injected me with something. Also, given how impossibly hard that must have been, that she was probably a badass doctor with killer aim.

“Oh hi, Doctor First Aide,” I greeted woozily. “Glad to see you’re okay. Listen, don’t worry about Elkington, he’s evil. Like, he tried to have both of my confederates raped and... Scheiße. So he’s a pretty bad dude, okay? Okay.” I dropped the knife and collapsed to the side.

The last thing I saw was Doctor First Aide’s pretty face looking down at me with a terrified expression, and the cadre of guardsponies surrounding her and Elkington and now me. Something about this felt cliché, and I had the sneaky suspicion that this would end with me dropping the soap in a prison shower. Really, this must’ve be what it felt like for cat when one tries to play the flute: which is to say, all kinds of screwy and wrong. I was going to at least wake up one kidney less in a bathtub of ice, wasn’t I?

And then a dark, surgical blackness gripped me whole.

Author's Note

Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: Daddy Issues—Daddy never hugged you enough. This gives you a Freudian excuse to misbehave. Oh, and you now do +5% bonus damage to mothers, fathers, and expecting fathers. But you also do +10% bonus damage to expecting mothers, because you’re a giant cunt and you sicken me.

50% to next level.

(This chapter caught some bad chapter cancer because I wanted it to end right where it ended. Screw the rules. Your comments are sought after, for I am a harlot for them. Oh, and if you really want something Jericho-related in the interim before the next chapter, here is something I wrote a long time ago: “An Excerpt from “Ich, Viktor”, the autobiography of King Viktor Pendergast der Landesvater”. Comments are enabled, but it is rather dark and not at all funny.)

(Seriously, leave Jericho here a comment. I need them to survive—they’re like a drug!)

Chapter 13 — Nuts

Chapter 13: Nuts

“All the ponies in this town are crazy!”

Terror.

Terror is a strange emotion, one related to fear, but so much more interesting. To quote someone smarter than me, fear is being chased by a monster; terror is knowing there is something behind you, feeling its breath on your neck, knowing you will be grabbed, and then turning around to find that there was nothing there. Terror is coming home to find that everything in your house has been replaced with an exact copy. Although, in that case for me, it had something to do with my girlfriend having accidentally summoned an eldritch abomination that destroyed my house and now she was trying desperately to hide that fact.

But terror was tied into the idea of ambiguity and vagueness, something we as a species do not like. When we can’t quite tell if something is off or not, when we’re not sure if it can or cannot hurt us, that is when we ponies get creeped out.

So when faced with blackness and a cold feeling, my last memories having something to do with killing and maiming a bunch of ponies working for an evil duke, there was a very reasonable emotion to feel in the back of my mind.

Of course, that reasonable emotion was about as far from my mind as good ideas were. Good ideas and reasonable emotions were two things that liked to stay as far away from me as possible. But who needs them?

| — |

\☩/

Dark chills, closed eyes. God, I knew it! I was totally going to wake up in a bathtub of ice, missing a kidney. My eyes didn’t want to open, a little feeling in the back of my mind urging me to just fall back to sleep.

Sleep? I’d been sleeping? A bolt of mild annoyance shot up my spine as I remembered everything from creepily leering at Cards while she slept to fighting Elkington. And that bolt was enough for me to will my eyes open, the rest of my senses suddenly bombarding me for all they were worth. Then the feeling of wanting to bake pie came to me.

I was lying down on some sort of bed as I looked up into the concerned-looking expression of a crème-coated unicorn mare with lime-green eyes, her violet mane done up in a ponytail, dressed in every way the epitome of a doctor. The smell of vanilla mixed with stale antiseptics clouded my nose as I glanced to the side, noting the white wall to my left, and thick-looking curtains isolating the little corner my bed was in.

“Hi,” Doctor First Aide said in a weak voice.

I regarded her for the longest time. “Good morning. I see the assassins have failed,” I muttered, letting my head relax on the pillow that was apparently under my head. Taking slow breaths, I lifted my head slightly and looked at my chest, at the bandages over my breast, my sliced arm, and the wound where Bigs had stabbed me. The rest of my body was covered by a light-teal blanket. My eyes found themselves back on the doctor.

She nervously cleared her throat. “So... aren’t you gonna ask any of the usual questions?”

“You mean: Where am I? How’d I get here? How long have I been out? Did I leave the oven on? And, Why is the pretty doctor hovering over me?”

First Aide flashed me a smile. “You’re in a very private wing of a very private hospital, in a very private room, on a very secure floor. To answer your second question, I more-or-less-brought you here. Elkington ordered me to, and I sorta went a few extra miles or so trying to keep you alive.” She held up an Atemschutzmaske in her magical aura. “I still had to return this thingy, after all.”

Trying to adjust my position, I found my wrists bound to the bed. I looked up at First Aide. “Why am I bound to the bed?” I demanded in a calm voice. Wait. No. I just figured it out myself—

The doctor put down the Atemschutzmaske and held up a copy of the Cloudsdale Post, the headline reading ‘The Songnam Slaughter’, apparently written by Lightning Dust. You go, girl! “They’re calling you the ‘Butcher of Songnam’,” she said. “Said you killed and wounded some seventy-two ponies.” First Aide licked her lips, glancing over her shoulder. “You made national headlines. Nothing like this has ever happened in Equestria before. All across Equestria, ponies are locking their doors extra tight, and I hear Manehattan’s even instituted a ten PM curfew, they’re so terrified of you.”

“Afraid of me?” I chuckled. Trying to flex my arms, I strained against my straps. “As you can clearly see, I’m locked up.”

She set the paper down and shrugged. “Official record by Elkington says you escaped after—” she smiled in that sort of way where you didn’t want to smile but couldn’t help yourself “—some heroic young hero fought you off. Me, of course! I even got interviewed ’bout it. Wanna hear about it?”

“Sure,” I said, “I’d love to. If you can make it short. And interesting.”

First Aide frowned, tilting her head to the side. “Fine. I won’t talk about it.” She paused. “Why’d you do it, try to kill Elkington?”

“I ran out of unproductive things to do at work.”

“Wha’?”

I shot her my most devastating deadpan. “I’ll be honest, I love work. It fascinates me. I can sit and stare at it for hours.”

That actually scored a chuckle from her. “You’re weird.”

“I too enjoy stating the obvious. Join me in telling people that the sky is blue.” I shrugged as best I could, being restrained and all. “A sense of humor is the only thing that gets me through the day anymore.” I blinked. “Are you wearing blue lipstick?”

She fluttered her lashes. “Why, yes I am. Thanks for noticing! I’ve been trying a few new things lately. A lady in my line of work doesn’t get as much free time as she’d like. And in the medical field, all the cute young doctors are so far outta my league they’re playing for the other team.” First Aide hesitated, then quickly amended, “Not that I’m some old spinster, only twenty-nine, I swear, but I rarely find the time to ever put any makeup or anything on and, well, sometimes I just like looking pretty.”

A pause.

“I still respect you more for being a doctor than being pretty,” I offered, and she actually blushed. “Anyone can be pretty, really, but it takes something neat and special to be a doctor.” Not to mention all the money medical school costs in most countries.

The doctor rubbed the back of her head, smiling at me like a schoolfilly. “Well, if it’s any consolation... I, uh, think you’re kinda cute yourself.”

Consolation is the wrong word, I’m sure. Is she just using big words randomly? “You know, I’m now known as the Butcher of Songnam, tried to murder a Duke, almost died doing it, and now we’re flirting,” I commented. “Don’t you think there’s something really fishy about this whole shebang?” Shebang is the greatest word in any language. “You don’t seem afraid or bothered by me in the slightest.”

First Aide glanced around. “Should I be afraid?”

“Your nation is.”

“Well, I’m not my nation. I’m a freethinker.” She winked at me. “And if I were afraid of you in the first place, I wouldn’t’ve worked so hard to keep you alive, would I?”

I looked down at my body, again looking at the bandages and—wait. “Did you... undress me at some point?” I glanced at her, and she gave me a nonchalant shrug. “You... saw me naked. That’s kind of a problem where I’m from.” I then explained to her a bit of my culture and some parts relating to our nudity taboo.

She giggled. “Trust me, I’m a doctor—I guarantee you I’ve seen more vaginas up close and personal than you ever will.”

“Oh, don’t be too sure. I’ve been around the block a few times. Mostly because I can’t remember which house is mine and I’m hoping that if I keep circling, I’ll find it, yeah, but the point stands.”

“Doctor First Aide,” a voice from behind the curtain said sharply, and the little mare jumped, “are you quite done flirting with it?”

“Uh, yes, m’lord!” she stammered out as Duke Elkington pulled the curtains, stepped into the little curtain-room, and shut them behind him.

Elkington was wearing what looked like a suit with Songnam Security armor worn over it, and for some reason I found that amusing. He gave the mare a look that could melt the ice cream off children’s popsicles, would would make them cry, and drive their parents into expensive therapy. Then Elkington took out a small flask and took a sip before walking over to my bedside. “What does it have to say?” he asked.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked.

“It,” he growled. “After all it did, it is not a pony, not a person, but an object.”

“You can still use the second-person to speak to inanimate objects. I talk to my sword all the time when I sharpen it. It’s freaky when my sword tries to whisper to me, much like that one nightmare I had where my penis would crawl up to my ear when I was asleep and would whisper into my ear dark secrets the likes of which ponykind was not meant to—”

He smacked me clear across the face. “Rocky Road,” Elkington said in a tone that’d take seven lives from a cat. His hoof bitch-smacked my face the other direction. “Glitterhoof.” Another smack. “Mud Mane.” Another. “Ice Charmer. Any of these names ring a bell?”

“If I said yes, I’d be lying. But lying is, like, ninety-percent of what I do when fighting bad guys, so yes, they all work for—”

Across the face. “Don’t fuck with me!”

“M-m’lord,” First Aide tried, only for Elkington to give her a glare that’d make a foal cry with or without melting its popsicle first.

“Give it the intravenous healing serum,” he commanded. “Chop, chop.”

I watched as she nodded and fiddled around with a little cabinet. “Oh, I get it,” I said. “The straps, the slapping, the witness. Elkington, you’re going to rape me, aren’t you?” He blinked down at me. “And Doctor First Aide just gets off to that sort of thing, doesn’t she? You know, First Aide, if you were really that lonely and desperate, you could have just asked. I mean, at this point, a girl actually asking rather than just assuming and forcing herself on me is a pretty surefire way to at least make me consider it. And trust me,” I singsonged, “my hooves can bring you far more pleasure than your own hooves alone.” The IV now loaded up with a clear bag of pink ichor, the serum slowly made its way down a little clear tube and into an IV attachment in my arm that I hadn’t noticed till now.

“Doctor,” he said.

“M’lord?”

“Leave us. Leave this room. And so help me Princess Celestia, if I found out you were eavesdropping on this...”

“Ooh, ambiguous threat,” I cooed. “It lets you be scarier and use her imagination against her. Like, maybe her interpretation of that is that you’ll shove sand in her eyes, but first you’ll make her go out and buy the sand. And I don’t really know if they grade sand, but if they did, you’d buy it as coarse as could be.”

He slugged me in the nose. “Cattail!” he spat, and I could feel my nose already healing itself from the potion in my veins. He watched her leave the curtained section, and was clearly listening as First Aide opened some door and stepped out of the room. The Duke looked down at me with a spiteful glare that gave me flashbacks of Daddy. “And this is for Sword Dancer!” he screamed, and rammed his hoof into my face

Again. And Again. And again. And sixty-three more times. Each time, the serum in my veins healed my face. I wouldn’t bear any lasting marks, but the current pain was all too real. With every slug, he spat a name in my face. Seventy-two names and not a single hesitation. He must have committed them all to memory.

By the time he was done, he was barely holding back tears. Elkington stumbled into a chair and took a sip from his flask. “The names of all it hurt two days ago,” he muttered.

“I’ve been out for two days?” I asked.

Another sip. “The doctor injected it with Propofol, then we just injected it with sleep drugs for some two days. Anesthesias, mostly.”

“Is that why I’m so cold?”

“It is cold because its blood is such,” he replied, looking down and rubbing his eyes.

“That some annoying way of saying I’m cold-blooded?”

He grunted.

A thought crossed my mind about a certain pegasus reporter I’d met back at the Songnam docks, the one Lightning Dust had rather disliked, and whom I’d sent to Elkington in order to see if he’d kill her. What was her name? Tag? No, no, her name was Tab. When I asked Duke Elkington about her and even explained why I cared to ask, the Duke only sneered.

“I told her to sod off, thank you very much,” he told me. “If you honestly thought I’d kill her, you were so fortunately mistaken.”

“Ah, so you’re saying you that didn’t kill her, but you did anally rape her?” I asked in a jaunty voice.

Elkington grunted harshly. “I hate you with perfect hatred; I count you my enemy second foremost.”

“Ich hasse dich im rechten Ernst,” I said in a mocking tone; “du bist mir zum Feind geworden.” He looked at me, sucking on his lower lip. “All I did was bring forth eternal damnation and suffering as a true hero would against something so evil as you.” Also, you slipped up and called me ‘you’.

“Evil,” he said. “Evil?” he laughed. Elkington laughed so hard he broke into a minor coughing fit, which he settled down by drinking from his little flask. He jumped out from the chair and grabbed me by the neck. “Evil?!”

“Hey, hey, hey—with the touching,” I protested. Then a thought dawned on me. “If your love of socks means that you sexualize hooves, does that mean that you touching me with your hooves is... oh God, you people are sick! And slapping me? You probably had an erection, didn’t you?” I accused. “Didn’t you?!”

He smacked me. “Would it just bring itself back into reality for a second?”

“You say you want me to bring myself back into reality?” I snorted. “You’re assuming I’ve been there before.”

He shook me. “It petrifies a nation with mass murder, and all it’s doing now is making jokes!?”

“Hey!” I protested. “Stop sexually molesting me with your hooves! What’s with you Equestrians and sexually molesting me? By the Prophet, just because I’m a foreigner doesn’t mean that my penis vibrates or something!”

“By Celestia!”

“Well, I’m not saying she’s stupid, but everyone else is.”

He punched me in the stomach. “Do not speak ill of Princess Celestia.”

I struggled against my restraints, only then noticing that so too were my legs held down. “So, she is real, huh?” He glared at me, murder in his eyes. “What about Princess Luna? Is she real, more than just a myth?”

“Why does it ask that?”

“Because I’m a curious colt,” I replied. “Now, does she or does she not exist?”

He grunted. “Princess Luna is very real. A bit elusive, but I’ve seen her before. Not entirely convinced she’s mentally ‘normal’, as it were. A thousand years banished to the moon will do that to girl, I suppose.”

“You don’t sound like you care for her much. In fact, you sound as though you wish you could put her into a tiny box in a museum and then forget about her for years until you come back to find her living off rats, allowing you to just poke her with a stick.”

Elkington sighed and sat down. “Princess Luna is no Princess Celestia. She will never be as loved as her elder sister, I’ll tell it what. Luna is okay, but I think I might have preferred it if the Elements had slain her and not reformed her.”

Going to pretend I understand what that last sentence meant. “And so, what, you’re trying to kill Luna?”

He snorted, then took a drink of his flask. From the frown on his face, I knew his flask must have been empty. “Princess Celestia chose to redeem her little sister, to forgive her, to rule side-by-side with her. If Celestia thinks it wise, I will not question her.”

“So,” I droned. “You won’t question Celestia, yet you’re hurting her citizens—”

“Subjects,” he corrected. “We are her subjects.”

I hesitated. “Ignoring how calling a denizen of a nation a ‘subject’ is about as brutally offensive as it gets where I’m from, it doesn’t change that you’re running a dark government conspiracy against her subjects. That’s why you had to die: for all those your hurt at Sleepy Oaks, and who knows where else.”

He looked as if he were listening to the devil on his right shoulder and the angel on his left arguing over just how quickly he could break a broom handle off in my ass. The Duke sighed and turned his head, pointing to a spot on the side of his neck near his jugular vein, which I noted as an ideal place to slash. I blinked as I noticed something on his whitish fur: a small black brand, almost like the mutilation on my chest. It was a rod encased in an angular figure eight, the center point of the eight where it met the lines was covered with a creepy-looking eye; the eye appeared to be crying three tears, all of which were crimson, not the black like the rest of the mark.

“Do you believe in curses?” he asked, putting a hoof on my mutilation.

“You just called me ‘you’. Also, that’s the bad touch.”

A nod. “Do you?”

I affixed him a hard look. “Of course I do. You’d be an idiot not to.”

He smirked for but an instant. “I once talked with the, uh, one of the foremost magic-users in Equestria, and she merely scoffed at the idea of curses.”

The idea of ‘foremost magic-users’ in Equestria sent a cold chill down my spine. Whoever she was, she probably had tentacles and liked to use them on small children, or to play tennis. Tentacles gave you a lot of options in life that hooves just didn’t bring you. If experience had taught me anything, it was to never trust a being with an inordinate number of tentacles.

“But I’ve seen them with my own eyes.” He tapped the brand on his neck. “I carry with me proof. And you, Special Agent Faust, have one on your chest.”

“You know my name?”

“Found a very lonely, very tired mare in a broken elevator. Interviewed her myself. Told me your name was Special Agent Faust. That’s how I know your name and that you’re not an Equestrian, but that’s where my knowledge of you ends. But see, my problem is—”

“I can do a pretty good impression of someone who cares about your problem,” I interjected.

“And there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’, but there are three in ‘narcissistic’,” he retorted.

“It’s okay, Ellie,” I said, and his eye twitched, “sometimes the first step to forgiveness is realizing the other person is an idiot.”

“Actually, the first step is admitting the other pony is the one with the problem.”

I shrugged. “This reminds me of a saying: why don’t we focus less on Goldilocks and more on why Mama and Papa bear don’t sleep in the same bed anymore.”

He cocked a brow. “Yes, and the problem with the world is that the smart ponies are full of doubts and the idiots are full of confidence.”

“Are you implying I’m stupid?” I asked.

Elkington sighed, rubbing his nose. “Look, would you stop dicking around and get serious?”

I’ll try to find him for you, but no promises. “I suppose you wanted me to ask you about that mark on your neck, and then it somehow ends up with you having a tragic backstory, yeah?” He grunted. “Holy Hell, that’s exactly it, isn’t it? You have some really long sob story that explains why you think it’s okay to experiment with evil magic and hurt good ponies.” I sighed, shaking my head. “You know, one of these days I’m going to fight a guy who is very clearly evil and not at all morally gray, and it will be glorious.”

The Duke stared at me. “You do realize the only reason you’re alive is because of me, right? That I, for all intents and purposes, own you. That I could kill you right now, and nopony would ever know; in fact, they’d laud me as a hero if I did. So you shut your mouth and you listen to me, capiche?”

I nodded. “So long as you can keep your story short and interesting.”

He frowned so hard that I was sure his face was going to pop off and flop all around me. “This brand on my neck was forced upon me the day my family died.”

“Even the dog? Poor Fido,” I commented.

The duke closed his eyes and counted to ten. “When I was a little colt, I begged my father and mother to take me and my baby sister out for a vacation to the lands unclaimed by Equestria. It was to be an adventure.” He licked his teeth. “While hiking and exploring—with a legion of guards, mind you—I managed to wander off and get lost. In those hills and mountains, I found an ancient abandoned series of mines down in the Appaloosan Mountain.”

I groaned. “Look, if you’re going to torture me, could you just stick needles in my nipples, pull my hair, and make me scream already? I don’t want to listen to your story. I’m already bored. Seriously, this is worse than... like... the Bronchitis Double Boner Lick Off.”

Elkington paused and stammered something in confusion. I didn’t say anything, and soon he was back on track.

“In those mines, I found a dark ruin, an ancient vault predating Equestrian civilization.” He affixed me a solemn look. “I wandered through forgotten halls carved out of the old mountain itself until I came across an altar to an unsung diamond dog death god: a dark contraption in a large room. When I entered the room, rusted gears started to churn and magical gems glowed to life.”

“You lost me, Elkington,” I taunted. “Seriously, you’re about as interesting as a knife in my ass.” I thrashed against my restraints, feeling something metallic inside me wriggling. “I demand more symbolism! That would be interesting—because you need it for good literature, says every teacher ever!”

Touching his brand, Elkington gritted his teeth in what I hoped was frustration and wasn’t because he enjoyed the grinding sound so much that it helped him calm down. “The ancient magical machine branded this symbol onto my neck, violating my very soul with its dark magics. See, sentient beings don’t like being slaves—big surprise, I know.

“So in order to deal with slave uprisings, ancient diamond dogs found a way to essentially indoctrinate sentient beings into perfect slaves via magic. But it was weak, its magical gemstones decrepit, and there were no masters for me to obey.” He bit his lip.

“That’s all good and all,” I said, “but I’m bored. Can you fetch me a muffin to eat while you talk and I ignore you?” I rhythmically moved my legs around as if doing some weird walk. The metallic object within my body slithered with a warm feeling. “Look, see? I can dance for you while you wait.”

Elkington a hoof down on the bed’s railing. “Stop speaking! I’m telling an emotional story!”

“So, Equestrians don’t believe that males showing emotion is a bad thing like they do where I’m from?” I asked, jostling my hips. Metal so warm, so close to metaphorical light of day!

“That doesn’t matter,” he hissed, “what matters is that I somehow found my way out of the vault and the mine... and I watched with horror as my flesh moved without me, watched as I became a prisoner behind my own eyes... watched as I took a sword and butchered my family. I had no control over my actions: it was as if I had no mouth, but every fiber of my being was screaming for it to end.”

I thought about something less depressing as I continued moving my legs. Really, his story was another example of what happened whenever you dealt with magic. Of course, the first non-depressing thing I could think of was: What the hell were Cards and Dust doing in the Security HQ? And then I thought, Scheiße, I promised to make the girls dinner! I wanted to make them some sort of stew with a homemade French silk pie for dessert! It would have been delicious, and they would have thought me really awesome for it.

“So,” I said, “it’s not that you have issues, but rather a subscription?”

“What now?”

“Magazine joke,” I replied, still moving around despite being tied down. “But listen, your attempts to make me feel sorry for you are about as effective as a guy who tries so hard to make his date romantic that, rather than romantic, he just comes off as super creepy. That’s you. So—” I looked around the little curtained-off room around the bed I was strapped to and saw a bedpan “—could you just summarize?”

He sighed, grinding his teeth. “To summarize: random circumstances ended up with Princess Celestia herself actually saving my life—I’m not going to explain how, because you hate backstory and explanations—which lead me to the conclusion that, in order to make up for my sins, I must do my best to protect Equestria from the bad things that live outside it.”

“Look, my life is just a big series of ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’s strung together into a dapper choker,” I replied. I moved my hips up and down, the metal almost free. “That said, it seems like a good idea to ask you for a pencil and permission to become your editor. I swear to you, with me at your side, we can write epic novels about a character who is suspiciously like you.”

“No; if I gave you a pencil, you’d just stab me in the eye with it.”

Foiled again! “Okay, yeah,” I admitted, and squirmed even harder, “that may or may not have been my exact plan; but, really, ever considered how cool it’d look to wear an eyepatch?”

“Shut the hell up, butcher!” he ordered.

“Well, I’m a butcher, my confederates are a reporter and a cop, you’re a nut, and—” I smiled “—Celestia’s a liar who doesn’t really control the sun.”

“Enough!” he bellowed, pulling out his shortsword. “I’m sick of your shit, Agent Faust!”

“Well, it’s not my fault your toilets have no running water,” I mumbled, and he put the tip of the blade just before my lips.

“Crack another joke. Go on, I dare ya. Make one more joke! Do it, punk!” he commanded. I dug my head backwards into the pillow, his sword trailing my mouth. “Oh, what’s the matter? Ain’t got anything to say, you sick, murderous freak?”

A smile. “So, a gymnast walks into a bar.” I bared my teeth, grinning even wider. “She gets a two-point deduction and ruins her chances of winning a medal.” With the speed of a zebra who stole something, I lunged my mouth forwards and bit down on the sword, still smiling.

Elkington’s first reaction was to pull the blade away, but I was biting harder than his magical pull. “What are you doing?!” He was just too much business, not enough monkeys.

“Goshya!” I laughed through the sword as its tip stabbed my tongue, drawing blood. Eager as the second mouse who sees his friend killed by a mousetrap and now knows that the cheese is his, I magically grabbed the metal bedpan and smacked Elkington’s head with it. His magical aura faltered for a second, and in that second I grabbed his sword. I moved to telekinetically take the blade from my mouth, only to have Elkington lunge down and grab the blade’s grip in his maw.

I thrashed against my restraints as he and I fought orally over the sword, the metal object almost free. When I said I wanted more symbolism, I didn’t mean it be two grown stallions fighting with their tongues and teeth over a phallic shape! Arching my back like some sort of epileptic worm, I did the only thing I could think of, the thing I just worked for: I pulled out a switchblade with my magic, flicked the blade out, and slashed the Duke’s shoulder.

He screamed in pain, dropping the sword. In the moment, I tossed his blade against the wall and held my knife up against his throat, holding it just so to discourage any movement. “Where the hell did that come from?” he shouted.

“Don’t ask,” I said.

“But we stripped you down of any weapons and gear!” he yelled frantically. “And First Aide certainly wouldn’t have given it to you—”

“Do. Not. Ask. Let’s just say that I am a particularly prepared, possibly paranoid pony, and I took... certain measure in the likelihood that I was captured.”

“But—”

“Don’t,” I hissed, venom leaking from my tone.

His eyes narrowed with terror. “That’s horrifying! And you were kept medically asleep for two whole days!”

“C’est la vie,” I casually retorted. Two days? Ah, dammit, I owe Cards and Dust a lovingly homemade breakfast, lunch, and dinner for this. And each will taste orally orgasmic. I tried to ignore the coppery taste of blood from my perforated tongue, as well as the implications that an oral wound brought with it; the urge to brush my teeth was really strong; the last thing I wanted was an infection of the mouth. “Now then,” I said in a calm voice, pressing the knife against his carotid artery, forcing his head against my breast, “you’re going to do exactly as I say, or I’m going to shove my hooves up your urethra and firmly grasp your bladder from within. Firmly grasp it! Comprends-tu?”

“Fuck you!” he spat. “If you kill me, you’ll be sealing your own death warrant! I’m the only one keeping you alive! You can’t kill me!”

“Oh yeah?” I chuckled. “And who’s going to stop me, Pony McDoesn’tExist?”

“You’re making a huge mistake, you don’t understand that—”

I rolled my eyes. “You need my help to solve some problem of yours, right?”

Elkington blinked. “Yes, that’s exactly what I... but how...?”

“Because I’ve seen this exact scenario hundreds of times in books and comics and plays and stuff,” I said. “Really, I pretty much suspected it the moment I woke up, and knew it as a fact when you told me that you counted me as your enemy second foremost. It’s the only logical explanation to why I’m neither A) dead, or B) being gangraped in the prison showers. Your boring, boring story was an attempt to make me feel sympathy for you—which failed hard—so that I’d be inclined to help you. Knife to my neck, I’d say it involves something dark and evil, right?”

“The Backbone.” Elkington looked into my eyes. “A monster with dark powers living in the swamps to the west, by the little town of Sleepy Oaks. Its... influence has been seeping out in the form of enervation. I’ve done what I can for them, but my best efforts are tyrannical at best, murderous at worst.”

“Alright, I’m in,” I chirped.

He blinked. “I... what?”

“Well, I know how this is going to end. As in, no matter what, I’m going to agree to help you, so why argue over it when I can just say okay now and have you explain it to me on the way, okay? I mean, unless you want to bust out some funky fresh rhymes and try to beat me. Here, lemme start: ‘My dick needs no introduction; your dick doesn’t even function. And my dick... enough said; your dick... looks dead.’ Boom. There. I win by being the most childish and immature, as is the standard of that genre, except when it’s not. So, would you just untie me, give me my gear, and point me in the right direction?”

“As in... I don’t even have to threaten your allies?”

I cocked a brow. “You caught them?”

Elkington frowned, drooping his ears. “Well, no.”

A moment paused as we just stared at each other.

I burst into laughter. And then some more. And a little bit more. “Mein Gott, you suck so bad at your job, Elkington!” I guffawed. “You pretty much have your own private army, absolute authority over your demesne, and a fanatical legion of fangirls—yet you couldn’t capture two little mares?” The laughs exploded into a coughing fit, a hacking sputter that hurt my throat.

“We were so focused on you that we never bothered looking for those other two you came into Songnam with...”

Taking the knife away from his throat, I sawed through the restraints on my arms, the Duke quickly stepping away from me. I kept coughing, my right lung on fire. “Dammit,” I sputtered as I freed my arms. Of course, getting your entire body stabbed through and piercing a lung wouldn’t be a cakewalk to deal with afterwards. I sat up, looking at my bandaged chest. I was going to have breathing issues for the rest of my life, wasn’t I?

Keeping the hospital blanket around my waist, I leaned forwards, found where my hindhooves were bound, and set them free. I tied the blankets around myself like some sort of weird toga before sliding out of the bed and onto the floor. Elkington just stared at me as I asked, “So, mind telling me why it is that you think you can do evil things in the first place? A lot of your direct underlings were up to no good. Like that one guy, Social Grace, who used dark magical earrings to try to kill a confederate of mine.”

I bent down and picked up the Atemschutzmaske from the floor, putting it on my head, though not wearing it. “Not to mention that one zebra conjoined twin who was using dark magic and enervation, who suggested that he was running tests on live animals and had been told they wanted to see what enervation did to a pony. Any thoughts to contribute?”

“Well...” he droned.

“Because, “I said, pointing a hoof at him, “ponies who do that kind of evil warrant being killed in my book.”

Elkington hardened his expression. “Everything I have done I did out of love and good intentions.”

I sneered and replied in a mocking tone, “Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer Jenseits von Gut und Böse—wie?” He cocked a brow, but I translated it before he could ask: “What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil, eh?”

“I am the sword and the shield of Equestria, of Princess Celestia.”

“Ooh, that rhymed!” I chirped. “Do you want to have another battle of funky fresh rhymes?”

Elkington went on talking as if I hadn’t even spoken. “You’re a product of the outside world; no doubt, you’ve seen the horrors it holds.” I nodded. “But it is different in Equestria. It is the blood-sacrifice of ponies like me who fight to keep it that way. Because as ponies settle westward, they come into contact with the myriad of monsters out there, and so too have they gone against us. Not long ago, Canterlot was attacked by a changeling swarm which came from the far west. An ancient beast of unrepentant chaos rose from an ancient slumber and wreaked havoc on this country. A year before that, a dark prophecy thought by all an old mare’s tale came true, when the stars helped the Mare in the Moon—Nightmare Moon—escape her lunar prison.

“In every case, Equestria survived by the skin of her teeth, saved only by our greatest heroes. Those are only the biggest incidents, the ones that everypony heard about. But the truth is, every day something dark threatens Equestria, and the reason why ponies don’t hear about is because of me.” He pointed to himself as if I didn’t know who this strange ‘me’ bloke was. “Dangerous artifacts with sinister powers, evil tribes of diamond dogs, pony-eating dragons, changelings, strange diseases, and all manner of forgotten beasts—I fight all of them. And sometimes they slip into Equestria, sometimes they prey on the ponies settling out west. It falls unto me and those who would stand alongside to fight them.”

“God, you sure do like to talk, don’t you?” I asked. “And you’re so full of yourself. You failed to explain why any of that lets you do evil yourself.”

“I...”

“You know, we have a saying back in the Reich, where I’m from.” I said in a throaty, all-R’s-rolling voice, “Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.” Dropping back into a normal Equestrian accent and tone, I said, “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not thereby become a monster. And when you stare long into the abyss, so too does the abyss stare into you.” I shrugged. “Roughly translated.”

The duke stepped backwards, staring at the ground with a distant look in his eyes. I opened up the curtains surrounding my bed and peered out at the rest of the hospital room and at the thick wooden doors. Glancing around, I didn’t see any of my gear. No, that’d be too easy. My clothes and gear were probably locked in some room in some tall, tall tower guarded by Cherry Berry. Downhill—that was how I rolled.

I glanced back at Elkington. “Oh, and that guy whom I’m quoting? Dude was completely nuts. I mean, ‘rolls around in his own waste while screaming racist things’ nuts. Said some cool things, though.” Humming a jaunty tune, I trotted a few steps forwards, stopped, then motioned for the Duke to follow. “Come on, Ellie, I don’t know where I’m going.”

He furrowed his brows. “Don’t you wanna hear about the exact reasons why I kept you alive? As in, the particular why of it?”

I shrugged. “Eh, probably.”

“I...” He frowned, gnawing on his lip. “Are you familiar with the idea of a demon?”

My ears perked up. “Intimately. They taste good.”

He blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah. If you cook them, it turns out they’re surprisingly nutritious.”

Elkington cocked his head to the side. “You’ve eaten demon?”

“Well, yeah. During the Dark Crusade.” I let out a breath as I thought. “Food rations were really low, what with half the Reich under demonic occupation, so the military’s high command decided that in order to prevent civilians from starving, the Mobile Infantry would have to eat the demons we killed. Because of that, no famine.” I chuckled at his horrified expression. “It’s not like demons are people or anything, stop looking at me like that. It was only fair: you invade us, we eat your face. In fact, I once constructed a tiny one-pony fortress out of dismembered demon limbs. It was awesome. I was the king of Fort Awesome! No girls allowed.”

“Right. Just going to assume that was a lie because it sounds stupid,” he said.

“Funny thing was,” I went on, “I didn’t get reprimanded for that. No. As it turns out, the third time you try to build a fort out of body parts is when they start thinking there’s something wrong with you.” I shrugged. “They chastised me and I got all punished for it, since it was apparently very unhealthy of me to do... After that, my body-part fortresses had to let girls in.”

Elkington sighed. “What’s with you and equicide?”

“Well, there are four kinds of equicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. Pretty sure that after killing and maiming up to seventy-two ponies, it becomes praiseworthy, don’t you think?”

“You killed and maimed them!” he snapped. “They were good ponies, all of them! How dare you make fun of them! How could you, even?!”

I threw my head back and laughed. “Easy! I see no difference between ponies and objects.” He gaped at me. “Kidding! Kidding! Sheesh, I’m kidding.” I smiled. “Took me awhile as a colt, but I learned the difference.”

He rubbed his nose. “Riiight... You laugh, they’re dead. Or maimed.”

“So, Elkington, here’s how it’s going to work,” I interjected, my master plan of awkward feelings working like a charm: “quickly tell me who needs to die, explain why you’re not evil, get me my gear back, and then send me on my way; if you fail the second or third points, I’ll just kill your enemy, then come back here and kill you. Oh, and try not to be boring about it, or I’ll cut your balls off. With a spoon.”

The Duke swallowed, then nodded. With his magic he pulled out a black object, holding it by a metal chain. I instantly recognized what it was: ein Kruzifix. Something about it just reeked of unnecessary symbolism. It probably could’ve been anything else and nothing would have changed, just some cosmic force had a real hard-on for it. On the other hoof, it satisfied my earlier demands for more symbolism.

“It all centers around this strange little object we found,” he said, “and the beast that wants it.”

|— ☩ —|

Rain. Yay. All of my hurras for rain, but only one hip-hip. As I tightened my duster’s collar and adjusted my hat, I stepped down the small stairs and into the rain. Even from here, the hospital just behind me, I could see much of Songnam, and that giant statue of Princess Celestia rising from the river.

I glanced heavenwards and muttered, “C’est l’heure bleue.”

“Hey there,” a créme-coated mare called out, levitating an umbrella above her. She was standing by a lamppost, its light bathing her. I paused in the street, and First Aide ambled up to me. “Seems like we keep bumping into each other. Destiny, perhaps?”

“Destiny’s just a tyrant’s excuse for crimes and a fool’s excuse for failure,” I said. “You were waiting for me, weren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Is it a crime for a doctor to look after her patient?”

“Well, it is suspicious,” I replied, and First Aide pouted. “Can you blame me? The first time I ever saw a doctor, he grabbed my leg and spanked me so hard I cried. So, forgive me for having a healthy mistrust of doctors.” I smiled, and she chuckled. “I once tried to be a doctor, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I recall playing it as a little kid,” I said. She cocked a brow. “What I recall most is all the little fillies asking me to send them to a specialist.”

First Aide rolled her eyes with a smile. “Somehow, I just don’t see you as a doctor.” I shrugged, continuing my way down the street. As expected, she followed after me. “Hey, where ya goin’?”

“My hotel, the Ritz.”

“You’re staying there?” First Aide whistled. “I didn’t know you had that kind of money.”

“Yes, I have more than I really know what to do with. But that’s what you get when you rob a dragon. He wasn’t using it, anyhow.” I shrugged, enjoying the sound of rain pelting my duster and her umbrella. “I just wish it weren’t raining.”

“Well, after what you did, Elkington scheduled this storm as a way of... like... commemorating the dead and wounded or something.”‘Scheduled this storm’? Oh, because I’d forgotten: you could do that in Equestria, because screw logic. And screw how weather worked on this planet of ours. “You’ve become a sort of urban legend, a monster tale in only two days, you know.”

“And yet here you are, not afraid of me in the slightest.” I watched the rain streaming from rooftops into gutters, doubtlessly feeding into those absurdly spacious sewers beneath Songnam. All because Elkington was saddened by some dead grunts. Emotion: A prostrating disease caused by the heart speaking through the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated sodium chloride from the eyes.

“If you wanted to kill me, you could have.” First Aide gave me a soft look as she walked alongside. “Instead, you gave me that mask-thing; you might not be a hero, but I do owe you my life. Spent pretty much two sleepless days with you, since I knew about you and Elkington didn’t want it getting out that you were alive. Thank Celestia that I specialise in dealing with bodily trauma, yeah?”

“Agreed.”

“Only problem is that after two days of nonstop work, pretty sure I smell.” I glanced at her, and she had this ‘Shit, I should not have said that; I am an idiot’ look on her face.

“And you’re following me in the rain?” I chuckled. “What, you suggesting we go to my room and take a bath together?”

She flushed exactly like real people didn’t do, the kind you usually only saw in bad erotic novels. Not that I would ever know. First Aide forced a smile. “Being diplomatic about it, are we?”

“Ah, diplomacy—” I cocked a brow “—the patriotic act of lying for one’s country.” That’s a quote from somewhere, right?

“Well, I guess that’s just cause and effect for politics, right?” The mare shot me a goofy grin. I was sure it wasn’t intended to look goofy. If she had been wearing a clown nose, she’d’ve been enough to make most children cry, what with her blue lipstick.

Turning a corner, I asked, “So why are you really here?”

“Because I want to understand you... Jericho, was it? Or was it ‘Special Agent Faust’?”

“Jericho is my name, Special Agent my job-given title, Faust my surname.”

She blinked. “You’re a noblepony?”

“What?”

“You said you had a surname,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean you’re noble?”

I stopped and just stared at her. “Unless my name was Jericho Pendergast, der Prinz Teutschlands, no, I’m not a noble of any sort.” She cocked her head to the side. “The Reich, where I am from, has no nobles; however, we have a single royal house, Haus Pendergast. Everyone has a last name in the Reich, not just nobles.”

“That’s... weird.” First Aide shook her head. “Only nobles here have surnames. Us commoners just have our names.”

I shrugged. “In any case, I’m Jericho Amadeus Faust, Special Agent of the Reichskriminalamt, RKA. Now then, why are you really following me?” I walked forwards against, First Aide following alongside, the rain still making that lovely noise against her umbrella.

“I thought you a curious pony, Special Agent Faust. Guess I sorta wanted to understand the heart of the beast, to quote some really pretentious poet.”

I laughed. “Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; des monstres l’ont mangé. Je suis juste un cimetière abhorré de la lune.”

“You speak French?” First Aide said, cocking a brow. “I don’t; tried to in school—failed hard.”

“I grew up with it.” A couple of ponies in raincoats passed us by, paying us no heed. “Why do you sound so intrigued by it?”

“Well, I guess I’m only a girl.”

The hell does that even mean? I rolled my eyes, lowing the tone of my voice to teuschen levels: “La jeune fille, ce qu’elle est en réalité. Une petite sotte et une petite salope; la plus grande imbécile unie à la plus grande dépravation.”

“Ooh,” she cooed, “quit trying to sound sexy.”

“I just insulted you,” I said, adjusting my hat. First Aide narrowed her eyes as I continued with, “I was making fun of your inability to speak Französisch, yet you seeming to like it. Promise not to be offended and I’ll translate.” She nodded, and I cleared my throat. “This is what a girl really is. A little fool, a little slut; the greatest idiocy united with the greatest depravity.”

First Aide gasped. “I break my promise!”

I froze, shooting her a murderous look out of the corners of my eyes—so far out of the corners that my eyeballs actually hurt from it. “In the Reich, there’s little more we hate than a liar,” I hissed. Then I smirked. “But that mustn’t be of any concern for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You promised to keep silent. Yet in your office was a Voixson.”

First Aide brushed a strand of her violet mane from her eyes as she stared at me with her lime-green eyes. She blinked, moved her jaw to speak, then shook her head and shut her gob.

“What was that all about, ma’am?”

“Job security,” she said curtly. “I don’t quite trust ponies with more power than me. Plus, what with the... matter at hoof, I felt like I needed that job security. You never know these days.”

“Because the economy is bad? I heard your economy was slumping, even though I’ve yet to see many outwards sign of abject poverty.”

“That’s because this is Songnam,” First Aide replied. “It’s, like, the richest, most powerful city in the South. And Elkington has a hatred for poverty so bad that he often goes way out of his way to make sure no one is in dire straits here.” She shook her head. “But that’s not what I was worried about. I was getting into some pretty serious information, the kind a pony disappears for.”

I paused. “Ponies disappearing? This is... news to me. I wasn’t aware Celestia ran a police state.”

“A police state?” she said with narrowed, confused eyes. “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t think it’s what’s going on. I mean, it’s an urban legend, really, but some that if us commoners know too much, we just sorta... vanish. Or accidents happen to us. Or something. Yeah, there’s never been any proof of it, and the one pony we all know ‘disappeared’ showed up a week later, having simply gotten lost in the woods. But just in case, if those bastards decided to screw me over, I could screw them back. Hard.” First Aide sighed. “Too bad the Voixson burnt up in the fire.”

“No, I have it,” I replied. “Took it because it looked interesting.”

She gasped. “You wha’?”

“Yeah. You didn’t think I’d just leave it there, did you? In fact, it’s probably the thing that inclined me to save your life—a plan to blackmail someone powerful in Songnam’s government automatically puts you on my side. So it saved your life.”

She was silent. “The only reason I’m still alive is because of... that?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much. Funny how the little things save our lives. Without that Voixson, odds are I’d be dead. But because you had an interest in blackmailing some powerful ponies, that put you on my side, so I went out of my way to ensure your safety.”

“A-and if I hadn’t had it? If I’d been with Elkington one hundred percent?”

“Then I wouldn’t have cared to try to keep you alive.” A flash of lightning, the sound rolling in soon after. “So long as you didn’t actively try to kill me, I wouldn’t have killed you, though.”

First Aide looked at the wet ground. “That’s a sobering thought. The only reason I’m alive is because I was bad.” She shifted her weight. “I... kinda like that thought...”

I looked around the streets of Songnam. “Why does it feel like such a ghost town? This time last I was out, there were still ponies aplenty ambling about.” The two-story and three-story houses lining the street felt to me ominous, exactly like the feeling of having to use the restroom, only to go in there and find a gaggle of gorgeous girls sitting there calmly, judging you. And they had to die for it.

“Are you trying to change the topic on me?”

“Yes; the old topic was boring me. So, why is everything so empty-looking?”

“Well, didn’t I explain this earlier?” the mare asked, and I shook my head. “The Butcher of Songnam is still on the loose, Special Agent Faust. The Songnam Slaughter goes unsolved. Ponies the nation over are terrified of, well, of you. Bit of a mess for Lollapalooza, since once the sun starts going down, everypony bolts indoors.”

“Huh. Lookie me, changing the world, one mass murder at a time.” I glanced around. “Yes, are there any confectionery stores still open?” She cocked a brow. “I want to buy the ingredients for a French silk pie, then make one from as close to scratch as I can get without being a farmer.”

The créme-coated mare shrugged. “Dunno personally. I could care less about making cakes from scratch.”

“Couldn’t,” I corrected.

“What?”

“The correct phrasing is ‘I could not care less’. Saying ‘I could care less’ literally means next to nothing. You could honestly be its biggest fan to the point where all your dirtiest dreams involve it, and still describe it as ‘I could care less’. ‘Couldn’t care less’ implies an utter indifference. Comprends-tu?”

Her face was like that of a brick wall realizing that it had the ability to realize things, but still didn’t have a face to express that look with. “What?”

“Oh, nevermind,” I sighed.

“You sound bitter,” she commented, and I rolled my eyes, stepping in close to her. First Aide looked up at me. There were some nifty advantages to being tall. Working together, I bet Cards could use First Aide as a stepping stool to get onto my back. Aw, who was I kidding? If Cards wanted a piggyback ride and begged me with her red, puppy-like eyes, my heart would explode and I’d give her one. Of course, I’d be dead, but it’d be so adorable it’d be totally worth it. Then I realized that she’d be childishly flailing around, screaming with laughter atop my dead body, and then it’d stop being cute and just get creepy, especially because she was an adult.

“Bitter? Ma’am, I just have the odd habit of thinking a lot. Now come on, I feel silly just standing in the road on a rainy day.” And so I walked, only having a vague idea of where I was going. First Aide and I only paused briefly to discuss boring things, like what made her want to become a doctor. Hint: her father was a doctor, and she always liked healing things. It was about as original and inspiring as saying ‘Hey, Daddy never hugged me enough, so I become a world-traveling mass-murdering hero’. At some point, she directed me on a little detour that I obliged her on. This lead to stopping before little two-story house overlooking the river.

“Okay, so...” she droned.

“Why have we stopped?”

First Aide stepped up to the door, then turned to face me. “This is my place, Special Agent Faust.” A moment of silence passed. She cleared her throat, glancing around as if she expected an eagle to swoop in and eat her baby. Not that that she had a baby. At least I was pretty sure she didn’t.

“Are you a single mom?” I asked.

“Wha’?” she stammered. “No. Why?”

“Don’t know. You just had a weird look.”

Awkward silence was the best kind of silence. The rain kept at it, though. Being that the rain was weather, you see, it had no concepts of drama or awkwardness, which gave rain the uncanny ability to just always be a complete dick.

First Aide feigned a cough, jostling her umbrella. “So...”

“Hey,” I said, and her eyes widened, a little smile on her face, “I just realized something.” I pointed to her doctor’s fatigues, to the little name tag on her chest. “Your name’s spelt wrong.”

Her smile turned upside down. “Wha’?”

“First aid is medical treatment. No E after the aid. First Aide with an E after the aid makes no sense.”

She shot me a flat look and said dryly, “A-I-D-E refers to an assistant or helper, sometimes of the confidential variety. My names essentially means ‘the first one to help’.”

“So... your name is a pun?”

First Aide sighed. “Yes, it’s a spelling pun. What of it?”

“Huh.” Equestrian names are stupid. “It’s a clever name, in its own way. I like it. Makes a fun bit of sense.”

She perked up. “Thank you! Dad always was proud of thinking it up.”

Chalk her father up on the list of ponies whom I must stab with fruit. “Okay. I’m just going to head back to my hotel room and plan out something big and world-saving.” I turned to leave.

“Wait,” she said, and I looked at her. “You sure you have to leave now?” I shrugged and nodded. Nothing happened. “Like... you don’t wanna come in, talk some more, double-check your wounds and bandages... cup of, uh, coffee?”

“I don’t like coffee,” I said plainly. “Stains the teeth and is annoyingly addictive. I prefer tea.” I walked away, heading in the direction I was sure the Ritz was.

|— ☩ —|

As it turned out, there was a little Mom ’n’ Pop-type store open along my way home. Because I was getting a break for just once, it sold everything I needed to make a French silk pie. Also, a baguette, because French.

Armed with my brown paper bag, I checked my map to note that the quickest way to the hotel was straight ahead from the store. That was, to cut through a very large train station. Since nopony seemed to be staying out at this hour, I didn’t see any problem with cutting through the “Super Songnam Station” (for added alliterative appeal, Ah’d accept).

What was with Equestrians and marble? Was wood too splinter-ridden? The interior of the station’s floors were so gleamingly polished, and the general emptiness made it feel like a Potemkin village. Here in the large atrium, there was a clearly marked staircase leading to a “skybridge”, and a handy map of the station informed me that this was how you got across the railroad and to the other side of the platform. I knew where I was going.

“What do you mean, ‘private train’?” a mare’s voice scoffed from somewhere. It was hard to tell, the acoustics of this place were weird when it was empty. Maybe they were always weird. I didn’t know. “Why would Elkington reserve this for himself?”

“Well, ma’am, I couldn’t tell ya,” some buck replied, and the mare groaned loudly.

“You’re so useless.”

“I try my best.”

As I crossed the skybridge, I hummed a little tune. The railway station was rather roomy, I had to admit. Plenty of room for a few big trains. It was easy to imagine it being one of the foremost in Equestria. A distinctly magical sound, like some sort of spell, erupted in front of me. I snapped my head forwards and immediately crashed into a girl. The bag fell, only for the girl to catch it in a blue aura of telekinesis.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t looking here I was going and almost happened to make you drop your things before I caught them—what a cute meeting, just like in those stories!”

I blinked, taking as step back. “Say wha’?”

The mare put a hoof to her cheek, her cyan eyes glistening. She had, to reference classical mythology, a face that could launch a thousand ships. “Oh my goodness, I recognize you! Jericho, right? How have you been?”

“How do you know my name?”

Her eyes drooped for a second, but she just as quickly perked herself right back up. “It’s me, Selena!” I gave her a look so blank that a child might’ve been tempted to draw on my face. “Remember, the train station from a few nights ago? Back in Ponyville?” She rocked forwards on her hooves. “We talked about the moon and astrological signs?”

“Oh,” I said, taking the bag back from her, “why am I carrying this out in the open?” Her ears drooped so hard that I was pretty sure they were about to fall off. I put the paper bag into one of my own bags, where it fit snugly and out of sight.

“Wait, how did you fit that paper back into your other bag?”

I shrugged. “I’m surprisingly adept at getting big things to fit into tight spaces, ma’am.”

A glint crossed her eyes. “You don’t say?”

“No, I do say,” I deadpanned. “In fact, I just said it. Why do you feel like this is a point of contention and that you must argue?”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” she stammered, “I wasn’t arguing!”

I cocked a brow. “Then what did you mean?”

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just, uh, you know? Common conversational thing, right?”

“You commonly talk to ponies by instigating arguments with them?”

“No, no, no! It’s like, uh, somepony says something, and you’re supposed to say ‘You don’t say’ because you’re not surprised or anything, you understand? It’s just polite conversation, uh, and stuff, right.” She forced me a large smile.

“No,” I said. “I’ve never heard that ever before in that way or context as you just described. Maybe I’m just unfamiliar with this language of which I speak fluently, but I’ve only seen that phrasing used in sarcastic, condescending tones. I should know.” I cocked a brow and widened the eye beneath it. “I’m often sarcastic because sometimes if you can’t laugh at something, the only alternative is to cry.”

“Um... so...” Selena ran a hoof through her long, soft blue mane, forcing a chuckle. “I was just, uh, walking around, doing stuff. What were you doing?”

“Going to where I was staying to make a French silk pie,” I replied, looking back down at the station platforms. They were actually made of concrete out here, which I found to look better than marble, if only because Equestrians abused marble so much.

Her smile this time wasn’t so forced. “Making a pie? Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

I gave her a look so blank it sucked the very life out of her smile. “No, not at all. Irony is defined by a contrast between what is and what seems to be.” She looked about as relaxed as a coiled rattlesnake as I went on—a simile which itself was ironic. “Irony here would be like... if I tried to make a pie, but ended up destroying all pies forever due to sheer incompetence on my part. That kind of thing.”

“Well, I was, uh...” Selena stammered. “It was ironic that you’re a stallion who’s making food or, uh, something like that.”

“Okay,” I said, pointing upwards for effect, “now that’s stopped being fun and has instead become sexist, with you calling ‘ironic’ things which seem out of place in your worldview.” She sucked in her lips as I laughed. “Of course, the whole reason I learned how to cook well in the first place was because the stereotype of guys being unable to cook always annoyed me, and I hate playing to stereotypes.”

Selena frowned, fidgeting with her mane. “I have a headache. I want to go home and drink a bottle of sangria.”

“I like sangria,” I replied, playing with my hat’s visor. “It comes from an old word that means ‘blood’.” She just looked at me, slowly tilting her head to the side. “Err, the two statements are unrelated to each other.” Selena just kept staring at me. “Quit it.”

The mare blinked—“Huh?”—and shook her head. “Oh, uh, sorry. Fazed out there for a second.” One of her ears perked, the other one hung floppily like a dog. “What were you saying?”

I stepped past her. There was a cake to bake! And... actually, come to think, I had no idea where Cards or Dust would be, and only the barest belief they’d be back in the hotel room.“I have a place to go, a cake to bake.”

“Don’t you mean, a pie?” she asked.

“Yes, yes I did.” I smiled. “That was my voice of evil reason speaking.” Pony, I own you.

Shut up, voice of evil reason.

“Excuse me?”

I shook my head. “Whenever my voice of evil reason speaks, I replace the word ‘pie’ with ‘cake’. It’s very tragic, you see.” Then, in a dramatic voice: “Thousands have lost their lives to this tragic tragedy of tragedies’ tragedy.”

She gave me an utterly bemused chuckle. “You’re weird.”

Frowning, I put a hoof to my chin. “That’s the second time today somepony’s told me that.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she said, her head turning to follow me walking away. “Hey, can I ask what you’re doing in Songnam? You were in Ponyville a few days ago and all.”

“I am but a humble traveler trying to save the world, Miss Selena,” I replied, stopping to look at her. “And you?”

“Oh, um, well... it’s complicated.” Selena looked off to the side, to the train station proper. “Someone asked me to head out to Songnam, but I only just arrived.” She hesitated. “So, are you going to be in Songnam long, what with that terrible tragedy that just happened?”

“Ma’am, when you’re in the business of slaying evil and protecting the weak, you stay and wander as is needed,” I said, wandering down the skybridge.

“Hey, what does that...?” Selena trailed off and sighed hard and dejectedly. Probably not knowing just how the acoustics of this place were when it was otherwise silent, she muttered: “Or, yeah, you can just keep going on your way. You’re so good at talking to ponies, me. Gee, you think? Yes, other me: that’s why you can hold conversations with interesting ponies for hours...”

|— ☩ —|

There were certain things in the world that made a pony want to murder something. One of those things involved climbing up to the fourth floor of a hotel after walking across a whole city—and then finding out there was an elevator in this place. Three, to be exact. But you didn’t know that because they looked nothing like the equivalent machines back home. Which just meant oodles and noodles of happiness and joy.

Then there was walking into your hotel room, closing the door behind you, and getting bashed upside the head and knocked to the ground by a frying pan and its friendly baton.

“GB?! GB! Oh Celestia, GB!” a very familiar pegasus screamed, dropping down to the ground in front of me. “Are you dead?! Oh Celestia, you’re dead!”

“No. Fine,” I moaned.

“Oh Celestia, he’s still breathing!”

Rubbing my face, I stood up. “I’m gone for two days, and this is how you greet me?”

“You’re okay!” Dust exclaimed, jumping at me and wrapping me in her arms. Her face buried in my chest, she said in a slurred voice, “I thought you were dead, and then I thought there was something breaking into the room, so then I thought I should fight them, and then I thought you were dead again, and—and—and—”

I looked down at her. “Lightning Dust, are you drunk?”

She looked up at me in turn, her eyes red and moist. A moment paused. Nothing happened. As the nothingness went wild, she slowly blinked. Dust had the look of a colt who was caught with his/her penis in the cookie jar. “I don’t know.”

“Dust, why are you drunk?”

“It was Cards’ fault,” Dust whined “She wasn’t drinking it! So I thought I should drink her Bucking Bronco, because.”

I looked around for Cards. “Speaking of which, where is she? Cards, that is.”

“She told me she was...” Dust looked at the door. “Was out doing re... re-conn-ai-shansh, but I’m pretty sure that just means she’s buying more booze... I like booze. Takes, like, lethal amounts before I feel anything, though.”

“Err, why?”

She chuckled. “Well, when you used to drink as much as me, you tend to build up a really annoying tolerance.”

“I’m not sure that’s how that works,” I said, narrowing my eyes. The mare rubbed her cheek into my chest, prompting me to push her off. “Dust, you’re a grown mare—stop acting like a little filly, and don’t touch me.” She gasped as she tumbled to the floor, but I was too busy walking into the little kitchen to care. I readied the oven and the stove.

“What are you doing?”

“Baking a pie. It’s literally been the only thing I’ve cared about doing for the last two days. Pie first, then save the world.” I nodded at the oven. “That exact order. Accept no substitutions.”

“A-all you’ve cared about...” she said in a weak voice. As I hummed a tune to myself, I could hear Dust’s breath quickening in tempo, like she was leisurely jogging or fluttering or whatever it was that pegasi did for flying exercise. And for reasons I couldn’t explain, she even gulped in an overly dramatic way that even I could clearly hear. It had better not be alcohol poisoning at work, or else she was in for a stern talking-to.

“I-I’d do anything to make you care,” Dust breathily muttered out of the blue. Well, out the drunken blue, which was probably more like a kaleidoscope.

Going to ignore that weird comment. As I set my paper bag on the counter, I—Scheiße! Okay, tackled to the ground! Or we could do that, yeah. I looked up into the crying eyes of the mare who tackled me onto my back. Her forehooves pinned my shoulders, but her legs didn’t touch me at all. I had to hand it to her—she was stronger than she looked.

“What the—?” I stammered.

“D-daddy always said,” she sobbed with quivering lips, “that this was how girls like me m-made friends...”

I blinked. “Okay, I can see how maybe some friendly horseplay—”

“Whore’s play,” she laughed mirthlessly. Dust swallowed her frown and blinked the tears away. Refusing to look me in the eyes, she gave me the worst faked smile I ever saw. “You know, GB, that ass of yours on my mind is-is-is—” she bit her lip “—is just so damn edible.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” I said slowly, venom coursing through my every syllable.

“That’s what girls like me are for, just like Dad said,” Dust mumbled. “Mom couldn’t do it, that’s why Dad left and came back and left again all the time. But I can do it. For you.” She closed her eyes, puckered her lips, and pressed them to mine.

Or, well, she should’ve pressed them to mine if I hadn’t kneed her in the gut and thrown her to the floor. “The hell is the wrong with you, you drunken Weib!?” I shouted, inching back against the wall.

The pegasus just curled up and sobbed. “You hate me, don’t you?! That’s why you didn’t come back—I ruined it all for you and then you didn’t want to come back! Please don’t leave me, GB!”

“Um...”

“I blew your cover while you were doing whatever you were doing in that Security HQ, didn’t I?! That’s why you’re gonna leave me, because I only cause problems and ruin stuff!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

She sniffled, rubbing her eyes. “I know how it goes, this kinda shit. I always pull something that drives ponies away.”

I looked around the room. That couch was still there, sitting menacingly. “Would you take a breath and start making sense before I have to smack it into you?”

Dust swallowed, one ear perked up, the other limp. “A-after you left, I got Cards and me to go off to the Security building to get information stuff about the Social Grace case,” she said at a mile-per-minute, “but then we found you, and then you did that thing, and that made them not follow us anymore because they were probably all after you, and then the Songnam Slaughter, and then you were gone for two days! It’s all my fault, isn’t it!?”

“Well,” I said, rubbing my chin, “I suppose things would have gone better if you hadn’t been doing what you’d been doing, forcing me to set everything on fire.”

Dust looked back at me, frowning hard as she wobbly tried to stand. “I knew it! You hate me because of that, don’t you? That’s why you vanished for two days, isn’t it?!”

“I vanished because—”

She lunged at me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “You hate me, admit it! Just tell me the damn truth!”

“Get a hold of yourself, mare!” I snapped.

“No,” she whined, “don’t push me away—they all push me away! All of them! First Dad, then that other colt, and Dad again because he came and went, and then other ones, and now you!”

“The hell are you going on about? How much did you drink?”

The opal-colored mare just burst into tears, burying her face into my chest. “Why do they all leave?! Am I that horrible? All I ever wanted to do was be the best and fastest there ever was! Is that so much to ask for? It’s all I ever, ever wanted.” She swallowed. “But I’ll do anything to keep you around.”

“You’re scaring me, Lightning Dust,” I said calmly. “Stop it.”

“No, no, no! I like you, GB—I don’t wanna be friendless again!” she cried. “The closest thing I ever had to a real friend went missing and now the closest thing I have to a friend in the world hates me! I’m sorry, sorry, sorry... but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do... for her friends...”

Missing friend? Oh! She means that dead girl they found in the swamp, the one that Doctor Dome autopsied. Haha, you have no friends.

Rolling my eyes, I sighed and pushed her off. “Friendship is just a ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only enough for one in foul. I’d go on some incredibly pretentious rant about something or other, but... I’m too lazy and pie-wanting-to-bake-y. I don’t have time for another sob story today. So let me just solve this problem here: I don’t hate you, it wasn’t your fault that Elkington caught me, and your fears are entirely in your own mind.”

“You’re just saying that!” Dust looked at me with her amber eyes, her lips quivering.

A loud groan. “Okay, once you’ve said that, I can’t possibly win.”

“Why do all my relationships end in failure?”

“Because you won’t let me bake this damn pie.”

“You care about the pie more than me, don’t you!” she accused.

“Dust, that’s crazy,” I said in calm tones. “When I call something’s crazy, I mean it. Trust me, I should know; I hear voices.”

I am acknowledged! Haha!

No, you’re just a figment of my boredom! “So shut up and let me make this pie.”

The way she was shaking reminded me of that one hamster I saw that’d just discovered Kokain. “I... I don’t get it,” she mumbled.

“What’s not to get? I want to bake a pie, you’ve gone drunken psycho and refuse to let me bake that pie,” I commented. “Where’s the confusion?”

Dust inched her way across the floor to me like the world’s least graceful caterpillar attempting to perform an interpretive dance rendition of Götterdämmerung while undergoing cataract surgery. She grabbed ahold of me and nuzzled my hooves. “You know, GB, you got really nice legs. I wish I had legs like yours. They’re nice.”

“Touch. Not.” I fancied that my eyes were firing concentrated beams of threat. She didn’t seem to notice all the effort I was putting into it, though.

“And such nice, clean, manicured hooves,” Dust said woozily, rubbing her cheek against my forehoof. “I don’t want to have to do this—” She blinked. “N-not that I don’t want to, that is! It’s just not something that I thought about and—that came out wrong! I mean, I have thought of it, but, y’know, I have those kinda thoughts a lot and that—” I watched her bite down on her tongue. “Sometimes we can’t choose our friends: the universe chooses them for us.”

“Confederates,” I corrected. “We are confederates. Where I’m from, the word friend, Freund, isn’t thrown around as lightly as it is here in Equestria.”

“Not gonna lie here, GB, but I have no idea what the word confederate means.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Pretty sure I never heard it till you used it. You might not call me your friend, but... by my standards, I’d call you my friend.”

“In my language, indicating possession over a friend generally indicates a romantic relationship,” I added helpfully. “We don’t have unique words for boy- or girlfriends, you see. By your standards, you’d say: Du bist ein Freund von mir. Literally, ‘Thou art a friend of me’.”

“Stop that!” she snapped. “That doesn’t matter, and you’re just trying to dance around the issue here.” Lightning Dust put a hoof on my side. “I don’t have many friends, or any, really, s-so...”

Despite my glare, her hoof slowly slid down my side. Well, enough of that Scheiße. I jabbed her in the forehead, and she yelped as she fell onto the hard floor. “Lightning Dust,” I hissed, “keep your hooves off me and my gentlecolt sword.”

Sidenote: I bet a single punch to her throat would kill her.

“But this is what guys want, right?!” she openly wept, covering her forehead with her hooves. “I don’t get it—you’re not supposed to say no!” Cherrypillar, much? Urge to kill slowly rising. “The hell am I supposed to do? That was supposed to work, dammit!”

“Stop drinking, really.” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were about to die from alcohol poison or something. Hyperbole aside...” I smacked her across the face. “They say that physical stimulation, specifically pain, helps drunks. Also, I just really wanted to smack you, because I’m not sure if I’m facing a moral dilemma here or not.”

Do you think slapping all these girls is going to have an adverse reaction on your reputation as not being a sexist?

Dust covered her eyes with her hooves as she laid on the floor. “I have to do this, GB, don’t you see? That’s what happens to girls who can’t hold a stable relationship in their lives... they don’t get happy endings, just a whore’s one. B-but if it means keeping a friend...”

“I should just get to making this pie, hoping that this becomes an alcohol-fueled blackout for you come morning.” I licked my gums. There was an odd taste that needed to be washed away with French silk pie.

“It’s what happens to girls like me,” Dust went on, not noticing that I wasn’t really paying attention. “I-I once had what I thought was a real friend—she and I worked so good together in the Wonderbolt Academy. They always told me to keep pushing myself, leave others in my dust, and I could be great. Achieve my dreams. Aim for the stars, y’know? There was no future for me otherwise. But then she—that bitch betrayed me, ruined it all... and she made my very own hero, my living idol, destroy my dreams.” She licked her lips and hesitated. “I’ll do anything to survive, I didn’t want to end up like Mom... unloved, cold, and alone...”

I stepped over her and went back to the pie I was trying to make. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Why are you ignoring me?”

“Well, I suppose that’s just going to remain one of life’s unanswered questions, such as ‘what color is a mirror’?”

Dust squinted. “Mirrors are green.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ever make a mirror tunnel, like, having two mirrors mirror each other?” she asked, and I gave a hesitant nod. “Mirrors are green because...” She licked her lips and shook her head. “You can tell they’re green because those infinite mirrors eventually get darker and greener, because that’s how light and colors work.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Holy shit, you’re right... Where did you learn that?”

Dust gave me a look that would have made more sense if she were crosseyed. “I researched it myself back in high school. No one knew the answer, so I did the thingy all by myself. Wrote a paper about it and how... how... the colors and light and reflections made color and... stuff. Got an A.”

“Well then.” I blinked. “Going to be honest here, that is pretty much the last thing I ever expected from you. Especially while you’re drunk.”

“Dad didn’t like the mirrors and the weird way they reflected things,” she sniffled. “I don’t know why—I think he got confused with cameras and how they steal your soul. He wasn’t a very smart stallion, and he was often drunk.” She rubbed her eye. “Doing stuff with mirrors helped keep him away when he was in a hitting-me-and-mommy mood.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s rough.” Too bad I don’t care.

The pegasus got to her hooves. Great, now we were both up. She half-walked, half-skidded towards me like an epileptic cow who thought it could ice skate, which ended about as well as you’d think: the deaths of several small children. The cow, that is, not the mare. “Y’know, I got both a killer body and a... one a them good brains.”

I frowned. “Lightning Dust.”

“Yes?” she purred in a sultry voice.

“You are standing exactly three quarters of a millimeter away from me.” I narrowed my eyes.

“What’s a millimeter?”

“And, you know, because you’re standing that close to me, every Atom in your body is cumulatively being drawn towards every Atom in my body with the exact same gravitational force as the sun is exerting on you right now. My Atome, too. We are literally being drawn together right now.” I frowned. “Stop it.”

She cocked her head to the side. “What’s an... ‘ah-tohm’?”

I blew out a puff of air. “I, uh... um... there may or may not be a minor gap in my Equestria linguistic skills when it comes to the sciences.” I made a circular gesture with a hoof, as if trying to catch the appropriate word out of thin air. “Das Atom... would be, like, a super, super tiny building block of everything that has mass, so small that you could never hope to see one ever, so small that there are billions of them in a single drop of water. What would that be in Equestrian?”

Dust cocked her head in the other direction. “You mean, like, a foremote or an uncleft?”

“What now?”

She stepped away from me, biting her lip. “I dunno, I didn’t have magic class. And I failed chemistry class, too.”

I looked at the pile of pie-making goods on the counter. They were taunting me! “So...” I said, “you failed chemistry class, yet you know all about how light works?”

“Color are just light reflected off objects because that object can absorb every color but the one you see,” she said is if reciting from a memorized speech: “it’s why plants can’t grow if you put them under a green light, they can’t absorb and use that light. So they die. Lightcombining can’t occur.”

“I...” I squinted at her. “And you’re supposed to be drunk and yet you know all of that?” Rather than reply, she made a noise that struggled to exist somewhere between the realms of a gurgle and a moan. “Okay, your ludicrously specific knowledge is kind of freaking me out.”

“Well, I’m sorry I never studied magic or, uh...” She knocked on her forehead. “Urgh, what was it called? That thing about those tiny, tiny thingies... Uncleftish beholding? Yeah, I’m sorry they don’t teach pegasi uncleftish beholding.” Dust made a gesture like violently sweeping all of my pie goods onto the floor.

A very nervous part of me was thinking about all the horrible ways Dust could throw my pie-making stuff to the ground and utterly ruin my night. I took a step towards the counter, trying to put myself between Dust and the pie’s ingredients. “Uncleftish beholding?”

“Yeah, like... that unproven idea that all stuff is made of super tiny unclefts.”

I blinked. “Atomare Theorie?”

“Dammit, GB!” she snapped. “I don’t know things! What kind of egghead do you take me for, the kind that reads Daring Do?”

I don’t know why, but that name sounds very familiar. “Well, this kind of thing lights my fire.”

She groaned. “Can’t we stop doing boring stuff and, like, get to the fun part?”

Cocking a brow, I said, “Not going to lie, you’re drunk, and that wouldn’t be a lot of fun. In fact, I’m not having any fun talking to you, save for that weird science bit. Really, the fun-train has left, it has departed the station, and I’m left standing here in my miniskirt.” Dust gritted her teeth and I went on. “In fact, it’d be less fun than the time I was forced to prove how many five-year-olds I could take on in a fight.” I narrowed my eyes in post-traumatic horror. “The children were merciless and showed no fear... but I did what I had to do...”

“So...?”

“The answer turned out to be ‘many more than common dignity should allow’.” That never happened and you know it.

Shut up, you don’t know that! And this is all part of my plan.

Dust pouted. “Screw them, what about me?”

There was a bottle of some strange brand of soda that I’d bought alongside the pie stuff, simply because I was curious to try out local Equestrian food and beverage. At that exact moment, the only thoughts going through my head concerned that bottle of soda, and whether or not it would have the list of ingredients on the back.

Dust stamped a hoof. “Screw them. What. About. Me?”

I blinked the thoughts of pie and cola away. “Well, no. Never. You’re drunk.”

“So?”

Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I sighed. Why couldn’t Cards randomly show up right now and make this more awkward yet likely help defuse the situation? “According to the laws of my country,” I said plainly, slow enough for her drunken mind to grasp, “sexual intercourse with a pony who is drunk while you are not constitutes a rape offense. That cultural and legal notion is now a part of my morality: to engage in such behavior while you are clearly out of your mind drunk would be an act of rape, in my book. And because rapists are one of the two things I will not tolerable being alive, well, I’d very much like to avoid having to fight myself. I’d kick my ass!”

“Wha’?”

I put a hoof to my chin. “Does your nation have that standard?”

“No,” she moaned.

“Hmm... I should really look into the Equestrian rape laws. I recall this one time in Equitologie class where we, as a class, were going over Teutschland’s rape laws. My teacher, Herr Marsch, he’d-he’d been with the, uh, military police over in a foreign country the Reich has bases in. And he’d related to us once these two rape cases he’d worked on where a teutscher soldier, the same guy, had essentially committed rape and gotten away with it because of a now-illegal argument. It was basically ‘she’s a slut’ for both cases, and it somehow worked in courts: the jurors seemed to be inclined to think the mare was lying.”

I smiled. “I can imagine myself going up to the archives or wherever you keep your laws all recorded, and then walking up to the secretary/librarian or whatever. She’ll just be this little Cards-looking mare, and I’ll go up to her and ask in the scariest voice: ‘I’m looking for the rape laws.’ And she’ll just look at me. Then call security.

“Then the nice security stallions will escort me to where the rape laws are kept, and we’ll talk about how broken they are. They’ll tell me that the little secretary has actually raped them both several times, but no one believes them, and your laws don’t believe mares can commit rape. And it’ll be horrible.”

Turning around, I fished around the paper bag for the glass bottle of soda. And there it was, clear glass filled with a fizzy brown liquid and with a red labeled slapped onto it. Colta-Cola was the labeled brand name. “Hold on a second, love,” I commanded, “I have the strangest craving to figure out what this tastes like.”

“Colta-Cola?” she muttered. “Aren’t you kinda completely off topic... or something?”

That’s the idea. I pulled out a bottle opener, popped off the bottlecap, and took a swig of the fizzy liquid. Swirling it around in my mouth, I frowned and swallowed. “It tastes pretty much exactly like giving oral sex to a sad clown,” I concluded. Dust blinked in what was either confusion or because my face had turned into a bright light source. “It’s like she’s saying: ‘My clown-painted marehood feels nothing but contempt for your pitiful efforts.’ And I’m left there feeling useless. No matter how much I try, I get nowhere!” I sniffled, rubbing my eye. “Why, Mommy, why?! Why can I never please you?! This is why you died, isn’t it! Daddy always said you died because I was unlovable!”

Dust just stared at me.

“So, yeah,” I finished, “that’s how it tastes.”

“It tastes,” Lightning Dust said, narrowing her eyes, “like being unable to orally sex your dead mother to orgasm while she’s dressed as a clown?”

A shrug. “Yeah, pretty much.” If that doesn’t deter you from ever trying to sleep with me ever again, I don’t know what will.

The mare gave me a look like she expected me to explosively decompress in the least spectacular way possible, and her wings twitched. “You know,” she purred, “I wouldn’t have that problem. I... sorta have the opposite problem, in fact.”

I slapped my forehead. “Oh, come on!” I blinked. “Ach, stupid language of yours! Look, Dust, no. And no. No, and some more no. You do not need to try to sexually manipulate me into sticking around with you, and I find the the notion that you think you can do that to me disgusting. I am not mad at you, or at least I wasn’t until you tried to pull this shit today. So go away. There’s a pie to be made. I don’t know how else to tell you this.” I jabbed a hoof at her breast. “You and I and probably Cards if she wants are going to save Equestria from this something-or-other, and then we’re going to go our separate ways. That’s what you wanted, right?”

She took a step back, just staring at me. “I...”

“That’s why you’re working with me, to get those stories that will make your career, of which you’ve already gotten one from me, right?”

“I-I-I...” she stuttered in a shakier voice.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” I said in calm tones. “Tell me that you’re in this for a reason that isn’t utterly selfish, Miss Lightning Dust, Ace Reporter.”

Her breathing got heavier as she looked up at me. Then, with a swallow, she hung her head. “No... you’re not wrong.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Now, go to bed. This little scene of yours has gone on for way too long, and I stopped caring before it began.”

She looked at me like a puppy who’d been kicked by her master, and couldn’t figure out why: the ability to comprehend was simply beyond her. “I...”

“Yes, I is a lovely letter.” ‘I is’ just sounds wrong. “But, seriously, there’s a pie to bake and it’s pretty much the most interesting thing ever right now.”

Her expression did not change. I recalled an experiment I’d once read about puppies and being abused or loved. There had been three groups of puppies: ones who had been constantly shown affection, one group which had been constantly abused, and one that had been abused and loved at random. As it turned out, a puppy who is randomly abused and loved will result in a dog that loves its master more than constantly abused or loved puppies.

The look in her eyes was like that of the third group of puppies. Like an infant being rejected by its mother, which only made the infant cling tighter.

Dust flattened her ears, hung her head, and let her wings go limp. With all the grace of a mare beating her dog with a baby monkey, she took a step towards leaving the kitchen. I faced her, watching to make she she slunk out and left me to my pie.

To the surprise of no one involved, the mare stumbled and fell. With a yelp, she had the nerve to reach out and grab me for balance. Of course, she pulled me down with and on top of her as we tumbled out of the tiny, tiny kitchen.

I glared down at her with an expression that I hoped looked very stern. “Dust.”

She bit her lip. “Oh, no, no, no—I’m sorry, that was an accident! I didn’t want to—sorry, sorry, sorry!”

“What the hell am I looking at?” somepony said from the door, and I looked over to see Cards standing in the doorway, staring at me as she held a bag of some kind.

“I’d give you the old cliché of ‘It’s not what it looks like’,” I said in a calm tone, “but because that never works, I’m going to say ‘It’s exactly what it looks like’ in the hopes of using reverse psychology to make you see the truth and avoid the whacky misunderstanding that the universe seems to want to happen.” I glanced at Dust. “What, even, does this look like?”

“Looks,” Cards said in a hesitant voice, “like it could be a lot of things.”

“Of which it is likely none,” I replied, standing up. “Where’d you even come from, Cards? One moment you were gone, now you’re here. You’re sneaker than a Rôdeur.”

“Roh-what?” Cards muttered. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak fancy.”

I gave a dismissive wave of the hoof. “Eh, Rôdeure are this type of sneaky ship operated by a government organization whose name would be... uh... I’d translate it as the ‘Office of Military Intelligence’.” I shook my head. “Take what I said as a complement, Cards.”

“Um... okay...” Cards tilted her head. “Why were you two...?”

“It was her fault; she tripped and fell to the floor, dragging me alongside.” I shrugged. “She’s sort of been... out of her mind tonight.”

“I can’t help it,” Dust groaned. “I take one sip of booze and I just gotta have it all, y’know?”

Cards stepped into the room proper, shutting the door behind her as she let out a single chuckle. “Yeah, she drank my booze and got sappier than me on my period.” She blinked and swallowed, then stammered out, “I, uh, forget I, uh—”

I looked at Cards. “Back in high school, all the ponies at my lunch table were girls. There was also me and this one gay guy, but that’s beside the point. Anyways, one of the girls mentioned that eating chocolate helped them not cry during menstruation. You should see to that.”

“Can we not talk about this?” Cards snapped. “It’s gross!”

“Why is it gross?” I asked. “I’m filled with blood, and often deal with it externally every day in my occupation. So what? It’s not as if that blood is toxic—in fact, a vampire once told me that menstrual blood was more nutritious than normal blood, because it’s enriched to help support a fetus and—”

“Stop it! Stop it! It’s bad enough trying to buy lady products when the town pharmacist is a stallion—I don’t need a really creepy sex ed class, especially not from a boy while there’s a sobbing pegasus at his hooves!”

“They are nice hooves, y’know. GB, how do you say in such shape?” Dust asked woozily, rubbing her cheek against my forehoof from down on the floor.

“Bones,” I said curtly, then went back to Cards’ topic. “You know, being ashamed of menstruation and thinking that it’s gross is actually a patriarchal idea stemming from this strange notion that said bodily function makes a mare unclean. I know my culture holds similar views, but for the life of me, I could never understand the why of it.” I shrugged. “I, for one, though, find it fascinating to see such similar views and opinions in a culture so different yet related to my own.”

“Okay,” Cards said in a wary tone, “now you’re just freakin’ me out.”

“Yeah, see—I have this problem where I think about everything as if I were an alien, even in my own country. Plus, I woke up tied to a bed today, the only thing saving me was that I totally saw it coming.”

Both mares just stared at me. I sighed. “Lightning Dust, go to bed. Cards, Duke Elkington hired me to go stop some sort of eldritch abomination that’s been giving him nightmares. But none of the details matter to me because I have to make a pie, and if any of you try to stop me from making that pie, I’ll strangle you both with your own fallopian tubes. We clear?”

They seemed to think there was something absurdly fascinating about my face, the way they just stared at me.

“Good!” I chirped. “Now that that’s settled, I have a pie to make for you to enjoy later, Dust has a bed to sob herself to sleep into, and Cards has nothing. Let’s make it happen, ponies!”

“I had a bad day,” Dust added for no real reason.

“I had a bad couple of days, Dust,” Cards sighed, flattening her ears.

“Bitch, I had a knife in my asshole for two days!” I snapped. “Don’t you tell me you had a bad few days compared to that!”

Author's Note

Footnote: 75% to next level
Companion Perk Added: Dealt Her Hand — Life’s a bitch, and so is Cards! But then, what did you expect when you murdered her only friend, you bastard? With her in the party, you gain +5% damage resistance and +1 Luck. You’ll need it to survive her whining.

Companion Perk Added: Dust to Dust — Blink and you’ll miss her! Even after having her already broken life destroyed and dealing with alcoholism, Lightning Dust is still one of the fastest, best fliers in the world. Just be wary of abandonment issues, those might bite you like a flock of puppies, but you don’t care about that, do you? Good! Her keen eye for telling when her father was in a Hitting-Me-And-Mommy mood gives you a +1 to perception. And though he didn’t hit often, when he did, it hurt. This somehow gives you both +10% critical hit damage. Hooray for child abuse giving you special powers, you bastard! I hope you’re proud of yourself...

[Well, this too far longer to produce than it should have. Lots of rewrites and cuts, split this chapter at one point and moved the other bit to chapter 14. Thanks to those who helped me with this chapter. Now then, my quest to inspire an artist to draw fanart for Jericho continues...

Oh, and a minor retcon: it’s now Reichskriminalamt (RKA), not Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)]

Chapter 14 — Mother

Chapter 14: Mother

“Oh, I’m the one who’s ruining your life?! Really?! Have you looked around this place? I’m the one who’d be better off with no sister!”

Trains!

Click clack.

“We’re on the track,” I singsonged, rocking my head side-to-side. “And that’s a fact. We’re going through the land like a hill of sand—wie Gottes Hand in diesem Land. This is the train song, because trains remind me of a dong. Oh! The train song. Girl, take off that thong!” Yes, I was making it up as I went. No, I couldn’t explain why.

Why do you sing so much?

Lightning Dust groaned, her eyes fluttering open as the first rays of morning sunlight bathed her face. She smacked her lips and squinted, turning her head away from the sun pouring in through the window. Her amber eyes fixated themselves immediately on me.

“Guten Morgen, Fräulein!” I chirped with a smile. “Wie geht’s dir? Mir geht’s übrigens gut.”

She blinked. “Wha’?”

“I trust that you slept well,” I said, patting Dust on the head before returning back to... uh... what was I doing? Oh yeah, singing about something or other while I looked out the window. The rolling landscapes—okay, just trees—was a sight to behold. Behold, of course, being a pretentious term for ‘pretending to care’.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Cards muttered from across the little alley. I doubted she was speaking to anypony in particular.

Dust just stared at me as I replied, “I know. Saturdays are usually karaoke nights for me. I found this neat little Neighponease club where I learned I do a killer rendition of the so-called ‘Smile Song’ by Sapphire Shores and Duke Elkington.” I grinned. “Get it?” I let out a howling laugh.

“Wha’?” Dust repeated in a slurred tone.

I rolled my eyes and groaned. “Well, sorry I use humor to deflect my insecurities and self-doubts. Plus, I’m hilarious and you totally know it. That first mare I killed with an axe would have known it too, except that I, you know, killed her with an axe.”

“What?”

“How dare you question me!” I snapped, and she flinched back against the window. “I, the Shogun of Sarcasm, the Sovereign of Snark, the Viscount of Vaudeville, the King of Comedy!” Rubbing the back of my neck, I sighed. “Yeah, that’s all I got.”

Dust blinked, her face scrunched up. “Where am I? How did we get here? And... why don’t I have a hangover?”

“What? Those are your questions?” I scoffed. “Did you not remember being hungover, me waking you up, giving you some medicine, and then carrying you to the train station? You fell back asleep, like, as soon as we got to the station.”

“We’re on a train?”

“No. We’re riding a giant worm with a nice cabin stapled vigorously to its back. It just so happened to have been reserved especially for me by Duke Elkington.” I gestured around the car, to the bunk beds built into its walls, one of which was occupied by Dust, the one across harboring Cards. “Incidentally, I learned just how nasty my reputation is in Equestria. Thank God that not a single pony recognizes me while I’m wearing my hat and duster. I think I really need to work on my reputation as a hero, not a mass-murdering psychopath.”

It’s true! It’s horrible. I mean, we couldn’t get a date here if we bought a calendar!

“Damn, that’s cold,” I said. Then I blinked. “Scheiße. Said that out loud, didn’t I? That was meant to be a thought.”

Cards muttered something about hating her life, and I agreed with her: I too hated her life. She herself was fine. But her life was a wench whose gentitals were so festering with all manner of strange diseases and plagues that they had been declared a wildlife sanctuary, who had then been locked inside a room with a lifetime’s supply of alcohol guarded by a moose, only to find out that she had an unconquerable phobia of moose, which was actually a suitable metaphor for most ponies’ lives. The moose part, not the part with the STDs. At least I hoped not the STD part.

“You know, I’m a bit vague on this whole plan, too,” Cards said. “You got up to the part where you orally fought Elkington with a sword, then you told me to shut up and shoved me into this train.”

I leaned back in my chair, which I’d set in the very middle of the car’s aisle. “Yeah, I figured it’d be more awesome to just not tell you anything at all until the very last, most dramatic second.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t I already say? For drama! Duh.” I nodded sagely. “The more information I dramatically withhold, the more awesome it is at the end during the big reveal.” She gave me a look that drilled holes into my dramatical resolve. Sighing, I pulled out the Eiserne Kreuz and the Kruzifix from under my shirt—both had been hanging around my neck. “This little Kruzifix is basically some all-powerful nonsense thing that some evil thing wants. Cards, your town is being mentally poisoned by strange magical forces. Dust, you’re a reporter who’s here because I don’t know. We have to go into the swamp, fight some demon, and then be back for dinner. Any questions?”

Dust raised her hoof, a blank expression on her face. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Don’t know. Anypony else?”

She raised her hoof again. “What’s a demon and why are we fighting it?”

“A demon is an evil monster that tastes good when cooked.” I shrugged. “I wasn’t really paying attention, but Elkington appears to be working with it in order to prevent it from going crazy and killing some ponies. The thing lives by Sleepy Oaks, and a byproduct of the things it’s doing happens to involve magically driving the ponies of Sleepy Oaks mad. Anywho, the demon wants this Kruzifix; we’re going to bring it to the beast, and then we’re going to kill him dead, and hopefully have him for dinner.”

Cards bolted upwards in her little bunk, banging her head into the bed above her. “Wait, what?!”

“Yeah. If you kill it, you shouldn’t let it go to waste. Because if the high-velocity ambush squid is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

“No, no—the other parts!” She crossed her arms. “I could care less for your sick joke.”

I shrugged. “Didn’t I tell I wasn’t really paying attention?” I felt the train’s brakes kicking into action, the cars all slowly... er, slowly slowing down. “Some demon wound up in Equestria and is looking for some magical artifact, which I’m now wearing around my neck. The pretentious prick calls himself the ‘Devil’s Backbone’. He’s hiding out in the Acolapissa Swamp; that’s why those government agents were harassing your town; they were trying to, like utterly idiotic fools, keep you from entering the swamp and keep you away from bursts of low-level enervation, I think.”

“You... you didn’t pay attention to that part?” Lightning Dust said in a quiet voice.

“What?” I chuckled. “It’s only a demon that Elkington’s overreacting to. If it were a proper threat, it would have used his magic to essentially consume his soul or something, as is the fate of most magi. I mean, yeah, it’s a demon; first time he sees you, he’s going to want to rape you to death, eat your internal organs, and sow your flesh and fur into a fine hat—in that order if you’re lucky. Ask Cards; told her all about that. In fact, he’ll probably skin you first, then walk around, asking your screaming, fleshless bodies what you think of his newest hat. Demonic humor, near as I can tell, is very primitive, relies mostly on slapstick. ‘Ach, look at her—she walked into a door and then got brutally raped by seventy-two fat, sweaty, bald guys! This is funny to me!’ And, you know, I just find that boring and tastless. I prefer wit and charm in my humor.”

They just stared at me.

“So yeah, point is, this shouldn’t be too hard.” I put a hoof to my chin. “Then again, last time I saw a live demon, I was in the Mobile Infantry, wearing a full-body suit of spidersilk combat armor, surrounded by brothers-in-arms, and we were using liquid fire, Giftgas, and all sorts of nastiness against them.” I shook my head. “Eh, we’ll be fine. We’ll save Equestria, then go back and... something... I didn’t really think this through, I admit. My ego wouldn’t let me listen to Elkington. You know, in hindsight, that was a terrible idea.”

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Cards asked flatly.

Now I remember why they’re here—their panicked screams will no-doubt distract the demon while I run up behind him and stab him precisely sixteen times in the liver and spinal regions. “‘We’? No. You? Didn’t I tell you that you were much too pretty to die? You know, back after Glasses?”

“Am I too pretty to die?” Dust asked with sparkling eyes.

I held my tongue for the longest time. “I cannot tell a lie, Lightning Dust.” Lügen! Alles Lügen!

She groaned, her feathers ruffling as she crossed her arms. “Gee. Thanks. You’re so encouraging.”

“I try my best.” I glanced out the window. “You know, I hear that if you can’t do long division, bears will mess you up for life.”

“What in the...?” Card tried.

“Yeah, I suspect that I was bitten by a rude yet radioactive spider when I was a colt.” I shrugged. “Such behavior is a very bad habit of mine, but one I find most hard to break.”

There was a moment of silence.

There were several more moments of silence as the train slowed to a stop.

I took this time to trot over to the front of the train car and open the door. Stepping into the fresh air of the little external place between the two cars, I turned my head to the side. I had the sneaking suspicion that the short train wasn’t docked in a station as I looked out into the little clearing. A small number of ponies in lightly armored barding stood around at little tents, and one of them approached me.

“Special Agent Faust, I presume,” she said, squinting her orange eyes. “So you’re here to help us, then?”

“In accordance with the prophecy,” I replied, nodding sagely.

She let out a breath, rubbing her forehead. “Thank Celestia! After the mess at HQ the other day, I was sure they were just gonna leave us here. When a pegasus flyer showed up last night with the news they were sending you, can’t tell you how happy we were.”

I resisted the urge to squint back at her. She pronounced the word ‘can’t’ to rhyme with ‘ain’t’, and something about that made we want to become a teacher of the Equestrian language. I’d be the best teacher ever; the children would all learn, or die trying. In the latter case, I’d be arrested for breaking numerous laws.

“Care for a sitrep, sir?” she offered, then blinked. “Oh, uh, I’m Lieutenant Pudge Farks, sir.”

It took every ounce of willpower not to giggle at her name. Equestrians did not know how to name children. “Sitrep?” I asked. “What’s that?”

She hesitated. “A situational report, sir.”

“Can you make it short?” I asked, and Pudge Farks nodded.

“Strange magical force hit the town, sir.” She looked over her shoulder. “Folks been staying put in the town, ’cept for one guy. He ran outta town, screaming something about spiders underneath his skin, then he vomited up about of pound of cobwebs that he ate, and he’s been comatose for days since.”

“Oh my... Celestia,” I said. “Did you keep the cobwebs?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

“You fool! I could have knitted that into a nifty scarf.”

Lightning Dust came up from behind me. “You can knit?”

I turned my head to her and Cards, who was right behind the pegasus. “It’s a hobby of mine, yes.”

“Sir, there someone with you?” Pudge Farks asked in hesitant tones.

“Yes, two young mares,” I replied.

Pudge Farks cocked a brow. “Impressive, sir. I can hardly get one.”

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing, sir.”

A moment of silence. I saw that Cards was hefting her bags, as was Dust. Good. Dust must’ve been given the gist of things from Cards. How handy.

I stepped off the train and onto the grass. “So, are we going to get moving or what?”

“Or what, I’m afraid.” Pudge Farks forced a smile. “Railroad officially ends here: Elkington’s orders, nopony gets into town via train.”

“What if I told you I wasn’t a pony,” I replied, cocking a brow, “but instead a lesbian zebra trapped in a stallion’s body?”

“Well, I’d tell you to go see a doctor about that.”

“But I don’t want to see a the rapist!”

She blinked. “Well, I’d rather remain unraped myself, but sometimes we gotta do what we’re ordered to do. You’ll have to walk into town; we’ve cordoned off every accessway into the town, and I’m just in charge of this checkpoint.”

I frowned as I looked out the trees surrounding the little clearing her checkpoint was set-up in. “Do you have any other silly rules, like ‘No using public masturbation to demonstrate a flaw in command logic’ or ‘Liquid fire sticks to kids is not what you put on motivational posters’?”

“Pretty sure that public masturbation is illegal,” Lightning Dust offered, hoping out of the car and up next to me. “Kinky, but illegal.”

Pudge Farks winked—whether at me or Dust I couldn’t say. “S’pose it could look nice.”

“Mmhh,” Cards hummed, hopping up to my other side.

I lowered my ears and groaned, “Oh sweet God in Heaven, what is wrong with your girls?” They didn’t reply. “Lieutenant, have you ever met Elkington?”

She shook her head. “I have not, no.”

Saddling up, I prepared myself to walk down the train tracks. “Well then, I hope you know that you’re working for a giant space ant.”

“Wait, what?” all three mares stammered as I walked. There was a town that way, and I’d be damned if I let some stupidly-named Equestrians stop me. Cards and Dust trotted after.

“Wait, you met Elkington?” Dust asked, and I nodded.

“Yes, and in reality he’s not a pony but a giant space ant.” I flashed back to his giant mandibles and his tentacle-like tongue, which I promptly informed the girls of. “Welcome to the real world, girlfriend—the giant ants have controlled our meek race since we first crawled out of the mud. All aristocrats are secretly giant ants. Their goal is to one day build the greatest picnic that has ever existed and sail it across the cosmos to establish colonies on the shores of other worlds.”

“Other worlds?” Dust asked as we passed the front engine. Now it was just us and a railway leading into a town tainted with dark magic. Just looking down the tracks and seeing the distant town made me feel sterile from overexposure.

“Yes, planets much like the Earth, except in space.” The oddly alluring thought of giant ant ladies clad in bikinis, sipping alien martinis on a beach beneath a red sun came to mind. Then I was reminded that most all ants were female, and that the males were essentially sex slaves for the queens, and the idea suddenly got terrifying and was going to haunt my nightmares. I had the strange feeling that Cherry Berry would be right at home with ants.

“Okay, this is getting really stupid,” Cards said, and Dust nodded.

I paused to put a hoof to my jaw. Cherry Berry sure had been popping up in my thoughts a lot recently. You’d think that if she didn’t matter to me, I’d’ve forgotten about her, but instead she just kept popping into my mind. Clearly, something about her had left some long-lasting scar upon me, even if it was just the question over whether Equestria was patriarchal or matriarchal. I should have killed her when I had the chance. With a sword. Like the bad itch she was. Well, not like an itch, because scratching an itch with a sword would be counter-productive to my attempts at living. In fact, why didn’t—

“Hey, GB!” Dust yelled, knocking on my head. “GB, where’d ya go? Ya just fazed out on us.”

“Huh, what?” I blinked, shaking the thoughts out of my mind. “Sorry, I was having flashbacks to that girl who tried to rape me the other day, just like that time I kept getting flashbacks to wars that I both wasn’t in and occurred long before I was born. And no matter what I told command, it turned out that who I was in my past life had no effect on the command structure.”

They both stared at me.

“So, yeah, Elkington’s a pony. What of it?”

“But...” Dust tried, “then why did you say...?”

“I don’t know, I just say things,” I replied, drooping my ears. “How have you not gotten this yet?”

|— ☩ —|

“So, wait,” Cards said, holding up a hoof. “What do you mean, ‘planets like ours’? There’s only one planet.” Dust chimed in an agreement.

“No, there are many.” I perked up a single ear as I looked out at Sleepy Oaks. Here at the train station, I do a sense of déjà vu. “What about, say, Tyr, the red light in the sky?”

Dust cocked her head. “Tyr? That’s just a wanderer, since it has that really weird twirly thing as it goes around the sky.”

Eye twitch. “According to the standards of my people, Tyr is a planet. The Earth is a planet. The moon is a moon. The sun is a star. And—”

The pegasus scoffed. “The sun’s not a star, it’s a sun! If it was a star, then Princess Luna would control it. She controls the stars and the moon, not the sun. Duh.”

I let that line hang in the air for a moment like a bad smell before I groused, “Sonnenanbeter,” shaking my head.

“So, really,” Dust went on, “you’re just not making any logical sense here, GB.”

I sighed. “Look, call them what you will: you stick to your worldview, I’ll stick to mine.” I jerked my head to Cards, and she flinched back. “And while we’re at it, ‘shpadoinkle” is not a word!”

“I said it the one time!” she defended, holding up her forehooves and, predictably, falling to the ground.

“I think GB’s just having a very shpadoinkle day,” Dust added.

I let out a breath, rubbing my nose. “Two drink limit does not mean first and last. Two drink limit does not mean two kinds of drinks. Two drink limit does not mean the drinks can be as large as I like. Because ‘I’m drunk’ is a bad answer to any question posed by my commander.”

“What”?

Muttering under my breath as I glared at Dust, the voices in my head most certainly not talking to me. You know, I’ve always wanted to be known as “The Strangler”. I mean, I wouldn’t kill anypony just for that title, but if I fail at killing this thing in the swamp, I at least want to come away from this with a title like “The Surreptitious Strangler” added to my already disconcerting repertoire of murder-borne titles.

Dust cocked her head. “GB, why are you staring at me like that...?”

“Look, can we stop doing whatever we’re doing and get back to the matter at hand?” I asked suddenly. “Namely, getting to the sheriff’s office.” I hopped up onto the train station proper and looked around. I could see that inside the teller’s booth was a Voixson. “Any objections, ladies?”

Cards just stared at me as Dust fluttered up onto the platform with me. Oh, wait, now I saw. Cards was too short to easily climb up onto the tall platform. Shaking my head, I went over to the edge and offered her my arm. She hesitated, but accepted it, and I helped her haul her body onto the platform.

“Uh, thanks,” she said, and I shrugged.

“Listen, you two hang here while I go inside,” I told them, walking for the very plain and obvious door into the teller’s office. Entering the little room and closing the door behind me, I located the Voixson. Looking out the window, I could see Cards and Dust talking, but couldn’t hear them. Odd.

The little luggage tag on the Voixson’s handle had a little black-and-white photo of a stallion with what looked like an onyx-black mane. Turning the photo over, I found a single word, “Blackout.” I hit the play button, and the “Blackout” Voixson crackled to life.

“Blackout, light of my life, fire of my loins, mother of my daughter,” sounded a stallion’s deep voice. It took me a moment to place the voice to that of Sheriff Strong, Cards’ father. “My sin, my soul. Black-out: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of two steps down the palate to tap, at two, on the teeth. Black. Out.

“She was Blackie, plain Blackie, in the mornings when she lived with her mother and father. She’d been simply Black when she was in school, she says. She was Outie on the dotted line. Chief Blackout to most everyone nowadays, even to her... to our daughter. But in my forelegs she was always just Blackout. For every ounce of revulsion I have for her, I only find her more alluring. I knew she had to be mine the moment our eyes met, and I knew I’d be hers the moment she deemed me fit.” He made a noise like a cat relaxing after eating its fill of a particularly plump pheasant.

“Then, today, a stranger from the government came. Then, he captured Cards, our daughter, and forced her into his service... Oh Blackout, no sooner had the black light of my life learned of the danger to which our daughter was exposed to than did she lose every consideration for everything besides that of Cards’ safety. The fire behind her pink eyes was one I’d seen time and time before, that lust for violence and action, the same look in her eyes when I lay her down at night. I looked and looked at her, knowing that look to be the death of me, just the same as it was meant to be the death of that government boy.”

Sheriff Strong hesitated. “I don’t disbelieve what they told me about you, that you are as manipulative as you are beautiful. That you were a total blacking out of the heart. I am all too keen that you believe that I dismissed them, but secretly the warnings only drew me in. I had something you wanted, something only I could give you. When you told me you were pregnant and that we needed to get married, I knew you were lying. When you used the coercion of your false pregnancy to lure me into making that lie true in the form of our daughter, I kept silent: your every action, your ability to weave webs of lies for the common fly, kept me transfixed with a morbid fascination. But I always saw through your ruses, your batted lashes, that innocent smile. I know you allowed yourself to be made pregnant only because it suited your interests. By marrying me, you decidedly went up in social class, became the envy of your lower-class girlfriends... But now there is another, more important mare in my life, a beautiful young mare I’d do anything for... and her name is Cards.”

He took a heavy breath. “Oh Blackout, the in to my external, the white to my darkness... you crossed the line today, and now our daughter is gone with that monster... Black. Out. What you did to our daughter today broke my heart. But you merely broke her life. And the rest is just rust and stardust.” The Voixson crackled out as the recording ended.

I just stared there in thought of the message. What was with that strange wording Sheriff Strong used? And how in the nine Hells did this wind up here? Cards might want to hear this... later, of course. Hearing it now would probably demoralize her. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, I figured, putting the Voixson into my bag. Shaking my head, I went back out from the little room.

“One time I dreamt that I was dragon but then I got slain,” Cards was saying to Dust, the pegasus nodding.

Lightning Dust glanced over and saw me. “Hey there, GB,” she greeted with a wave. “Find anything?”

“No,” I said, trying not to look at Cards’ cut ear. It didn’t look at that bad, more like a tiny, tiny landshark had taken a bite out of her ear—because what else did a tiny, tiny landshark have to do for fun but ruin Cards’ life? Even though we all knew that landsharks could swim through water as though it were land. The original reason I conscripted Cards help came to me again: to assist me in her neck of the woods. “Cards, back to what we were doing. Can you lead us to the sheriff’s office from there?”

The little mare nodded. “Yeah. Why there?”

“The more I withhold, the more completely unnecessary drama there can be.”

|— ☩ —|

Cards hesitated at the fork in the road. “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” I heard her mumble. Dust followed her closest, and I always lagged behind the two, which was hard. Having longer legs than either mare made my strides longer.

Looking around the street, I couldn’t shake the feeling that bringing the girls was a poor idea. Enervation hadn’t exactly been kind to Dust the other night, and with the levels here in Sleepy Oaks... I didn’t know. They were fine when last they were here, so maybe it was nothing. The town, though, appeared anything but fine.

“Reminds me of Midgard,” I said absently.

“Hmm?” they both hummed, turning to me.

When I didn’t reply and just kept staring at the seemingly abandoned houses, Dust asked, “What’s Midgard?”

“It’s a city,” I replied. To me, something about coming to Sleepy Oaks in the day seemed wrong. It felt like the kind of place designed to look spooky at night, but just looked mildly dilapidated at day. It gave me the strange urge to just paint everything with newer, snazzier colors, since it was really all the place needed. Now then, where was I going to get a few hundred liters of hot-pink paint and several kilograms of sexually suggestive stickers at this hour?

“That it?” Dust prodded. “Sounded like you had more to say there.”

I sighed. “Midgard was a major city in the Reich, the capital of the federal state of Asgard.” A shrug. “Picture a big city, like Songnam. Now picture it swarming with countless legions of the very scum of the Earth, the city’s populace having already evacuated to the north. Now, imagine setting off a massive Gefechtskopf—er, setting off a massive piece of military ordnance, like a huge explosion, only instead of fiery doom, there was lots and lots of Nervengas.”

“Uh, this way,” Cards said, pointing to the left. Dust snapped her attention to Cards and quickly followed her.

At the other end of this party was me, and I was looking over my shoulder. I had the feeling that I should have had the feeling of being watched; that fact that I didn’t have that sensation was actually troubling. It was too cliché not to happen. I gestured from my eyes to the empty street, letting it know that if it wasn’t going to leer creepily at me, I’d leer creepily at it.

Scurrying after the girls, I found them chatting.

“So, you actually any good at cards, Cards?” Dust asked.

Cards shot the pegasus a look. “Yes, actually. I’m damn good. Challenge me to a game of poker and end up broke at the end of the night.”

Lightning Dust tilted her head like a dog you’ve blown a whistle at that doesn’t understand what whistles were and may be looking to bite the tip of your penis off like a snapping turtle. It was hard to tell; dogs had notoriously difficult minds to read. I was sure she’d say “What’s going on here?” from the look on her face, but instead it was: “But your poker face sucks.”

“Sh-shut up, it’s great!” Cards snapped.

“No, I’ve seen you try to hide your emotions, and you suck at it.” She shrugged her wings. “At best, you look like you’re having the world’s worst or—”

“Hey, look, we’re here!” Card interjected, pointing to a concrete building of three stories. She quickly trotted over to the building’s front.

In no time at all, we were standing before it. I took back the reigns of the group and entered first. The room I came into was a small sort of waiting room—it smelled of impatience, of course, which was how I knew what it was—with a desk at one end and a hallway leading further into the office.

As the girls came in with me, my hoof bumped into an empty bottle. It clanged against the desk. “You know,” I said, “this is a poor start to an open house.” I cupped a hoof to my mouth and called out, “So where do I register with a realtor agent here? I’d like to buy this plot of land.” I went up to the counter and found an ashtray and a packet of cigarettes. With a frown on my face, I picked the packet up and flung it onto the ground. “Smoking kills.”

Cards watched the packet bounce across the floor before she raised a brow to me. “What?”

I shrugged. “Smoking kills, Miss Cards. Don’t smoke. It’s bad for you.” Now then, where was a soapbox to stand upon and preach when you needed one? “If I were to start a cigarette company, I’d name it ‘Scorpion Smokes’—we market exclusively to foals and guarantee a free live scorpion in every packet.”

Dust, who’d been staring at some graffiti on the wall, turned to me. “A scorpions in every packet?” She licked her lips quickly. “If I was a filly, I’d buy them just for the scorpions. Those preppy bitches at school would have liked to find them in their manes.”

I frowned. “I find it disconcerting that you didn’t question a brand of cigarettes marketed for small children. You don’t think that maybe the idea of cigarettes marketed for children is sort of morally despicable?”

She shrugged. “Well, if I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let her have any. That’s just common sense. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.” Cards chimed in her agreements to Dust.

I’m possibly a mass murderer, but even I have higher standards than you! “But if you had a son...?”

“Ugh, fine, let’s argue semantics and words.”

“Egal,” I sighed, giving a dismissive wave of the hoof. “Hey, what’s that on the wall there?” I walked over to Dust, and she stepped back. The writing on the wall was in black crayon, the penponyship was either hasty or done by a small child upon a step ladder. Either way, they apparently had an irrational phobia of the common comma.

“One two she’s gonna get you

“Three four better lock your door

“Five six she knows your tricks

“Seven eight you’ve stayed up too late

“Nine ten she’s gonna kill again

“SANDMARE”

“Sandmare?” I asked.

“Uh, a foal’s fairytale,” Cards offered. “She’s this little mare who helps children fall asleep, and she’s the one said to leave those little eye crusties in your eyes. Not sure what this little poem is about; the Sandmare is a nice character. Brings you good dreams if you’ve been a good colt or filly, they say.”

“Hmm,” I hummed. “Reminds me of the Sandmann.”

“Zahnt-mahn?” Dust asked.

“Ja, der Sandmann,” I replied. “He used to be sort of the same thing, a foal’s fairytale, but about two hundred years ago his legend morphed into something of an evil monster. If you’re a bad little boy or girl, our Sandmann will throw a hooffull of sand in your eyes, make them bleed, forcefully tear them out as you beg him not to, then he puts them in a bag and takes them home to feed his monstrous children. Also, his children live on the moon, by the way, because why the hell not?”

“The hell kind of fairytale is that?” Cards asked, shaking her head.

“Apparently the same one written here on the wall,” I replied, walking over and behind the desk. A part of me was tempted to just stand around idly for the whole day until it was night, because this place’s whole aesthetic was ruined by sunlight, and I didn’t want whoever made this place so horrible to feel bad. A lot of work had been put into making this place look like it hadn’t seen a lot of work in a good many years.

“Well, it wasn’t on the wall last time I was here,” she said.

I looked at a note on the desk. “Put out an APB on that government boy—we gotta find Cards!” it read. “That bastard isn’t getting away with what he’s done to our town.”

“What’s an ‘APB’?” I asked.

“It stands for All-Point Bulletin.” Cards frowned. “It’s, like, a thingy that police or guards can put out, giving information on a wanted pony, making it easier for everypony to find that pony. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I just saw the acronym noted here and was curious.” So. Cards. They were looking for her after they ran her out of town? “You Equestrians sure do have the strangest obsession with acronyms. It’s like you’re philic of things you feel like you could shorten. In the Reich, we don’t abuse them anything like you do.” ‘Philic’ sounds a lot like ‘phallic’. Phallicphilic.

“So... why are we here, in the sheriff’s office?” Cards asked.

“Simple,” I replied: “I’m looking for your father or mother, but hopefully the father. Do they have offices in this building? If so, where?”

Cards blinked, then said absently, “Third floor, opposite ends of the hallways. I recall getting reprimanded in Chief Blackout’s office a few times. Dad kept a bottle of whiskey in his desk. Used to sneak sips from it when I was a filly.”

I turned to the little hallway. “Hey!” I yelled out. “I’m here to see a mare about a train! Can somepony point me in the direction of the nearest quest-giver? I require a quest to slay a dragon and rescue a maiden.”

No response.

“Scheiße,” I sighed, trotting into the hallway. I found a clearly marked stairwell and made my way up to the second floor. Why only the second floor? Because some cosmic force had seen it fit to block the stairwell up ahead with all manner of desks and tables. Choo-choo, who was being railroaded by fate? This bucking guy!

I opened the door onto the second floor, sure I could find another stairwell or something, and then I paused. There was a large room against a series of glass windows, possibly some sort of break room. But the thing was, there was a carriage in here. As in, the whole thing, turned onto its side, lying on the floor and taking up most of the room, without any obvious sign of how it got here in the first place.

Had they constructed it in here? Did the carriage somehow fall through the ceiling in defiance of gravity and end up here? Really, this was just bizarre. I walked over to it and poked it. To my dull surprise, the carriage just flopped over. “Oh,” I said, “it was a horrifically good painting.”

I blinked once. “This whole town is stupid. Who the hell would paint a photo-realistic picture in faux-three-dimensions and then just put it here?” From behind me, I heard the girls come out onto the second floor with me.

Dust asked a question, but I was too busy being transfixed by a mousehole in the wall. I’d never seen a real one back in the Reich, and I struggled to recall seeing one during my travels. I recall once speculating that if I had an eyeball at the end of my penis, I could jam it into mouseholes and use it to spy on mice. But looking at it, I realized how impossible that would be; there was no way a pony could bend themselves to be able to spy on mice and find out what evil they were up to.

Turning to face Cards and Dust, I announced, “I think I figured out what happened to this place after we left.”

Card perked her ears. “Really? What?”

“They were all too stupid to legally exist and so were consumed by a hole in reality.” I nodded. “It only makes sense.”

She just stared at me. “Has anypony ever told you that you’re funny?”

“Well, yes.”

“They were lying,” she hissed, her eyes like slits. Cards shook her head. “Look, there’s another stairwell over on the other side of the building. Do you wanna get to the third floor or not?”

“Wow,” I said, “you’re more upset than those orphans from that one time I tried to build a birdhouse but instead ended up killing an orphanage.” I affixed her a hard look. “Yeah, that’s right: I killed a whole building.”

“Wha’...?”

“The orphans were fine,” I said with a shrug, “just really confused and then really upset.” After a few awkward moments, I glanced to the side and asked, “What the hell is that?” as I pointed to a rectangular box propped up against the wall. Before anyone could answer, I trotted up to the strange box.

The vertical rectangular box was bright red on the front side, a strange logo on it reading “Colta-Cola”. Towards the floor-end of the front was something that looked like a mail-slit you’d find at your front door, and upon a panel on the right were a number of small pictures attached small buttons. The little demon of confusion crawled to the forefront of my mind: his solution, to set everything on fire and let it sort itself out because fire solved everything, though appealing, didn’t strike me as the best idea.

I pressed the topmost button, the one with the picture of a normal glass bottle, and nothing happened. Frowning, I asked, “What is this thing and how do I kill it?”

“That’s...” Dust offered up, “a vending machine.”

“Vending,” I muttered. “Vendor. To vend. To sell. Seller. Selling. This is a selling machine!” I put a hoof to my chin. “But how does that even work? If I know Equestria and its obsession with magic, then I can logically conclude that I must sacrifice a virgin to appease it.” I looked knowingly at Cards. Then it dawned on me that Equestrians seemed super phobic of killing, so there went that theory. I pressed another button to no new effect. “I get the feeling that maybe I have to press these buttons in the right order, thereby completing an incredibly obtuse puzzle which will unlock its reward.”

“Or ya just do this,” Dust said, putting a coin into a thin slot upon the machine. She punched a button and, with a rumbling sound of internal machinery, out came a glass bottle from the mail-slit-like thing. She reached down, grabbed the bottle, and offered it to me. “Rather simple.”

I looked between her, the bottle, and that infernal contraption. “Uh, no, you can keep the drink, I don’t want it.”

“Then why were you trying to get one?”

“Why does a guy win a girl random odds and ends at a fair?” I asked with a shrug. I don’t think that comparison works so well, now that I think about it. She shook her head and put the bottle in her bag. “Okay, so... back to finding the other stairwell.”

Dust and I followed Cards through the building and to that other stairwell. Cards went in first, then me, then Dust. As the little former deputy ambled slowly up the stairs, Dust tapped me on the shoulder and pulled me aside. “Um, GB?” she said in a quiet voice. Cards didn’t notice we’d stopped and kept heading upwards.

“You know,” I said, looking around, “something about this dirty, somewhat ruined building reminds me vaguely of home. Mind you, I come from Hell, so that’s not a compliment, just a thought.”

“GB, this is serious.”

It took every ounce of my mental fortitude not to say, ‘Pleased to meet you, Frau Serious. This here is Lightning Dust. Have you met?’ Instead, I nodded.

She dropped her ears and looked away. “A-about last night... I... didn’t get a chance to say anything earlier, and I know now’s a bad time, but I just gotta say it before I think too much about what I’m gonna say and lose my nerve.” Dust took a breath. “Thanks, GB.” She ran a hoof hoof down her face. “Just... thanks for not taking advantage of... yeah. Moment of weakness... you’re a better stallion than most, probably. Better than any I’ve met for sure.”

That last sentence. There’s probably some really deep story about that, one I can’t be bothered to care about right now. I smiled curtly. “No need to thank me, Lightning Dust. I’d never take advantage of you in a moment of weakness.” I wonder if she’s acting like this because she’s convinced that no stallion but me can say no to a sexual proposition. “I’m better than that; I have a sense of respect for mares like you.” Whatever that means.

Dust swallowed, looking at her hooves. “Thanks.” She hesitated. “I-it won’t happen again. Me, that is. I won’t do that again. And I’m sorry that I... that I...”

I put a hoof on her shoulder and nodded once, a tacit understanding, I hoped. Turning around, I went up the stone stairwell to catch up with Cards. The little mare was gritting her teeth as she tried to force open the door at the top of the stairs, the doorknob refusing to budge. I pushed her gently to the side and tried the knob myself, and found that it was simply locked. Sighing, I brought out my tools.

Tick. Tack. Tock.

Tools away, door ajar. Ajar is a weird word, I thought, opening the door. ‘The door is ajar.’ Are you stupid? It’s a door, not a jar. God, I hate that pun. “Hello?” I called out. “Olly olly oxen free! Alle, alle auch sind frei! Would it help if I just said ‘the sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick’?”

Cards tried to repeat that tongue-twister under her breath, and failed. “How the hell did you even pronounce that?” she asked.

I looked at her. “I have the distinct feeling that I had to use the restroom a moment ago but now I don’t and it’s really freaking me out.”

Somewhere in the stairwell, a very noisy fly few about, doing whatever it was that noisy flies in a stairwell did so early in the morning. Cards, though, just stared at me. “Y’know, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m so jaded that I’d’ve actually been more baffled by a logical, thoughtful answer than by what you just said. And that scares me.”

“I am just a boundless well of terrors for you, aren’t I?” I asked, exiting onto the third floor and looking around the halls. Cards mumbled something I couldn’t make out and I didn’t care to ask her to repeat. “So, where’s your mom, Cards? Well, where is her office? Same for your father’s.”

The mare pointed to one end of the hallway, to a closed door. “Dad’s office is there.” She gestured the other way and implied something around a corner. “Chief Blackout’s is over that way. Opposite ends.”

Well, whoever’s here will likely be the second pony I look for. I looked at her father’s door. Smart choice: stay together and look for Blackout first. Dumb choice: look for Sheriff Strong first. Suicide: split up and look for both at the same time. But that would be more dramatic. “Hmm,” I hummed, rubbing my chin. “Oh, screw drama. Cards, Dusts, I want to check out Sheriff Strong’s office first. Hopefully, this’ll let me slug Blackout in the face. Lord knows she deserves it.”

The door at the end of the hallway was unlocked. We slipped into the fairly clean office, and I closed the door because open doors that were behind me were the devil. There were two bookshelves lined with books that had certainly never been read and, judging by the caked dust, were there to make Sheriff Strong look smarter than he actually was. That was the only reason a pony ever bought a personal bookshelf, after all.

“This place brings back memories,” Cards said with a sigh, her ears drooping as she looked around. “Sometimes I’d get in trouble just to be sent here to see Dad. It was sort of the only time I got to see him, since he went to work before I went to school, and got home after Chief Blackout put me to bed.”

“Chief Blackout’s your mom, right?” Dust asked, and Cards nodded.

I trotted around to the desk in the room. It was nice in an uncool-dad-trying-to-be-cool sort of way, especially the bobblehead on the desk, which depicted a stallion hefting a comically large wrench over his shoulder. I flicked the head and made it bobble, then just pushed it over. Bobbleheads were just tacky and only an idiot would actually have one, and only an embarrassing dad would proudly display one. Looking at the bottom of the fallen stand, I noted a small inscription: “Why buy the new when you can make better the old?”

Whatever. Going back to the drawers, I pulled open one and found a handy-dandy Voixson. A part of me wondered about the little record inside it, if they could be removed and put into other Voixsons like normal records into normal record players. It’d probably save a lot of money. This Voixson had a luggage tag with a picture of Cards’ father, the words “The Open Secret” signed at the bottom on the photo. These were so utterly pointless but so interesting; did Equestrians really see such a need to speak their otherwise private thoughts aloud? I put it on top of the desk and hit the play button, and it came to life.

“Cards...” he said softly, as if the very words were a curse that he just couldn’t help but speaking. At those words, the named mare froze, her whole attention rapt to the device. “She was a pony born of Punic faith. Yet from the moment her infant eyes first opened up and saw me before seeing anything else, I knew that if pony life was just an series of purposeless dots upon a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece, she was meant to be a purposeful brushstroke. She had my eyes, too... But I failed her, and doomed her to be a footnote like the rest of us.

“She was sired under a hectic fever, between that sycophant mare and me; was ushered into this world through Blackout’s horn gate, a gate of dreams which come true; for my daughter was a dream in every sense, and dreams are things. Cards was borne not as a pony, not as a union of love, but as an object, made to serve a purpose. And that purpose was to whatever aims her mother had, aims that most certainly involved manipulating me, aim that used Cards as her coup-de-grâce against me, forcing me into marriage. You can see the evidence of such by the way she treats our daughter: to Blackout, to the light in my darkness, Cards was and is just an object, a pawn, a thing, and she always treated her as such. I think it’s obvious. Her treatment of Cards is an open secret—a secret that lies open to all, but is seen into and understood by only few.

“When I look at Cards, I see everything I love about her mother overlayed with that basic instinct every father has to protect his offspring. Yet... she is something terrible to me, a reason to hate the light in my darkness. When the fire of my loins speaks ill of the fruit of her loins, I want to hurt her. I want to grab her by the neck and dare her to say it again. I almost have several times. How dare she insult our daughter! How dare she insist our daughter isn’t good enough!

He was silent for several seconds. “And yet I have never... Why? Were I good to the fruit of our union, I could have smacked my love, I could have held Cards in my embrace and told her nopony would ever hurt her again. I should have. Ever fiber of my being wants it, and every fiber within me regrets not doing so... But I think that I just can’t. I do what I can, but it’s either my daughter or the mare I sacrificed everything to have. At the end of the day, I am not stallion enough to choose between them.” His voice shifted to a loud whisper, his tone like a stallion hiding, knowing he is about to die a horrific fate probably involving gingerbread ponies and the letter H. “And Cards has paid the price for my weakness.” The Voixson fell silent.

The room fell silent, too.

Cards just stared at the Voixson. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out. Lightning Dust looked to Cards, then to me. She was closer, so with an ocular gesture, I somehow convinced her to go over and put a hoof on Cards’ shoulder. If I had tried that same thing, Cards would have probably bitten me; I knew she hadn’t brushed her teeth this morning, unlike me, and I wasn’t about to die from a pony-mouth-borne infection, thank you very much.

“Cards,” Dust asked, “are you okay? You seem a bit shaken.”

I looked back into the desk drawer and found that the Voixson had been hiding a small object behind it. It was a little silver pocket watch, no doubt here in case Sheriff Strong was ever attacked by werewolves.

“Thats... that’s Dad’s pocket watch,” Cards said as I held the watch up. “He always had that on him. What’s it doing there?”

I fiddled with the watch until it popped open. The watch was ticking, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. In the watch was a small picture, a black-and-white of a little smiling filly. My eyes took in her sight, the honest smile of a little girl just happy to be alive, both her ears perked up and wholesome. I looked up at the ragged shell of a mare on the other side of the desk, a grown girl who wished to be dead, both ears drooped, a chunk missing from her right ear. “Catch,” I told her softly, and tossed the watch when I was sure she was ready.

Cards looked at the watch like it was a holy relic, as if the mere act of contemplating it were a transgression against whatever deity was popular with the foals these days. With all care of a mother holding her newborn for the first time, she opened the watch up and gasped. “This was...” she said with a distant look in her eyes, “this was taken when I was six.” She swallowed.

I glanced to the desk and saw a pencil. Narrowing my eyes, I picked it up. Yep, it was a pencil alright. I tossed it casually onto the floor because I could. “Aaaand that’s where that goes,” I said assuredly to myself.

When I looked back up at Cards, her eyes were moist. She gritted her teeth as she clutched the watch against her breast. The little mare took a breath and blinked the moisture away. “Lightning Dust, Government Boy, there’s nothing here. Let’s leave and get this damn thing over with.”

“Right,” I replied, nodding. “There’s nothing an adventurer can’t overcome with a bunch of derivatives, a diversified employment record, and absolutely no morals whatsoever.” I went over to the door and left the room. At the pace of a brisk jog, I made my way down the hall, humming to myself. I stopped at a little junction, Blackout’s office apparently being somewhere to the left.

Looking back, I watched the two mares hesitantly walk down the hallway. I let my jaunty demeanor die out. Just because I was eager to punch Blackout in her stupid face didn’t mean that Cards was, and the little mare’s demeanor was rubbing off on Lightning Dust. Right. I frowned as I looked at Chief Blackout’s door, assuming it was hers. End of the hall, right?

So then. We were all assembled and went down the last leg of the trip. Dust was right, Cards was terrible at hiding her emotions. What Cards needed right now was an ice cream cone, coffee flavor, and to be pushed on a swingset. Or maybe she’d like to meet my father. I had the strangest idea that the two of them would have a fun time playing a game of strip poker. The two of them could go on for hours upon how much they hated me, and then the night would end with him giving her a firm hoofshake and a schedule detailing when I was asleep.

On an unrelated note, think’st thou that Elkington’s throat would play nice with a piece of garrote wire?

We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. As of now, we should focus on doing this little quest.

The walk seemed to last forever. “Quest”? Ha! Have you updated your quest log about this one?

I fought to keep down a nostalgic smile. Serious time, Jericho, serious time! Hey, don’t look at me. I only just learned that the “sex” spot on the character sheet was not for keeping score. Besides, it’s not a proper quest log because it’s not filled with every miscellaneous task I have.

We stopped in front of the door. Something about it felt wrong, like if I opened it, it would reveal a giant penis poking out of Blackout’s genitals; her lady bits were actually just a sheath for a retractable shaft. Why don’t real people I don’t know randomly ask me to do strange favors for them that often involve murdering other people? Ah, I miss playing tabletop Rollenspiele.

“Hey,” I whispered to the mares, “after we save the world or whatever, would you two be up for a game of Dunkelheit und Drachen? What do you say, Paladin Cards?” I could just imagine myself commanding in dark tones, ‘Paladin Cards, put these clothes on—dance for me like the monkey you are.’ Then I forcibly equip the armor onto her character, and say, ‘Oh, you are so ready, Paladin Cards! You are going to smash through, like... a bank vault... made of glass! And start bashing everypony with your warhammer; it’s going to be great.’ And then she doesn’t understand it because she’s never worn clothes in her life.

Well, I supposed that her strange deputy vest thing sort of counted, but she certainly didn’t have any other pairs of clothes lying around her house save for those three vests, not even a long and suspiciously scented pair of dirty panties. Though there were socks. If I showed up randomly in her bedroom one night wearing her owns socks and... no, no, no—not continuing that line of thought.

“What?” Cards whispered back.

“Why are we whispering?” Dust asked.

A shrug from me. “I can’t say. I mean, a jid-jid...” I blinked. Well, that was both a stutter and an attempt to combine two words with no business mating. “I just did go it...” No, that sentence structure was way too awkward to make any sense. Sighing, I shook my head, resigning myself to silence. At least there was a doorknob to—aaand it was locked. Okay. Guess I had to pick a lock. Again.

Tick. Tack. Tock.

There. Done. Scheiße! “I would make a great surgeon,” I muttered, picturing myself picking a lock to someone’s open-to-the-air heart, which somehow solved their sexual impotency. Malpractice? Ha! What was that?

We all entered the rather sizable room, and I immediately got the feeling that something was wrong, and I wasn’t even surprised in the slightest. Knowing how my life was going at this stage, this would somehow end with Blackout coming onto me, insisting that stallions couldn’t say no, her overpowering me, then Sheriff Strong coming in and killing me. There was, however, an absolutely lovely desk in the room, all its craftsponyship being clearly of the highest quality. If I had to be violated, at least it’d probably be on a really nice desk that I could appreciate.

The large chair behind the distant desk slowly spun around—I rolled my eyes at the cliché. Seriously, what was the point of that?—and there was Blackout. In the shadow of the room, I couldn’t make out most of her face, but I knew it was her because that was how the universe worked. But before I could take my sword out and just get this over with, Cards stepped forwards.

“Hello, Chief Blackout.” Cards swallowed. “Where’s Dad?”

Blackout cracked a smirk that I certainly could make out. “Well, well, well, the prodigal daughter returns. Welcome home, Deputy Cards.” She looked to me. “I see you’ve brought that thing back with you. As usual. Nothing good ever comes of you.”

“Where’s Dad?” Cards repeated. I could see that she wasn’t standing exactly still, slight tremors destroyed her attempted illusion of confidence. She reminded me of a puppy going up against a lion, only it wouldn’t be nearly as hilarious when the lion tore the puppy into blood ribbons. Wait. No. That wasn’t funny and just left a bad taste in your mouth.

The older mare chuckled. “You know, Cards, I tried to love you, I really did: you were the culmination of everything I ever worked for, every lie I told, every heart I broke, every buck who entered me. You, Cards. You were to be my special little one, my baby girl, like mother like daughter... Instead, you were you, not the daughter I deserved. I always wondered what I did to warrant you. I worked hard to survive. I struggled and fought for everything I ever had. Your father? Third and youngest son of a wealthy business owner. His father literally owns the lifeblood of this town, and he delegates that all to his son. His life was handed to him on a silver plate. Me? I never even touched real silver until I was seven and stole a fancy fork. My life is the culmination of sin, blood, sweat, and tears.”

I really wanted to heckle her with “No more monologues!” and then run up and slap her across the face. Somehow, I didn’t do that. Instead, I looked around the room. Eh, a few odds and ends here and there—like a painting of a younger-looking Blackout with a mane of, oddly, black-with-red-streaks instead of the blonde-with-black-streaks she had now—but nothing worth stealing while she was focused on Cards.

“That’s... nice,” Cards said, visibly gritting her teeth. “But where is Dad?”

“Strong,” she spat. “You know, at least with him in my life, I was guaranteed a meal every night. He was my Prince Charming, a guarantee of warmth at night, a full belly, a someone to care for me. But the reality about Prince Charming rescuing the mare from the tower is that the ensuing marriage is one born of rash emotions. There is no sadder mare in the world than the girl in the tower; either she’s locked away from the world or she’s trapped in a loveless marriage the rest of her life, and she’s too powerless to leave, and she’s too guilty to leave her hero, and now she has a family and she puts their safety and happiness ahead of her own. That’s what mothers do, Cards. We sacrifice ourselves for our children.”

She looked down at her lap. Then, with a horizontal slashing gesture, she glared up at Cards. “And what did you do for me? Your birth destroyed my womb; it caused ovarian cysts which needed to be removed, the entire organs, and now I am barren. But when I know you are the fruit of my womb, I know that your birth didn’t make me barren, I was born barren.” She shook her head. “On the outside, you’re me: pretty, unassuming but far more than you appear. You had so much potential. But on the inside? You’re your father’s daughter. No charisma, no charm, no work ethic, no inner strength, no convictions, no beliefs, no willingness to sacrifice, no will to dominate, no nothing!”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Übermannsk and Eugenik and other stupid things,” I sighed, trotting across the room and past Blackout. They all stared at me as I went up to the windows at the far end of the room and pulled up the blinds, letting the light splash in. “There,” I chirped. “That unnecessary darkness was bothering me.” Then I looked out the window. “Oh, that doesn’t look good. That does not look good at all. I mean, this could very well ruin my d—ach! Scheiße!” I let out a screech as I collapsed to the ground, a howling pain in my leg.

“GB!” Dust yelped.

Something had popped, something that should never have made a noise had just popped with a decidedly dislocating sound, and Blackout was standing above me with a steel baton. “Autsch! Das war mein Bein, du Hure!”

“Insolent fuck,” she hissed, literally spitting on me. I doubted she’d brushed, too!

“I did not see this coming and underestimated her!” I shouted. “It has nothing to do with her being better than me, I swear to God!” There. Pride preserved.

That’s what you get for not taking the alpha bitch seriously, me.

“Can I get a bowl of cereal?” I moaned, because I hadn’t yet learned my lesson.

She brought the baton down on my stomach so hard that I gasped and felt like I was going to vomit. “Eat shit and die.”

“Can I get milk with that?” I coughed.

Stop doing that, Arschloch!

She kicked my external sex organs for good measure—ha! Who was wearing a codpiece? This guy!—before turning her attention back to the girls. “Anyone else wanna axe a stupid question?”

I weakly raised a hoof, saying in a groaning voice, “It’s pronounced ‘ask’.”

Blackout brought the baton down on my ribs. Scheiße! “You know what, keep talking. I’m taking out tons of stress by beating on you—you’re a real blessing in the skies for all intensive purposes.”

“Blessing in disguise,” I corrected, and she and the baton met me before I could finish the sentence.

“I know,” she said with a sick smile.

“Ow, my dick!” I whined. “Because, apparently, my dick is on my shoulder...” I bit back the damn pain. “Blackout, we’re going to kick your ass and teach you a thing or two about love.”

Cards stomped a hoof. “Chief Blackout! Where. Is. Dad?”

Blackout snapped her attention to Cards, baton raised. “Deputy Cards, is that any way to speak to a superior officer?”

“Is that any way to speak to your daughter?” she spat, and Blackout scoffed.

“I have no daughter.” And the older mare charged, weapon raised. “So you better learn your place, you little bitch!”

“No,” Cards said with a dejected coolness that was, quite frankly, entirely out of character. With a swift motion, she slugged a hoof into her mother’s countenance.

Blackout gasped and jumped back. I watched the Chief hold her hoof over her face, then bring it away to reveal a smudge of blood. “You... you just hit me,” Blackout stammered with a look in her eyes like a gopher trying to comprehend the act of a dog and a pony violently rutting each other.

“I did... I just... Holy Celestia, Chief Blackout, I’m sorry—”

“You bitch!” Blackout roared, swinging at Cards. “I’ll kill you! Kill you like I should have done when you were a baby! I should have smothered you the moment they put you in my forelegs—and they would had lauded me!”

Lightning Dust just stood there. Then, with a blink, her eyes went to me. “Shit!” She spread her wings and, even in the confined space of the room, jumped up and flew to me. The mare skidded to a halt by my side. “GB, are you alright?”

I gave her the driest look that the eyeball, a naturally wet organ, could muster. “Well, there’s this annoying little itch on my back that my poor, poor pony physiology proper was prepared not for. If you could just get that for me, I’d be golden.”

She blinked.

“It’s rather low. Like, on my ass. And I can’t really see to it because that bitch dislocated my knee. Now, could you help me find a healing potion in my bags?!”

“I hate you!” Blackout barked, swinging at Cards. To Cards’ credit, the little mare was damn agile. “Your pathetic father loved you, and now look where he is! For seventeen years I’ve put up with your shit, but it ends today! I never loved you! Never even cared for you! And today I’m going to finally do what I should have done a long time ago!”

Wait. Cards is only seventeen?

Card ducked back, impacting a shelf and knocking a framed certificate of some sort onto the ground. “Yeah? Well...” Gritting her teeth and with tears in her eyes, Cards struck her mother across the face. “I loved you!” Without another word, Cards landed blow after blow.

This Cards, she was a cross between the Cards I’d first met and the Cards that had beaten Social Grace bloody as her flesh melted from within. But it was a bit like trying to teach a tapeworm how to leave his mother’s basement and become a functioning member of society: the only winning move was not to play. If she defeated her mother, it was still her mother she’d’ve beaten. If her mother won, Cards might very well die. Then Cards let out a loud grunt as a hoof hit her eye.

“You love me? Good,” Blackout spat. “It’ll hurt your heart more when I murder you.” She cackled like a banshee and brought her weapon to bear.

“Mom,” Cards pleaded, and the older mare froze. “Please... please don’t... please stop...”

For a moment, Blackout did stop. But that was the thing, it was just for a moment. Her eye twitched. “Cards,” she said softly, “I couldn’t be fonder of you if I tried; you are the fruit of my womb.” Blackout grit her teeth. “But, well, if you lose a daughter, it’s possible to just get another. But you robbed me of that possibility—and it’s my job as chief of police to persecute thieving scum like you.” With all the fury of a hurricane and the warcry of a demoness, Blackout threw her body against Cards, swinging and beating and bashing and punching.

Card screamed as her mother’s blows struck against her, raising her arms in defense, trying to parry and block with her own body. I couldn’t make out the guttural, half-mad shouts and screams Blackout made, only make out their acidic tone. She knocked Cards to the side, the little mare falling onto her back like a turtle flipped by a mare who just wanted to see it squirm and die. And that mare, Blackout, never let up as she threw herself onto her daughter, punching and scratching. Her teeth came down on Cards’ shoulder, drawing blood as Cards shrieked.

Then, from the side, a black steel baton struck Blackout upside the head, the blow knocking the mare to the side, a chunk of Cards still in her mouth. Still bleeding from the shoulder, Cards stumbled to her hooves, only to be body-slammed by her mother. Now both mares were screaming in a frenzied mess of arms and limbs and weapons, one screen a primal, murderous, howl-like laughter, the other scream the lung-bursting battlecry of a mare with nothing left to lose.

Baton against head. Flailing. Thin mists of spit beaten out. Droplets of crimson sent flying. Blackout stumbled backwards and fell onto the floor, her daughter not giving an inch or a second’s thought as she kept on hitting and hitting and hitting and hitting and hitting.

And then it was over.

Cards stood over her mother’s body, panting heavily. Drops of blood caked her face, her teeth gritted, crying silently as she looked down at her mother. But Blackout didn’t look back up at her daughter. In fact, Blackout wasn’t looking at all, one of her eyes and part of her skull visibly caved in.

She dropped her bloody baton and took a step back, eyes wide as she truly, truly took in the sight of her deed. Her breaths came in quick and shallow as she look at her blood hooves, then looked at the pony who gave birth to her. “M-mom?” Cards said weakly. “Mom...?”

Nothing.

“Mom?” she asked with tones of desperation in her voice.

I leaned myself against the desk, the problem with my leg fixed and everything. Dust stood to my left, watching Cards. I shook my head and said Cards’ name softly.

“Mom!” Cards shouted. “Chief Blackout! Oh Celestia, no, no, no!”

“She’s gone from us, Cards.”

“No, no, no, no!” she just yelled, falling to the ground and sobbing. “Mom!” she cried, like a little filly lost in the woods, wolves hounding her. Cards was just a little girl, tears drowning her eyes as she wailed.

I looked to the crying mare, to Dust, then to the bloodied mare on the ground. There were so many things to find sort of funny about this, a long list of wisecracks just dying to be made, and at least three jokes that demeaned Cards. But... those would be the wrong things to say and do. I walked over to her and knelt down. “Cards.”

She cried in that pitiful, childish way that a frightened baby might cry.

With a sigh, I did the only rational thing a pony could at a time like this. I reached out and wrapped her in my arms. “There there, sweetie, don’t cry,” I cooed. “It’ll be alright, Cards. It’ll be alright.”

The mare in my arms protested something, a weak, “Don’t touch me.” But in my embrace, she nuzzled up to my chest and cried her heart out. Blood from her nose and shoulder found its way onto my coat, reminding me to take out a healing potion. I popped a cork off one and, practically holding it like a bottle for her, made Cards drink it and another one just to be safe.

I sat back and cradled her upper body in my arms, brushing a hoof through her mane as I tried to calm her down. God, how old was she? Seventeen, her mother had suggested? She was still a child, really. She certainly had no business out here; her business was in finishing up school. How in God’s name had her life screwed up so hard at such a young age? Her damn brain didn’t even finish growing and maturing for nearly a decade at least.

Looking up from Cards, I saw Lightning Dust crouching right in front of me, biting her lip. After a roll of the eyes, I said, “Don’t stand there like an idiot, Dust—come here.” She hesitated, but, with a bit of prodding and ocular gesturing, I got her to get in on this business. Now it was a right proper group hug, and Cards was surrounded on one side by Lighting Dust, the other side by me. The warmth must have been nice to Cards; she just felt so cold.

God, this was getting cliché as hell. The group hug after a traumatic event, not the generic “murder your mother because she’s a crazy bitch” thing. At least I hoped that wasn’t cliché, because that would mean that having to murder the flesh and blood that bore you was a disturbingly common occurrence, that was an uncomfortable thought. And—hey! Dust, your hoof is a little too close to my genitals for comfort. Stop hugging Cards so tight.

I blinked as Cards nearly brought herself under control. When is the appropriate time to stop hugging someone after they were forced to kill their mother? Er... maybe I should say something. I look down at the mare partially cradled in my arms. “Cards,” I said softly, “I...”

She sniffled, moving her head out of my chest in order to look me in the eye. I didn’t know if it was possible, but she seemed smaller than ever. If losing Glasses was her breaking point, then what the hell was being forced to murder her mother?

“I... I’m sorry, Cards. For everything I’ve done to... done against you, Cards.” There. That was the right thing to say, right? “A-and...” I tried to go for a firm but non-stern tone. “Cards, whatever anyone might say, whatever you might think, whatever impulse or idea takes hold of you, I want you to know something: Cards, you didn’t have a choice; it wasn’t your fault. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. What happened today wasn’t your fault. But by every last scrap of honor and dignity left in my shell of a body, I will make those responsible for this pay. I want you to know that I swear upon the falcon that I will hunt them down for you, Cards.

“I know you think I’m a monster, and I couldn’t argue with that. I know I’m the Mephistopheles to your Faust—ignoring how I’m literally Faust—and I know you hate me more than anything else. But they’ve crossed the line, what they did to you. I swear that my every waking hour will be spent finding the bastard who did this, the demon in the swamp, the monster Elkington sent me here to kill... and for every tear you’ve shed since I arrived, I will make him pay a hundredfold in blood.”

Cards just looked up at me. Her expression sent chills up my spine; it was unreadable. So many emotions battled for supremacy over her face and eyes. At the end of the climatic battle, she dropped her ears and hung her head. “I... I’d like that,” she uttered as if knowing she was making a blood pact with the Devil, with the Mephistopheles I was.

Every muscle along my mouth moved as I bared my teeth and grinned down at her. Cards was onboard with this little quest of mine. That meant there was no longer anything restraining me from having fun with this job. Oh, this was going to be a very good day.

Author's Note

Footnote: 75% to next level

Companion Quest Perk Added: Born of Barren Womb — What, you didn’t know that murdering your own mother gave special quasi-supernatural powers? Well, it’s true! (If your name is Cards and your were forced to beat your mother to death, that is.) With this perk, Cards does 15% more damage with blunt weapons. She will never be able to hit someone in the head without ever thinking of her mother now, haha!

Chapter 16 — Orpheus

Chapter 16: Orpheus

“I’ll be back as soon as I’ve returned him to the Gates of Tartarus.”

Nopony.

Though look over the shores of the lake I did, I never saw Cards or Dust on a boat, safe from harm. But looking into my reflection in the water, I looked like a Mann again, all the blood washed off with a towel that I had to then burn. At least I finally had my shadow back. If I ever met Princess Celestia, alleged goddess of the sun, I needed to spank her for making the sun so damn hot today.

Of course, the mental image in my head was of me bending Cards-with-a-fancy-hat over my knee, but details, details. In fact, I thought as I trotted along the lake and looked for the girls, Cards probably has some creepy fetish for being spanked. Just because physical pain was the only thing that could make her feel anymore.

I stopped by the cwtch and looked down the street. Where bodies had once lain, strewn around like drunken kitties around a cathouse, there was only a clean, if oddly reddish, street. Each corpse viewable from the lake had been... swept aside. Last thing I needed now was Cards and Dust finding out just what in the nine Hells I had done.

Above the door to the cwtch were the words “Vous Vois”, meaning “I see you”. Odd, since I’d seen this twice before: upon the gates to the Baron’s plantation manor, and above the door to the Cabinet of Curiosities. With a vague curiosity not unlike a monkey high on Kokain who’s just been dropped into the big city, I pushed at the door to the cwtch. Almost predictably, the next moment I was sprawled out on the floor with a lump on my head, and a panicking mare above me.

“Déjà vu,” I groused, ambling back to my hooves. Glaring at the armored Cards as she slowly put her baton away, I muttered, “One of these days, I’m going to walk through a door you’re behind, and nopony is going to bash me over the skull.” Glancing over, I spied a dusty oil lamp and lit it with a match.

“GB, are you okay?” Lightning Dust asked, biting the tip of her wing.

“Dandy,” I replied, looking over the large, sturdy rowboat in the little boathouse, and the closed door leading out onto the lake. “Why didn’t you ship off on the boat onto the lake? You must have been just sitting here for, like, an hour.” Neither of them answered or even looked me in the eye, Dust, in fact, just sort of rocked on her hooves.

“Great,” I groaned, rubbing the face. I considered berating them, but after killing a whole town, mares and children too, I wasn’t in any position to berate. “Look, would you two just get in the boat? I managed to lose the whole town minus Cards’ father—he wasn’t there—” and is probably still alive “—and now we just need to get into the swamp before they realize where I am.”

I checked the sizable rowboat—perhaps the sturdiest-looking one I’d ever seen—and opened up the boathouse door. With everything in place, I helped the mares onto the boat before getting in myself. Cards needed it, her and her shortness. As a last thought, I extinguished the lamplight and took it with us on the boat. It never occurred to me to ask the mares if they wanted to row; I just figured I’d do it. I could get away faster from the town that way, in any case.

Minutes later and were were rowing across the lake at what I hoped was a good pace. Boating, much like baby-punching, was never something I ever put much effort into learning prior. But it was something I’d been forced to do at one point or another, so I at least knew the proper technique and how to do it, also like baby-punching. In my defense, dragon babies lust for pony flesh. But at least dragon babies weren’t little fillies.

With the hateful glare of the sun above, I was glad I had my hat, giving me just the perfect amount of shade to keep the sun out of my vision. But she was a persistent witch, the sun, and so found ways into my eyes by reflecting off the water. I recalled reading about how reflection of the sun were top reasons why sunburns were particularly nasty out at sea and in the icy wastelands of the world. Water was just evil and actively out to get you like that. You dare drink me? I’ll burn your goddamn face off and hit you with a rake! To cope with that heat, I made sure to have my canteen—filled with fresh water—out should I need it.

I was sure I hadn’t taken a drink of anything for a while; the Colta-Cola didn’t seem to matter to the hints of thirst in my throat. But I didn’t want to take the drink. Something about the thirst was vaguely appealing to me, as if bearing the feeling would... make Cards and Dust start making out or whatever stallions were all into in Equestria. Or maybe it was a sort of vague penance for what I’d done. But I had to focus on the living, back to Lightning Dust and Cards.

Speaking of whom, the mares were sitting silently on the far side of the boat, their hips touching. Cards looked almost adorably pudgy in her black armor, its little chest protection and clothey short-shorts; and Dust just looked like she’d just told a really racist joke in front of a crowd of minorities, hoping someone would laugh and make her joke okay, her hooves folded neatly in her lap.

But as the lake gave into the swamp and I made the first rows in the quest to navigate the swamp with the little map spread out across the boat’s floor, Dust spoke up. “Hey, GB. Why aren’t you rowing with your magic?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, moving the oars with rhythmic motions of the arms.

She shrugged, nudging Cards. “Well, I just thought that since you’re a unicorn, you’d just, like, use magic to row.”

I cocked a brow. “Why use telekinesis when raw flesh, bone, and muscle does the job just as good if not better?” She shrugged again. “I can’t say how you must see it, but where I’m from, it’s seen as illogical to use telekinesis when you don’t have to. Of course, while I should probably still refer to it as ‘magic’ for your convenience, the Reich and I are of the opinion that telekinesis isn’t actually magic but just a unicorn’s natural psychic ability. The point is, there is honor in manual labor.” I almost unconsciously glanced down to my breast, to the mutilation I knew was under the clothing, and thought of what it meant. “Arbeit adelt,” I said cooly; “work ennobles.”

Lightning Dust didn’t say anything further, and I decided not to pursue the matter of interrogating her about why she thought I wouldn’t use my perfectly able flesh to row. Then the matter of picturing my mother naked came to mind as I heard some sort of frog croaking, and a question bubbled onerously to the forefront of my mind. It seemed like the exact sort of thing I’d normally ask, and it felt like a good way to try to forget Sleepy Oaks.

“What’s the legal age of sexual consent in Equestria?” I asked. “Because where I’m from, it is fourteen years of age, which always struck me as odd, since the legal age you can volunteer for the Rheinwehr is sixteen, but school typically ends around seventeen–eighteen years.”

Cards cocked a brow. “School ends at eighteen? That’s crazy. Ends here at, like, fifteen–sixteen.”

I blinked as I thought back to all of the stupid things I’d seen in Equestria, like the lack of ingredients lists and the mere existence of Juggernog. “A whole lot of things just started making a whole lot of sense all of the sudden.” And I rowed on without further comment.

Silence reigned for a time, then Cards prodded Dust with a question—something about cwtches, I don’t know, I wasn’t paying any attention. They giggled at something like laughwolves. Cards glanced to me, then prodded Dust with a hoof to the ribs. Dust then said, or rather, solemnly singsonged something.

“Gafflwn Dihenydd O’r fuddugol yn wiriol sydd.

Ni fydd neb yn ein drechu.

Falch ydy ni I drochu, Traed o flaen I’Annwn, mewn y gwybodaeth fe godwn ni.”

I blinked, momentarily snapped out of my self-induced daze. Cards cooed with awe. “Whoa. And what does that mean?”

Dust bit her lip and looked to be lost in thought for a moment. Then she spoke up in that same singsonging tone.

“We dare cheat death his rightful victory,

We are beyond defeat.

We are glad to plunge headlong into Annwn, knowing that we will rise.”

The pegasus finished with an almost bashful smile. “Mom taught me that herself; it’s a line from some old battle poetry ancient warriors used to say before a fight. It’s a bit weird in Equestrian, but I can sort of translate the language, sort of can’t.

“Sounds almost familiar,” I noted pretty much like how a desperate stallion will comment on any similarities he has with the pretty girl he’s failing to charm. They turned to me, and with my mind in a different place, I said: “Wir sind unbezwingbar, denn selbst dem Gevatter Tod ringen wir seinen rechtmäßigen sieg aus der Hand. Froh sind wir, zu denen zu gehören, die mit dem Haupt vorran in die Hölle preschen, in dem Wissen, dass wir uns immer wieder erheben werden.”

“And that means?” Dust prompted, like a bad actor being held at knife-point because the guy with the knife had delusions of literary grandeur, and needed her to enact the lines from the terribad play he wrote.

“We are unconquerable, for we wrestle from Godfather Death himself his rightful victory. Glad are we to be amongst those who dash head-first into Hell, knowing that we will rise again.” I looked at Dust. “It’s a little poem they have amongst the Höllenstürmer, the Hellstormers, an elite unit of pegasus shock troopers in the Reich.”

Like a dog about to be put down as his beloved master watched on without a care in his eye, I flashed back to the happier days of my youth, to that girl, the first real girl in my life, and her status in the Höllenstürmer. Funny how life had a way of ruining everything nice, and I just had to laugh it off because I’d be damned if I let life win. So I forced a smile and a chuckle. “Just an observation,” I dismissed. “Please, what were you saying about your mother?” Just. Keep. Smiling.

“She, uh, was from up north,” Dust said, fidgeting with her forehooves, “even had a vague brogue that she gave me as a filly. I had to get rid of it once school first started, in fact.”

“Really?” Cards asked, mercifully taking the conversation out of my incapable hooves.

Dust took a deep breath through her nose, then said in a very singsongy, extremely liquid accent: “Iechyd da, Lightie! Fed up with you, I am, bach Dustie. Oh, ych a fi! Dustie, would ya get ya dwp dad to get ’ere? I got hiraeth for the cywoedd of home and some old tref cwrn. Oh, Lightie, don’t be sad—come her and give Mammy a cwtsch!” She feigned a cough and pounded a hoof over her breast. “Yech. If I start speaking like that for too long, I’ll never get rid of the accent.”

“She really spoke like that?” Cards giggled.

“Well, only the one time when she got really drunk and then dad...” She rubbed the back of her head. “In a way, I suppose, I’m only half-Equestrian on my father’s side. Mom was from the cwms up north: her native accent was real fluid and just sounded awesome. Wish Dad hadn’t pretty much beaten it out of her...”

The two went silent. I returned to not giving a damn about them. Instead, I went over to brooding over just how awesome leather dusters were, and how I could make mine make more awesome noises and generally look badass in the wind.

|— ☩ —|

The onerous task of rowing through kilometers of serpentine swamps into the heart of the Acolapissa was not without its amusements. Namely, the quiet little snore from Cards as she curled up on the boat’s floor, where she’d ended up after dozing off. Were I not rowing, I would have reached out and poked Cards on the face and said “Touch” again. On the other side of things was Lightning Dust, sitting on the boat’s bench, wide-awake, looking at both everything and nothing.

As it was, I rowed the boat through the silence, knowing everything that could be wrong was wrong. This was a backwater swamp, yet I hadn’t even been buzzed by a single mosquito. That was a paradox. But a paradox was just the truth standing on its head to attract attention because the truth was a little floozy like that.

My vision was as clear as the murk-muddled rain water as I listened to the quiet snores in-between the sloshes of the paddles, like some sort of obscenely pretentious metaphor for life. For the record, allegorical works of fiction tended to suck really hard, because they cared more for the allegory and not for the actual here-and-now story of the work. Just my ten cents, since my two cents were free.

My eyes eventually drifted from my surroundings to the map, then settled onto Lightning Dust as she was stretching her wings out. Dust snapped her wings back to herself as she caught me staring lazily. She shifted how she was sitting, pointedly not meeting my gaze, instead looking at the floor of the boat. With a calm but not slow motion, she brought a part of her wing to her mouth. As if she wasn’t consciously aware, Dust nibbled at her feathers. Preening, that’s what it was called. She was preening in an almost absentminded way, like her head was somewhere away.

Then she blinked and glanced at me. Dust blinked again, and slowly, extremely slowly, took the wing from her mouth and set it to rest, furled behind her back alongside its sister-wing. The mare offered me a curt, forced smile before returning her attention to everything that most certainly was not me.

I looked at the map. We must have been really close to where we needed to go. My thoughts threatened to dwell on Sleepy Oaks, the image of Doc Dome’s daughter searing the back of my eyes. Meditate upon the face of your father. I looked up. “It seems so many ponies have strained relations with their parents.”

Lightning Dust blinked hard. “Excuse me?”

With a sigh, I looked to Cards. “In the Reich, there is mantra, one that comes from the days when a stallion earned his sword—his true sword that he too would pass down too one day—from his father. They’ll tell you to meditate upon the face of your father, too.” I repeated to her the mantra that’d gone on in my head as I butchered Sleepy Oaks.

“What does that even mean?” Dust asked. “Because it just sounds like… I dunno, but it doesn’t really make much sense.”

I cracked a small grin, like a lion licking his lips before he gets devoured by a flock of rabid geese. The goose was the lion’s natural predator, after all. “It’s something many are taught when learning to use the sword. It is a mantra meant to help you relax, and thus to wield the sword better. Emotion is often the enemy of the warrior. Yet the mantra is deeper: a way of seeing the act of swinging the sword not as just a person swinging a sword but as the sword being an extension of the self.”

Lightning Dust just stared at me. Whether in thought or because she’d suddenly gone brain-dead, I couldn’t tell. Then, rather suddenly, she said, “Can I meditate upon the face of my mother? She’s more inspiring to me than… anypony, really.”

“Yes, of course,” I replied. Did you just actually make her think about the face of the father who beat her mother and quite possibly beat her, too? You’re a dick. An actual penis. “You must have loved her more than your father, right?”

“I… I loved my mother,” Dust said, “but not my father. For him, I have a begrudging, hateful respect. He told me he didn’t want me to be stuck in a dead-end life like he was in, with nothing of value in the world.” She bit down on her hoof in though, her eyes moving slowly from place to place as if lost in a memory. “He told me that the only way to get anywhere in life was to be better than everypony else: better, faster, stronger. Leave others in the dust… the lightning dust.” Licking her lips, she looked at Cards. “In a way, I should thank him. His constant… efforts to be a father got me to the top, I had my dream so close I could smell it. And in the end, because I listened to my father, I lost everything I ever had—” she looked at me, shaking her head “—and ever wanted. And sometimes we don’t ever get a second chance.”

I let the silence sit for just long enough. “This must be difficult to talk about, I imagine,” I said, and she nodded. “Have you ever talked with anyone about this before?”

She cracked a wry little smile for a fraction of an instant. “That’s the thing, GB: no one’s ever even cared to ask.”

The dusty eyes of a dead filly flashed in my mind’s eye. “Sometimes, Lightning Dust, it’s good to talk about things with ponies who can understand your suffering.”

“Yeah, it’s—” her eyes slowly ambled across the floor of the boat, as is searching for something she both desperately wanted and yet couldn’t care less about “—it’s good to have friends.” She didn’t say anything after that, just looked off as if in a dream. Soon, too, I could see the shore of an island. The tall reeds and cattails gave it away rather than hid it. And if those weren’t enough, I could see a small number of mossy wooden boats and an shoddily-made wooden dock.

I watched as Dust prodded Cards. “Hey, hey!” she whispered. “Wake up.”

With a deep intake of breath, Cards opened her eyes. “Wha’?”

“We’re here.”

|— ☩ —|

With all the speed of a pregnant mare whose legs I broke because she was the fiancée of Jeepers, we got off the boat and onto the dock. I idly wondered if that mare was okay, and if she had a permanent fear of being glued into tight spaces after what I did to her.

Cards yawned like a stretching cat as we finally got ready to move out. “How long was I asleep?”

“A few hours,” I said. “Sleep well?”

“Not… not really,” she replied, shaking her head. “I kept dreaming about everyone in Sleepy Oaks being dead.” Cards scrunched her face slightly and look to the side.“Like, I’ll come home and just find them all dead.”

The heart in my chest was suddenly pumping ice through my veins. I patted her on the shoulder, even though she flinched from my touch. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. No need to worry. I mean, really.”

Cards perked an ear. “Really what?”

I shook my head. “Oh, sorry. That’s as far as I got with that thought. It just sort of ended there.” I led the way up the dock and onto the island proper. Past the reeds and tall grass was a raggedy camp, many large and once-white tents stood like giants flaunting their superiority over a thoroughly unamused toad. So then the toad thought it’d be hilarious to just tear up bits of the tents and make the tents look like toilet paper in general.

But that was the thing. The damage and ruin the tents had undergone didn’t look natural or just solely from age. It was as if someone had done it on purpose with the intent to make it look like nature’d had its way with the cloth tents. What’s more, there weren’t any bodies or signs of old blood or any struggles. It looke at once sterile and a mess.

Rounding the corner of a large tent which had likely served as some sort of command center, I saw why there weren’t any bodies as the ponies all slowly turned to face me. They were in white robes soiled by age and the swamp, their faces all covered by a white porcelain mask. Looking at the nearest one, I saw that the porcelain masks had been nailed, literally nailed, into their faces.

They looked at me in the same way a cat eyes a mouse intending to capture and sell it into the circus. Cards and Lightning Dust just stared back, like sunstruck fools. At the far end of this little courtyard between the various tents was what looked like a little stairway leading into the stygian abyss where no doubt the Devil’s Backbone was cowering like a little girl without a mother during menarche.

“Well then,” I sighed. “Listen up, you whatever-you-ares! I am in no goddamn mood! Cards here is in no Celestia-damn mood! And I won’t pretend to speak for Lightning Dust’s mood. But in my case, here’s how it’s going to work: either stand aside or cease to exist. There are no other options.” I shook my head. “I get it, you’re probably all mind-controlled slaves of the Devil’s Backbone or whatever, but I really, really don’t care. I get how you’re trying to be all spooky with the masks and the white robes and whatnot, and you probably spent a lot of time dressing up for us, but I’m too damn tired to care.”

Pulling out my bloodless sword and wearing a frown on my face, I walked forwards. “Come on, girls. Stay close.” My eyes went from my sword to the some twenty–thirty ought ponies. “If any of you bastards gets any ideas, I will kill you all.” What was another thirty things added to my daily kill-count?

As we were about half of the way to the the hole in the ground, one of them—a mare, by the looks of it—moved. She came at me, not with any speed or open hostility, but like she was a lost in a dream, and was coming up to ask me for direction on where to find the depraved sex-type things part of dreamland. The expression of her porcelain mask, like all the other masks here, was of a look of dumb regret, like the look of a dog who’s just realized that no, he cannot play the piano with his penis, unlike his friend, the cat. They were like the congregation of the damned.

Suddenly, I found myself wondering what it’d be like to be a productive member of society, like a priest instead of the mass-murdering hero errant I was. Or maybe a cult leader. Yes, Father Jericho, the Prophet of the Great Boxing Octopus, who freed the crab people from slavery. Together, brothers and sisters, we can join forces to defeat the evil of the lying waffles, who betrayed our great god during the lesser simulacrum. There. New religion established.

“Hello,” I offered to the shambling mare, “would you like to join my new, dopey religious cult?”

The robed mare just stopped right there, within touching distance. Though it was impossible to truly see her eyes through her mask, I could tell she was looking into my eyes. There was a special chemical that activates in the body when you make eye contact, a very handy tool in social interactions. But other than that, it was, needless to say, very eventful as she stared at me and nothing happened. Yep.

Cards let out a quiet moan. With a confused blink, I looked over at her, only to see another robed mare dangerously close to her. And by Dust there was a robed stallion. They didn’t do anything, but still Cards grit her teeth and looked as if she was particularly constipated after having eaten a box of nails.

And then Lightning Dust, standing there like wet cat cornered by a pitbull, whimpered. “GB? What are you talking about?” She flinched, ears going limp. “Rainbow Dash? No, she’s a liar!—don’t believe her! Please, GB, don’t! I am good enough! Please, don’t! Don’t… please…”

In a moment, I understood exactly what was going on. I’d seen it before somewhere. Maybe in a campaign of Dunkelheit und Drachen. Although I had my sword ready, I hesitated as Cards screamed, “Make the voices stop!” And in an instant, my sword went clean through the neck of the nearest robed mare, her head flying clean off her body in a way that I should not in any way have been able to do. Her death satisfied the Kodex, but the Code needed a real sacrifice to be repaired. And that sacrifice was so close, so near, and I didn’t have time for this chickenshit.

The mare closest to Cards snapped her attention to me, making a sound not unlike that of a very angry cat trapped in a fishbowl with a piranha. With a single cleave of my sword, she lost her a leg and collapsed to the ground. “Nyo!” I reprimanded in a childish tone. “That’s a bad kitty!” With the speed of particularly agile dwarf hamster, I picked up her severed leg—“Seems like I’ve got a leg up on the world!”—and hurled it hoof-first at the stallion near Dust.

His face mask shattered into oblivion as the hoof hit him, and his body fell limp to the ground. The face, I saw, was mutilated, bits of the mask still nailed into his face; but his eyes and mouth were sewn shut with raggedly black threads, a strange eye-like insignia painted across his face with a slightly phosphorescent material.

Instantly, all the robed ponies just tumbled to the ground like puppets with their strings cut by an octopus learning the joy of using scissors to cut things that aren’t his. I looked at the mares as I waited for them to get ahold of themselves, tapping my hoof and humming a quick little song to pass the time. My attention rapt to the dead stallion. His face was not unlike that poppet that Jeepers had used to cast the spell that he himself was incapable of. In fact, now that I looked at it, it was almost exactly the same thing. And being that his death had caused the others to collapse, he must have been the poppet controlling the others.

“So. The archaeological team was turned into poppets, then?” I muttered, rubbing my chin.

Dust, lying on the ground and rubbing her head, looked up at me. “GB?” she asked.

“Oh, there it goes. I was starting to get worried,” I replied with a smile. “I believe those things were some sort of enervation conduit, some sort of thing to mess with your mind, at least. You were just moaning on the ground; I was worried you’d go insane and try to kill me… again.”

She bit her lip. “I… I’d never let myself do that do a… to a friend.” She took a breath. “For a moment, I saw the worst thing possible, and my head hurt a lot.” With a sudden jerk of the head, she looked right into my eyes: “I’m good enough, right? You-you wouldn’t ever just le—abandon me, right?”

I ruffled her mane with a hoof, smiling warmly and reassuringly. “Of course not, Lightning Dust.” First comes smiles, then the lies. Last is the clash of steel. “We’re confederates in this together.” I helped her up. “We’d better not tarry here.”

Next was Cards whom I helped up. “You,” she groaned as I brushed the dirt out of her black-with-red-streaks mane. It seemed to take her a moment to realize I was touching her, and when she did, she jumped back. “I… what was that? Those… things?” She looked at the corpses strewn about haphazardly.

I made dull note that Lightning Dust was holding a camera and taking a few pictures as I explained to Cards my theory and how I’d saved her life and how we were totally equal for the whole ruining her life and cutting off a part of her ear things. Well, I didn’t specifically mention that last part, but it was heavily implied by my body language. When it was over, Cards sighed.

“When they were doing that… thing to me,” she said, “a dark voice kept screaming in my head that you had killed everypony I ever knew. And it kept flashing these images of your murdering Sleepy Oaks, butchering mares and children.” Card gritted her teeth and shook my head. “I think it was trying to make me attack you for… something. I think it was like you said: it plays off fears.”

I chuckled. First come smiles. “Yeah, like I could butcher an entire town. Or that I could even possibly harm a child.” Then the lies.

Cards frowned. “What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Why? You can’t tell me you don’t have any fears.”

My worst fear already came true today: that I will become a monster. “Nope. Guess I’m just utterly fearless. But come on, ladies, we need to get moving. There’s no telling what could happen out here.”

I lead the way through the congregation of the damned, resisting the strong urge to put them all into sexually compromising positions so that in thousands of years when archaeologist of the future find this place, their entire perception of history would be utterly screwed and all sorts of wacky conspiracy theories would occur. The thing that had looked to me like a staircase was actually just a very large hole in the the side of a rock mound, one whose incline down had been grooved into impromptu stairs at some point.

The mound led about a story or two into the earth, where we came upon a large chamber of crystalline architecture, like a buried city street, strewn all about with small camps and tables and junk put here no doubt by the archaeologists. It was all lit by brightly glowing crystals on or perhaps partially in the walls. The more the crystals bathed me in their colorless light, the more I was convinced that I was suddenly sterile.

Going up to the big table at one end of the cavernous street, I was dead certain I’d find a Voixson or something. Instead, I let out a groan as I just found the diary of the expedition leader. Probably the guy who recorded the Voixson in the sheriff’s office. I flipped it open, not really reading anything. Of note was that he mentioned this resembled the architecture of some ruins found up north belonging to the long-forgotten, long-extinct, and pre-Equestrian “Crystal Empire”. That, and how near the end, they found some sort of ancient magical “lift”, explored the underground there, and how the architecture of the ruins further down resembled absolutely nothing; the author actually speculated that the original ruins were actually an archaeological camp dedicated to the “antediluvian” ruins further down.

“Boring,” I commented, and tossed the journal over my shoulder. Dust took another few photographs as I looked down the street to the building where the lift had been mentioned. “Come on, ladies.”

And down the cave we went. The building at the end looked like it was artificially grown from crystals, and this room looked like a lobby. Even after eons of rotting to itself, it still smelled of impatience. At one end of the ocular room was a familiar structure, if only because it had been clearly marked with indicators and a panel, since it had been termed differently than I was used to.

“Is that an elevator?” Cards asked, tilted her head to the side. “What in Tartarus?” It was now safe to say that Dust was just taking lots of photos. No need for me to make note of it anymore. “Why is this here?”

“Press it and find out,” I suggested.

She gave me a hesitant look, like she suspected me to just shout, startle her, then shove her into a well where she would know nothing but eternal humiliation for all eternity at the hooves of a small child. It was a very specific look. Finally, she gave in, walked up to it, and pressed the button that either called forth the elevator or sacrificed a virgin to a pagan god. Being that Cards was still alive, it had to be the former.

I heard the sound of magical parts moving. It was too damn slow. I needed to get down there and kill that demonic bastard now, goddammit! The Kodex had to be forged anew; those children needed to be avenged!

Then it arrived, making a weird humming noise like a billion distant hummingbirds having the world’s most lackluster orgy. The doors opened, and inside was a dirty-looking room that seemed to be made of onyx, with two illuminating crystals. Shaking my head and just wanting to get this charade over with, I got onto the elevator, and the two mares followed. There were two buttons, and I pressed the down button.

Instantly, my stomach was in my throat as I felt the floor beneath me fall at a controlled but fast pace. Gritting my teeth, I felt like I could barely breath. A crawling sensation spread from my gut to my privates as the speed approached what felt like freefall. Cards and Dust stood around like nothing, Dust even preening herself with the same blank, unthinking look as earlier.

Then, suddenly, it was over. With that same humming noise of the ladybirds faking a poor semblance of sexual ecstasy, the doors opened. I stumbled out, gasping for breath. My first instinct was to lean against the wall. But when I did, I only found my breath laughing at me as it leapt from my chest and went on to do cooler and better things, wherein it immediately got inhaled and enslaved by Cards.

There were bits of crystalline structures and stuff clearly brought up by the archaeologists in front of the elevator, even what looked like an old statue of a diamond dog, but none of that mattered compared to what lay beyond the camp outside the elevator. At the end of the camp was a large river, flowing noisily through the darkness of the cave from my left to my right, its extreme sides disappearing into dark tunnels that looked downright artificial, the angles far too straight and smooth. The stone bridge that crossed the river, I saw as I slowly approached it, was kept alight by those same glowing crystal. Each breath of air tasted like water and limestone.

The far bank of the river looked less like anything made by nature, more like the edge of a train station, like the river was simply flowing across the tracks. Clearly, it was built by the worst architect ever. The statues of the diamond dogs on the far side of the bridge watched me as I approached the wall of darkness just beyond the far bank of the river. Cards called out for me, but I kept walking forwards. Weird or not, there was a demon to kill.

“GB, I don’t like caves, ” Dust said, keeping close to one side of me. “There’s nowhere to fly in here.”

“I promise you, Lightning Dust, Ace Reporter,” I replied, not bothering to look at her, “we shall be out of here soon enough.” Glancing over to her, I saw her chewing on her lip. We’re not stopping. The Code must be repaired. “Trust me.”

As we were halfway across the bridge, a splashing sound from the dark waters below the bridge caught my attention. Great, I thought with a groan, it’s a tentacle monster that wants me to teach it a thing or two about love. Looking out into the water, I thought I saw a thick, fleshy thingy sloshing against the current for just a moment. Couldn’t have been bigger than a dolphin. After that, it was under the water and it did not come back up. Well, that certainly won’t end up eating my face off.

Up close, the bank of the river—or at least the little area cut out of the rock—resembled the bare ribs of some long-rotten beast, the dark pillars like that of an U-Bahn station that kept the those kinds of underground train stations from collapsing. This little place even had a roof a good few feet above my head. With a sudden flickering, the darkness of this place died as strange lights came to life. More of those crystals of plus-three testicular cancer, I noticed. In the light, I could see that the pillars of stone here were the color of ancient teeth—but more importantly, there was a wooden table with a Voixson on it!

Letting out a childish gasp of glee, I ran up to the Voixson and picked it up. “Look, Cards, look!” I enthused. “It’s a thing.” The mares walked up to me. Dust kept looking over her shoulder as if expecting a clown to jump out and touch her privates with a balloon animal. “Want to listen?”

“Uh…” Cards droned as I set the device on the table and pressed play.

I smiled, waiting for it to start up. Then I frowned as I hit the play button several mores time. “Oh, you slut! Slut!” I hissed. “You were never used!”

“Wouldn’t that make it a virgin?” Card asked, and I silenced her with a murderous look.

The murderous looks turned into a depressed frown. “Aww, this is worse than that time I learned about that scar on my penis.”

Dust jerked her head to me, apparently forgetting about Bimbo the clown. “Wait, say what? You have a scar on it?”

Rubbing my chin, I said, “Well, technically two, one from nature, one from a ritual genital mutilation we in the Reich perform on newborn male infants. So, where I’m from, every stallion has them.”

Dust opened and closed her jaw at me. Cards, on the other hoof, just sighed. “I don’t wanna ask, but I’m pretty sure you’d just tell me anyways.”

I shrugged. “Well, really early in-uterus, the sex of a fetus isn’t yet determined exactly, and the default gender of a pony is female. But then the Y-Chromosom activates, the body suddenly stops doing female things; however, by that part, the body has already grown some semblance of nipples and labia. The nipples stay around on us stallions; the labia fuse into the shaft of the penis.” I nodded sagely. “I’d go on about how on the bottom of the shaft there is a scar running from the glands to the scrotum, but… no, wait, I just said it. Well, I went on. I remember how in school I used to go sit at random tables filled with lonely-looking ponies, and one of the things I’d often talk about was that scar, since it always amused them to know all penises were original labias.” I smiled. “Ponies are so fascinating, aren’t they?”

They just stared at me. Dust offered a blank “Well then”, but Cards just stood there.

“Das Y-Chromosom is the dominant one over the female’s X,” I finished.

“Ewp-sil-on kroh-moh-zome?” Dust muttered.

“Oh, sorry,” I chuckled. “You pronounce the letter as ‘wai’, I pronounce it like ‘Üpsilon’. Sometimes I forget that Equestrians—” my tone dropped to dead and serious “—have no grasp of science. Because Üpsilonts have very common scientific and mathematical uses.”

Cards, after glancing at her lightly armored flank, blinked at me. “I am swimming in an ocean of confusion right about now.”

The image of filly Cards trying and failing to doggy paddle in the kiddy pool came to mind. And then a giant tsunami came along and took her away. The wittle water wings didn’t help. I jabbed a hoof at her. “Cards, you stay away from that ocean—you’ll drown!”

“Uh, I can swim.” She cocked a brow.

“I’m only saying it because I don’t want you to die or get hurt… any more than you have already.” I nodded. It occurred to me that there a large doorway at the back end of the this little platform, minding me of the large double-doors in a grand cathedral, only bigger. “You are perfectly adorable just the way you’re hurt right now. That mutilated ear? That black eye? I could just put you in a cage and poke you with a stick for decades.”

Card just blankly stared at me. “’Kay.”

“Good girl,” I chirped, trotting over to the large cathedral-like doors. They had the look of doors meant to look big and were hard to open and close, since its churchgoers were always eager to leave. It was probably a fire hazard, too. If I still had that firefighter’s axe from the Songnam Slaughter… God doesn’t always dish in your face, I thought as I poked at the thick door. Most times, but not always.

The doors opened just as easy as I’d thought. Because it was awesome, I manually shoved the doors apart from the very center so that they exploded away from me. I promptly slammed my face against the doors. It turned out that although the doors did push forwards slightly, that was the fault of loose hinges. The doors, in fact, opened outwards.

“Goddamn,” I groaned, rubbing my countenance as I lay on my back, “still one of my many one weaknesses.” I stood up quick as I could. “Dumme Tür…” This time, the doors opened, and I didn’t care that I almost whacked Cards with them. “There. You are now open,” I spat, and marched into the… darkness. Sighing, I groused, “Great. Never easy. Also gotta make this annoying. Now, where did I put that lamp I nicked from the boathouse?”

“Couldn’t you just use your magic?” a voice that I really hoped wasn’t Lightning Dust asked. “Just light stuff up, y’know?”

With all the menacing horror of a little filly just standing there and staring silently, I pretty much did my best imitation of said thing towards Lightning Dust. Only, I wasn’t wearing a dainty little dress. Which, thinking about it as I stared, was probably a good thing. Or maybe not. Why were skirts now considered a feminine piece of clothing when all that extra room would be so lovely to have when you’ve got this hunk of flesh and muscle hanging between your legs?

“I should really invest in a skirt or a kilt or something, don’t you think?” I asked.

Lightning Dust blinked at me, looked as if she was searching, for words, then just gave up. On the other hand, Cards perked her good ear up. “Can you buy me a dress first?”

“Pardon me?”

“You know, a dress.” She nodded. “Can you buy me a dress if you’re going to a place where they sell skirts?”

“No!” I scoffed loudly. “Absolutely not!” Her ears fell limp. “Cards, if you wore something with so much fabric, you’d probably strangle yourself to death somehow! I don’t know how, but you’d find a way. I know how you are with things, Cards.”

She tilted her head to the side. The damn mare hadn’t actually entered the dark room with me. “Things?”

“Yes, Cards, with things.” I almost explained what that meant, almost, but somehow I didn’t. In case you were wondering, that explanation was, simply put: “You go on a date, and you end up pretty much kidnapped and half-liquified. You go to save your town, and you kill your best friend and end up on Team Jericho. You attempt to incapacitate one of the two ponies who’ve been ruining your town, and instead you break the neck of a single father which, in turn, probably made his foals starve to death hilariously. You try to say hi to your estranged mother, and instead you accidentally beat her to death. It’s irresponsible of me enough that I let you out in the sunlight—God only knows what you’ll do with a dress!” But by the graces of God—aw, who’m I kidding? It was probably Satan—I managed to figure out not to say that just before I said it.

For some reason, the thought that I could’ve probably killed Card in at least six different ways at this exact moment ran through my mind. It made my eye twitch. With the Code broken, it wasn’t dresses that were Cards’ greatest danger, it was me. I couldn’t be trusted without the Kodex. A rather… unsettling thought crossed my mind. It involved me committing against Cards and Dust that most unthinkable of acts. I found myself shuddering. Of course, I had self control and never ever would I ever so much as half-seriously contemplate doing that most unthinkable of acts. Then again, that was exactly what I thought about harming… about killing children.

What in God’s name was I doing just standing here? Oh, yeah, right. I was getting out a lamp. Wee, was it hot in here all of the sudden, or was it the flaming lamp? Probably the lamp. Heh. Ooh, these walls were pretty. Very bland and ignored as I hastily trotted down the little hall. Somepony needed to come down here and make some graffiti about griffons goring gorgons garishly gobsmacked and good-like. But they were still pretty. Cards and Dust were following me, right? Good. They were. Or bad. They were. Don’t think about what would have happened last night between you and Dust if you didn’t have the Kodex. Don’t think about what you would have done to Cards as she begged for mercy without the Kodex. Blossom! That was name of Doc Dome’s filly, the one I’d killed, had watched as her body was torn apart by my instinct. Don’t think about her. Don’t you think about her!

“Stop running so fast!” Cards yelled out for me, and I ground to a halt.

“Running? Who’s running I’m not running nope not running just walking because Jericho is not a monster nope certainly can find the Kodex danger not are you in—I’m not secretly a cephalopod standing atop a swarm of guinea pigs in a stallion suit.” My eye twitched.

“Um, was there even a period in that sentence?” Cards asked as she trotted up to me.

“Sorry, I’m just…” I searched for words to tell her. That was a rare feeling. “I’m just so eager to kill that demon.” I actually thought about adding, “But first I’m going to kill you, if only so I can rest easy that I won’t hurt you without the Code.” But had I really started to degrade so far without the Code already? If so, why bother to go on at all? Why, if I had turned into one of the very creatures I exterminated with extreme prejudice? Also, it didn’t make any sense, but I came to that realization last.

Apparently, while thinking that, I’d just been standing there with a blank look on my face. Lightning Dust hesitantly extended a hoof and poked my chest. “GB? Ya okay?”

I blinked. No, I do not get aroused thinking of my mother’s corpse! the quote of someone echoed in my mind, but for the life of me, I didn’t know who. Or what. “No,” I sighed. Hey, Lightning Dust, I murdered a bunch of kids. Isn’t that great? Don’t you just want to lie to me again in a poor attempt to make me buy you a damn drink? Play not nice with me—I know why you’re really here. “I’m just in a bad way. I’m scared for you two. I realize I’ve dragged you into a really, really bad situation, and now I don’t want to deal with you two nice girls dying because of that really bad stallion.” Well, that was technically the truth.

Lightning Dust flashed me a smile. “Aw, that’s actually kinda sweet.”

“Uncharacteristically so,” Cards muttered, and earned herself a quick glare from Dust. I glanced at Cards, who was eying me not unlike the reporter. From this angle, it could see them both equally staring at me, in fact, their faces bathed in the eerie glow of the lantern.

She does have nice eyes, though.

For a moment, it was like I’d just been shot in the chest. The only reason I didn’t stumble back was because it didn’t dawn on me to be such a drama queen just then. That thought did not just happen. I looked between Dust and Cards like a pitbull eyes a toddler’s face. Or so it felt like. So I closed my eyes and took a breath. There was no amorous pounding in chest, no fire in my groin, and there never had been. Everything was under control. Ever was, ever will be.

Except for Sleepy Oaks.

I felt a pang, a deep, reproachful surge in my shallow heart. Dread clawed its way into the organ like a cat digging into the bucket of tuna. And suddenly, as I looked into their eyes, I was a colt again, and it was not their eyes I was looking into but the steely and hot eyes of he who helped me forge the Kodex. Not my father, just a wise, older earth pony, a friend.

“If you have given up your heart for what you believe is right, Jericho,” he said in that cool yet knowing tone that made him the majority whip in the Reichstag, “you have already lost. That without heart is too that without love, and that without love is too a beast. Of course, you can be a beast, but not freely: he who makes a beast out of himself may get rid of the pain of being a Mann, but that Hell will reap its own price from him.”

“But what if I still got what I wanted, even as a beast?” I had asked. “What if I should save the world, but leave my heart as payment for that victory?”

The stallion had just looked at me. “Impossible. Even King Viktor der Landesvater had some semblance of a heart. You’ve read Ich, Vikor; you know what Viktor was, he was just like you. King Viktor had a code, and its foremost pillar was simple: ‘If the ends are the benefit of the Reich and its people, the means are justified; and as King, I alone can justify the ends.’ With his code, he performed monstrous acts but never became a monster, and we remember him as one of history’s greatest leaders for it.”

He took off his reading glasses off and set them on the desk. I knew that he didn’t need glasses, but he wore them sometimes because it made him look more genuine and down-to-earth to the voters. “But were there nought but darkness in your heart, what could you do on your quest but degenerate into a monster? To gain one’s object as but a beast would only be bitterly comic. But to gain your object as a monster, well, to pay hell is one thing… but do you want to own it?”

“And,” I tried, and stopped to lick my lips. “What should happen if I become a monster? If I—if I broke the code?”

“The only way to deal with a monster,” he said simply, without hesitation, “is to kill it.”

I shook my head of the thoughts. “Angst and brooding are for sissies and lame writers who want to pretend like their story has weight and depth. And also for the existentialist movement,” I counseled the mares before turning back around and—ow, stupid door! Why was there a door here? How had I not seen this? Oh oh oh, great. Great. Wooden door. Rotten wood. Horn stabbed through the wood. Head hurt. Oh Prophet, I was just going to end up losing my damn horn today, wasn’t I?

Growling, I pulled my head out of the door, and the door promptly fell inwards. “Hey, look. It didn’t fall on me,” I remarked, and then I frowned.

Alongside me, the girls peered into the large room beyond the doorway. “Oh, fuckberries,” Cards groaned.

“You know, I’d ask who built this,” I said as I looked at what I could of what looked pretty much exactly like the gotischen cathedrals of the Fatherland, “but I’m pretty sure God’s just screwing with me at this point.”

This door appeared to be large, though single, door into the front-side area of a massive stone cathedral. It was bright inside, lit by bright, colorless lights from above. There were the wooden pews, even stained glass windows depicting… things I didn’t recognize, but even they appeared as if they were outside in the sun, like there was a light behind them shining in. It just had that feeling of unnecessary symbolism. Like some cosmic entity, some accursed scribe in Heaven, had heard my plea to Duke Elkington for my symbolic nonsense, and still thought it the epitome of hilarity to shove the damn things down my face.

As I looked around, the room flickered as if it were a dying fire. A vague feeling of knowing exactly why it looked like a cathedral crossed my mind. The feeling was reinforced by Cards’ nonsensical line about forncating berries, which seemed totally out of place. “Cards, Lightning Dust, what do you see in the room?”

“Canterlot Castle,” Cards and Dust said at once.

Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I sighed. “Okay. So. While I don’t know why, I’m not seeing Canterlot Castle… nor do I know what it even looks like. I, however, am seeing a massive cathedral. In fact… I think it might actually be the Hohe Domkirche Laurentie—the High Cathedral of Laurentia—the legendary cathedral located in the capital city of the Reich, Zentrum.” I shrugged. “Nice place. Father used to take me there when I lived in Zentrum. But listen, I’ll be right back, and you two stay here.” I set the lantern of the ground by their hooves and trotted back down the hall.

When I came back, I was holding that unused Voixson from earlier. Before they could ask what I was doing, I hurled the Voixson into the room and shouted, “Attere Dominatum!” The thrown object clattering to the stone floor and slid to the halt. “Huh,” I said dumbly. “Well, that was anticlimactic. I was sort of expecting it to, I don’t know, destroy the illusion, or maybe hit some invisible wizard on the face, or prompt him to tell us to pay no attention to the stallion behind the curtain.”

“So…” Dust droned on. I blinked at her. She was still wearing the Kruzifix. I actually hadn’t bothered to take it off her. Perhaps it was something unspeakable in me speaking, but there was something charming about the way it looked on her. Oh, but I bet it’d look even cuter on Cards!

Just as I was about to form a thought, a slithering voice crept through my ears. It made my hair stand up on end, which for some reason made me feel all fat and poofy. “Are you a follower?”

“Only to make sure that the guy in front of me gets stabbed before me,” I replied, “so that I can be the one to stab the stabber. Simple meat shield tactics, really.” The mares just looked funnily at me. I sighed, shaking my head. “The evil thing in there is whispering sweet nothings into my ear and probably trying to seduce me.” I looked over my shoulder and yelled into the room, “Not until you at least buy me a very expensive dinner! What kind of slut do you take me for? I am a whore of caliber and class, thank you very much.”

Dust and Cards soon got spooked looks. Yep. It was doing that to it, too. Groaning, I said, “Fine, you jackoff. I’ll walk into your trap. Just stop trying to act all scary and mysterious. I’ve seen it all about a thousand times, and you’re very uncreative. Lighting Dust, take it off.”

“Wai-wha’?” the named mare stammered.

“The necklace. Not your… Hey, how long have you not been wearing that miniskirt-looking thing?” I asked. “You know, that weird little thing you had on when I first met you.”

“Uh, I took that off about immediately after you left the bar,” she replied, taking the chained Kruzifix off.

“Huh. I am really unobservant, then.” I accepted the necklace from her and put it in a pocket. The Eiserne Kreuz hanging from my neck was all I needed. With a roll of my eyes, I stepped into the trap and was surprised what I wasn’t immediately gelded. Gelding Jericho. Geldingcho. That would be my name if that happened. As the girls followed me in, I looked around. Still the same cathedral. Lame.

“Dust,” Cards said in a worried singsong-tone.

“Uh, yeah,” the pegasus replied.

“Do you see that?” And Cards pointed towards the altar that was so far, far away in the massive cathedral. There was nothing of interest there. “Because I really hope I’m not seeing it right about now.”

“If I lied and said no, would you feel better?” Dust asked.

“A little.”

“Then I don’t see anything.”

Cards glanced at me as I gave her a bemused look. “You know what? I was wrong. That didn’t make me feel better at all.”

“Does anyone have change for twenty Mark?” I called out suddenly. “Also, if somepony could tell me what the hell you two are seeing, that would also… help… oh, Scheiße.” I paused for a moment. “I don’t know what you two are seeing, but snap out of it—come on, let’s go. It’s just a stupid illusion. We’ll go back, figure out a way to dispel it, then come back and not have to deal with this pretentious monster. Sound good?”

“GB…” Dust whimpered in a weak tone, pointing at something over my shoulder like how a dying soldiers points at the mare he know’s has been sleeping with his wife and has left him thoroughly confused and horrified on many levels, “it’s not just an illusion.”

I rubbed my forehead. Why was there a vague ache in my head now? “One of two things are going to happen. I turn around it it’s there, leading to a few various possibilities. Or there’s nothing there and…” I looked down and saw a shadow growing across the floor, overlapping with my shadow. “You know,” I said slowly, “Devil’s Backbone, you’re supposed to let me finish and turn around first.”

A smile crept across my face, though. The Code was soon to be restored, or I would die. In either case, my problems would be solved. After all, I’ve been told it’s hard to have moral conundrums when your body was being eaten by worms.

A voice like creaking floorboards asked, “Are you a follower of the Mare Laurentia?”

Not the thing I was expecting him to say. But then, what did I expect him to say? Probably something to the effect of “Bend over and prepare thine anus” or maybe “I’m gonna teach you a thing or two about love!” Well, that second thing was something only I’d say as a battlecry. Of course, I was the only pony who cared for creative battle cries. I’ll take your “For the King!” and raise you my “Good for the Good God!”—thank you very much.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” I said, not turning around. “I am a follower of the Prophet’s word.” A grip on my sheathed sword, I gritted my teeth.

The voice—the so-called Devil’s Backbone, really—hummed a consideration. “It hangs from your neck, Crux Iericuntis.” He hesitated. “Yet you are no Jerichite. Why wear you the symbol of a fallen Imperii?”

I looked down at his shadow. If I knew my shadows, he was practically on top of me. Given that the way Dust and Cards were staring at something behind me, that wasn’t a bad presumption. “Too is it a symbol of my people, its distant descendants, in a way. Ours is a modified version of it, though. Non civis iericuntinus sum. Pretty sure I said that right. I don’t actually know, though I have a book about that language somewhere.”

“I,” he began, then paused. “I have been locked here for so many years in stasis. Everything I knew has changed but one thing: my devotion to her.” Another pause. By God, it was like he didn’t know that a period wasn’t one of those dot dot dot things. “I sense that you have brought me the object. Elkington has fulfilled his part of the pact. When you return to him, please give him my thanks. Let him know tha—”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” I replied, and spun around, swinging my sword. The fine steel slashed deep into the tower of black flesh behind me and hit a bone.

He shrieked a high-pitched squeal that sounded girlier than anything Cards could ever come up with as he jumped back. “Lucifer te perdat!” he howled, and I got a good look at his mouths, a set of four fleshy mandibles forming a pseudo-mouth around his more pony-like muzzle. With the horns on his otherwise bull-like head and the hooves ending his bipedal legs, I was pretty sure he was some sort of ex-minotaur. Being no better than dogs and ten times as ugly, though, demons had a lot of variety.

The Devil’s Backbone clutched at his bleeding side with two of his three pairs of arms. It was actually kind of funny because those two pairs of arms were actually really tiny and anemic. The illusion of the cathedral flickered and died, thank God. As it was, the room was actually some sort of large vault carved out of the rock itself. It was decorated with bits of archaeologic stuff—little dig sites and very nicely catalogued stuff. Where the altar had really been a rather pretentious throne of some sort, but at least the large room was still well-lit.

“See here,” I said, “you’re different than me and I don’t understand you, which means that I have to kill you, as is my custom. But more importantly, your death will satisfy the Code, will repair and fix it. And until you die horribly, I won’t be able to sleep at night.”

Eyes seeming afire with their own internal light, he shrieked, “Treacherous beast, just like the rest of your horrid kind! Never trust a pony, that’s the old maxim! Your kind have always lied and cheated ever since the dawn of time when you betrayed Our Lady!”

“Der Garten Eden?” I asked, puzzled.

To my utter stupefaction, the Devil’s Backbone dug a three-fingered hand from his big arms into the sword wound. I watched as he roared, grabbed, and clawed the hole in his char-like flesh. With a rasping, grunting sound like the world’s worst sexual session, he pulled his hand out. His hand came out clutching a rib bone. Before my very eyes, he grabbed the disembodied rib with his other hand and slid his fingers down in an an almost masturbatory motion. It was kind of fascinating to watch in a sort of “watching your parents do it” sort of way, and finding out just what kind of really freaky stuff your saintly mother was actually into.

“If Elkington instead sends assassins,” he said, gritting his teeth, his mandibles dancing, “then I know I was a fool to think you could trust a pony.” I mocked him by saying exactly what he just said but in a babyish tone. “But first, I’m going to kill you all,” he said Cimmerianly, his once bleeding wound rapidly drying up.

“Yeah, no,” I said. “That’s not going to happen.” He raised his rib up in the air—and what the hell? It was a spear. Was a rib, and now it was a bony spear. What kind of absurdly impractical yet evil and cool power was tearing out a rib and turning it into a spear?

He chucked it through the air with a weird flicking gesture. It flew past me with a sharp whoosh. I was just about to think of a jeer for missing me when I heard Cards scream. “Starting with her…” he growled, baring his yellowed teeth at me in a terrible smile.

Cards was just lying on the ground, a spear knee-deep into her side, into at least a lung. The armor hadn’t really done much for her. She gasped for breath through raspy heaves, a pool of blood forming beneath her as she shook. That’s when I saw something else, and then another one, and another, and another. There, on the higher parts of the wall, runic symbols painted in a charcoal-like substance. I recalled seeing these before, back in the city of Schiloh: explosive runes, a favored pastime of demons who felt artistically inclined.

Before I could even react, Dust was sliding to Cards’ side and pulling out a pink bottle. “Hold on, Cards! Oh shit, hold on!”—and she shoved the bottle into Cards’ mouth. I almost commanded her to stop. I didn’t know if the healing would cause the spear to fuse with the body, and I had momentarily forgotten that Equestrian healing potions were the wrong color, pink instead of the red they were in the Reich. Card weakly drank the bottle before just dropping her head on the stone floor.

“GB!” Dust shouted, and then a hoof clocked me in the chest. I almost lost the grip of my sword as I tumbled to the ground, pretty damn sure that there were tiny hairline fractures along my sternum now. “Oh Celestia, GB, Cards!”

The Devil’s Backbone leered at me with a grin. “Acta non verba,” he chuckled, reaching behind his back. “Actus me invito factus non est meus actus. Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea.”

“Please just speak one language, Equestrian or Teutsch,” I replied. “I get confused easily by things.” The Backbone pulled out a sword that looked older than dirt. He wasted no time and pounced upon me, and I likewise wasted to time rolling to the side as his weapon stabbed the ground just where I had been. “Got you,” I said, and pulled out a knife—not the one that’d been inside me, for the record. Its edges were sharpened to the point of being downright invisible. All the better to stab someone in the thigh with.

Mister Spine screamed and flinched back, his own actions tearing the knife out for me. Good. The last thing you ever wanted to do if stabbed was to tear the weapon out. With a quick thought as I jumped to my hooves, I shouted, “Dust, whatever you do, don’t take the spear out of Cards—its the only thing keeping her alive!”

“I—uh—yeah!” Dust stammered.

A burning sensation beneath the flesh of my breast, another thought struck me as I glanced at Dust. Ten Mark say that those explosive runes only activate as the Backbone dies. “Dust, do you see those weird shapes drawn on the upper parts of the wall?”

“Uh-uh yeah!”

“Don’t ask any question, but I need you to fly up to them and smudge them!” I commanded. “Now, dammit, do it now, girl!” To her immense credit, she only took a single look back at Cards before nodding and flying up into the air.

“Memento mori!” the Backbone hissed, and I looked back just in the time to see a face that didn’t look too cheery bearing down upon me with a sword. He was too close for me to swing my sword or stab him before he got me first, so I did the one thing I could think of.

I twisted my neck forwards and gored him with my horn. Ignoring the spike of pain in my head, I could keep that part of my body between two of his ribs, and a trickle of dark blood running down it and onto my forehead and hat.

“You… you just…” Spiny McSpinerson muttered in what was hopefully horror.

“Well, why do you think unicorns have horns? They’re for goring! At least, so say evolutionary biologists who insist that unicorns’ natural psychokinetic powers are absurdly recent in our history as a thing: about fifty thousand years ago or so, which is also supposedly around the time when modern pony behavior emerged, too. Cool, huh?” He didn’t respond. “You know, if not for the fact that it’s the wrong part of me that’s inside you, this could almost be nice… No, wait, there is absolutely no way to phrase what I was just thinking in a way that doesn’t imply that I think it’d be a nice to rape you in the lung with my penis. And, you know, it’s saying a lot that doing that would actually be the least despicable thing I’ve done all day.”

“Oh Celestia, what the hell am I doing?” Dust screamed. “GB, how do I… the hell are you two doing?”

Before I could give a very snarky response, I felt my neck almost snap to the side as the Devil’s Backbone spun himself like a gater’s deathroll. It was so sudden, so hard, so fast, that it just blindsided me.

And then something cracked. Something was supposed to never, not in a million years, ever so much as bend the wrong way. The sudden sheer spike of agony in my head blinded me, literally made me blind as it gave me a thousand promises of pain yet to come.

Just like the rest of his body, his legs twisted in ways that should have powderized his bones. The hoof slammed into my eye at the same moment I flailed with my dagger. We both screamed like French whores, I in horror and agony, he in a mix a pain and childish giggling.

Landing on the ground with a roll, my vision unblurred enough to see everything but my peripheral vision clearly, the pain prancing gaily across my eyes. The first thing I saw clearly were the little Lightning Dusts flying around my head, and the tiny Cards hopping happily after the Dusts. Well, that’s a good sign. Hallucinations.

“Oh Celestia, GB!” Dust—the real one, hopefully—shouted as Cards moaned in pain beside my fallen body.

I realized I was panting hard, and I only realized it because I was coughing. It was a rough, hacking rasp, and each cough made it feel like fishbones stabbing my throat. The wound where the metal rod had pierced my lung only three days ago burned almost as wet and hot as my inflamed breast. It hadn’t bothered me when I killed Sleepy Oaks, so why… or maybe it had, and I was just incapable of noticing it.

Sleepy Oaks… my mind whispered. Repair the Code. I tried to stand, only to slip on what I hoped was blood and fall onto my back. As I laid on the floor, I saw the Devil’s Backbone, crawling on the ground as he clutched his bleeding wounds. Again, I tried to stand, only for Lightning Dust to skid to a halt next to me.

“Shit, hold on!” she told me, eyes widening as she looked from my face to my breast. Without another word, she grabbed for my chest, almost tearing my duster off she undid the top few buttons like a lover awkward in her eagerness. “Oh shit…” she whispered, eyes as wide as tarantulas.

“What?” I tried to lift my head to look at my burning chest, only for a trickle of salty blood to spill into an eyes. Instinctively, I clenched both eyes shut. Whether it was mine or the Backbone’s, I didn’t know. Gritting my teeth, I tried to rub my eyes, only for Dust to push my hooves away and wipe my eyes and forehead with something very soft and… her wing? Then she let me rub my eyes enough to open them. Yessir, there was a line of blood on her wingtip, and no small amount, too.

My eyes drifted to what she was staring at, what she had unbuttoned to see. There was this lovely hole in my breast where once there had been magically treated stitches. The wound that that daftly named mare had caused me when she pushed me off that balcony to save her beloved was bleeding anew, the stitches tore asunder. “Well. This seems a tad bit inconvenient,” I commented.

“You have healing potions, right? I used all the ones you gave me on Cards!”

I shook my head. “Yes, but they’re useless.”

“What! Why?!” she demanded, her eyes constantly flickering between the Backbone and me.

“Because there’s no food in my system. I vomited it all out in Sleepy Oaks after you left. And without food in your system, the potion will break down healthy parts of your body in order to repair the wounded parts.” I forced a smile. “I actually needed to stop and brush my teeth to get the taste out of my maw. If you give me a healing potion, I will die.”

“B-but you’ll die without one!”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t that be just grand for the Code?” I replied with a little chuckle. I took a deep breath and tried to mediate upon my father’s face. His eyes were as cold and mighty as glaciers. With the face of my father in my mind, I gritted my teeth and willed myself to stand. The headache made it nearly impossible to think, my seeping chest made it a bad idea, and the Backbone’s lumbering towards me made it my only option. “How many runes did you destroy?”

“I-I dunno,” Dust blurted. “How do I destroy them?”

“Rub them, really,” I said. “They’re known to become useless during even the lightest of drizzles, snowstorms, during strong winds, in places that are moist, when threatened, and when exposed to corn-products. They’re pretty worthless, usually. In here, though, they’re useful to him.” I coughed. “Just smear that weird paste they’re made off.” With a strong thought, I telekinetically picked up my sword. The act felt as if it tore my head in two, and a fresh splash of wetness dripped down my forehead. “Destroy the runes, Dust,” I ordered in a steely tone.

“But—”

“Yes, ours are lovely, but I really couldn’t care less. Destroy the runes, or we all die.” I shot her a look so acidic that she actually stepped back. For a second, I almost thought she were seeing who I really was at the moment without the Kodex. “Are we clear?”

She swallowed. “Crystal.”

I didn’t bother looking at her as she flew off. And I tried to ignore Cards’ agonized groan as she just laid there, not bleeding, but not getting any better. I had to fix the shattered Kodex. That filly’s dusty eyes. I could feel them still looking at me, could feel the Code being torn asunder, could feel a monster stirring under my flesh. And there was only one way to deal with a monster.

My knife was back in its holster, and my sword was ready. Every second felt like an eon as I stared at the Devil’s Backbone. My lips tightened so hard they became less like lips and more like some incredibly unsightly but small scar from a hernia operation. Father’s face. Dusty eyes. Cards dying on the ground so uselessly. The Kodex.

Trying not to stumble or cough, I swung my weapon as the Backbone neared me. He avoided the blow, his wounds bleeding harder. With a knife of his own, he found purchase in my shoulder, the blade utterly useless against the duster’s fabric. It was not a proud, heroic slash that nearly castrated the naked savage, but the awkward jerk of a stallion who should in no way even be standing up, let alone killing a monster. The kind of slash made by an old cripple with delusions of grandeur and one having a beard made out of kittens.

Even with the spot above his groin bleeding, he wasted no time in nearly caving my skull in with a single ferocious kick that nailed the spot between forehead and horn. At least I could take comfort in the fact that he had a very tiny penis. Thank you, prehistoric mares who made conscious decisions to breed only with the best hung guy, thus passing their Gene along to all modern stallions. The confidence boost was really something I needed.

I shook the blood from my eyes like a wet dog shakes off being covered in all that piss. That’s when I felt the Backbone’s three-fingered hand wrapping around my horn. He smiled at me with his inner muzzle, his mandibles extended outwards as if to hug me warmly, and he threw my head against the stone floor. I tried to shake it off, tried to remember my father’s face, but the Devil’s Backbone was faster as he grabbed me by the back of the head.

“I am named Spina Diaboli,” he whispered to me. “Believ’st thou in a higher power?”

“I am a Konfessionist,” I groaned, “as are most every single one of my countrymen. And I know then an angel watches over me, and they say that two fallen angels rule Equestria. You are an animal, a race unfit to worship, unfit even to know the art of language.”

“Ah, a Konfessionist. What an ancient faith,” he said contemplatively. “And know’st thou how I learned the modern Equestrian language?” My lips remained sealed. “A demon can learn any language he chooses. All he need do is cut out the tongue of a living speaker of that language and consume it. Confiteor, it is just that Confessionismus is a dog’s cult; noble creatures such as my kindred will never so much as speak around one of your faith, lest they hear our holy language, one which your vulgar faith has already so thoroughly raped. But for thee, I shall this exception make, because I know that my higher power, Domina Nostra, Our Lady, would not fault me for it, just this once, thou worthy foe.”

“You know, I must ask,” I said: “what’s with all these bad guys I’ve been meeting recently being so obsessed with females and willing to monologue about them? First Elkington and his obsession with Celestia, and then you and your Lady. I get it, you all need to get laid, but there is such a thing as touching yourself, so don’t take that sexual frustration out on—” Before I could even finish, he slammed my face into the floor. My horn felt as if it was going to be torn out by the root as it and the rest of my head tried to go in separate directions. He raised my raise and slammed it again.

Raising it a third time, blood pouring from a gash on my forehead, he allowed me to look into his smile, his blue eyes. The Backbone opened his mouth to speak, only to howl in my face, dropping me as he flailed backwards. I blinked when I saw the reason.

Cards, panting and rasping hard, was standing there, blood running down her flimsy armor. The little mare dropped her bloody-to-the-hilt sword—the same sword I’d given her—to the ground. “He’s mine, you fucking fuck,” she hissed before collapsing to the ground, landing on her good side.

The Backbone roared as he dug a hand into the deep wound in his chest. “Puella, morieris!” Apparently, he could rip out ribs and also turn them into swords. Fantastic. It had to be the single most impractical evil power to ever have. With the boneblade in his bloody hands, he charged at Cards.

For your father’s sake, boy! a voice hissed into my ear. I didn’t have a choice, it was pure muscle and instinct acting on their own. If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done any different. “Cards!” I shouted, throwing my tattered body forwards on legs that shouldn’t have been working. I tackled the Devil’s Backbone just as he swung. He smiled as his sword stabbed into my flesh from where Dust had opened my duster and I’d neglected to close it, because I was an idiot.

But I smiled and knowingly forced my body closer to him, the act plunging his sword deeper and deeper into my body. “Hello,” I croaked, “can I interest you in this lovely collection of knives?”—and I pulled my knife out and stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him like it was going out of season. Why that comparison made any sense to me at that moment was mostly because there was a sword deep in my body. You don’t tend to think very well in those moments.

As I grabbed onto his sword, I felt his spidery fingers sliding into my coat. With a mad smile, the bleeding beast pulled out the Kruzifix and rolled backwards. He held onto the Kruzifix as if it were the most beautiful girl in his world. Since I was pretty sure that there wasn’t really anything notable about the Kruzifix other than its unnecessary symbolism, I figured that the Kruzifix was probably a Mistress who he’d later found out is a Mister, and no amount of showering would ever cleanse him of the shame. Not that there’d be a later for him, he was bleeding from the multifarious wounds all over his body. And I was no better off.

I looked at Cards, who stared up at with me wide, teary eyes. “Good to see you’re alive, Cards,” I chuckled and coughed.

“You… you took a sword for me,” she replied in a dumb, hoarse tone. I could see that she had torn the spear in her body from moving. But like a clingy girlfriend, the real challenge was getting the spear out of her; that was where the real damage would come from, and I didn’t think she’d eaten enough to possibly allott for healing potions to fix all of that. It was safer to leave her as-is than to try to fix her.

With a dismissive wave, I said, “Hey, for you? Anytime, Cards. I’d offer you my business card, but because of your name, I feel as if that would descend into the realm of confusion and bad puns. Also, I don’t have business cards, so there’s that, too.” I looked over to see the Backbone hilariously crawling across the floor towards the throne that had been the cathedral’s altar during the illusion. Then I peered at the bony sword in my chest. Well. That could pretty much ruin my day.

With a throaty gurgle trying to pass itself off as a groan, I opened my bags and hunted for something. Oh, wait. I pulled out a half-dead but still feisty ocelot bound with string. “Oh yeah, I stole Elkington’s pet cat.” In a single motion, I tossed the kitty aside and cuts its bindings. The ocelot squealed and ran off somewhere. “What a nice guy. He’s going to die out in the wild and it’s going to be great.” Back to my bag, I pulled out what I was looking for: two slices of French silk pie, the remains of my masterpiece. I wiped the blood from my forehead before wolfing them down so hard that I hiccuped. As I pulled out two bottles of Equestrian healing potions, I said to myself, “Oh, this is going to hurt.”

I tore the sword out of my body in a single jerk. Before the blood exploded outwards, I threw myself onto my back and dumped the healing potions directly into the wound. “Mary’s little lamb was a goddamn slut!” I half-screamed, half-singsonged. “Ow! Bends hooker prostitute wench slut of holies with a side of ranch dressing, oh God it burns!”

It was over soon, and I felt an empty hole in my gut. The sword wound was mostly healed; all it was now was just a nasty gash. Blood didn’t gush from the wound; it slowly, slowly wept from it. Funny. I expected more healing. But as for the rest of my wounds, they were still proudly alive, but at least I’d prolonged my death for—something exploded, somepony shrieked, and somepony thudded against the ground screaming. Great. Not even a second to get my thoughts in order.

Before I even saw what was wrong I was sprinting at full speed to the screeching, bleeding mass of opal-colored fur and feathers on the ground. Just as I was cogitating what must have happened to her, I slid down onto the ground next to her. “Lightning Dust, what hurts?” I demanded of her, but I already knew what hurt. Everything from her breast up to her face was pockmarked with shrapnel, her face bleeding like a blood fountain. Parts of her seemed like without the muscles holding them on, they would fall off. Her eyelids, miraculously, seemed like the most intact things left on her face.

“Everything!” she wailed, blood mixing with tears. “It did a thing, and then I covered my eyes with my wing, and then it blew up, and then I crashed! I think it’s broken!” I looked her over. Sure enough, her right wing was torn up worse than a nice couch was bound to become when introduced to the new kitty, and the limb bent at a rather unnatural angle. “Food in belly,” she blurted out, and I nodded. The meaning was clear enough.

Suppressing a coughing fit, I pulled out a potion and, like a mother to her baby, nursed the bottle into her mouth. She drank greedily. I looked at her face only as long as to confirm that the potions were working, averting my eyes when her flesh began to crawl and repair itself. Then I saw that not only was the wing bloodied and snapped, it also didn’t looked attached properly at all.

“Lightning Dust,” I said, and she look up at me with quivering lips, the torn flesh under her countenance dancing as it healed. “I’m going to do something to you, and you’re going to have to trust me. Can you do that? Can you trust me?” She nodded weakly, and I flipped her onto her stomach. “Stay still, you dislocated your wing.” Dust only made a weak, whimpering sound as I physically grabbed onto her wings. “Now, on the count of—” I twisted and bent and pushed the broken limb, and she screamed in such a high-pitched voice that I struggled to believe it was her and not the Devil’s Backbone.

“Scheiße,” I muttered at the relocated limb. “You wing’s still broken. It’s going to need a splint, and fast, or else you might…” I didn’t finish the sentence. Even I had the common sense to try not to put that thought into her head. There was nothing to build a quick and dirty splint out of.

The Devil’s Backbone laughed maniacally. “Inferior, stupid creatures, you ponies! Today, the good guys win, and the path to your extermination is found by the righteous.”

I looked over at the Backbone fumbling with the Kruzifix just as Cards growled out a low, “Go fuck yourself.” Then she sputtered out into coughs, even choking up a splotch of blood, the spear jerking around with every cough, no doubt slicing up fresh internal wounds

Even from across the room, the demon trying to stand up, I could see his smile. “Why not? Give me a chunk of broken glass and I’ll rip it right off and stick it right in, for all the good it’s doing me these days. And then I can use it on you—to teach you a lesson in being weak.” He let out a howling, mad cackle. “And then the pegasus, and finally to the stallion there! I’ll let you all have it! And it’ll be no one’s fault but your own. After all, if you were strong, you would have fought me off.”

Father’s face flashed across my mind as I stood up from Dust. There was nothing to do about her with that bastard still alive. Every breath he took just made me want to strangle an orphanage. The fact that this thought even crossed my mind was proof that he needed to die. The Code demanded nothing less than a blood sacrifice. What this bastard didn’t realize was that when dealing with me, it was better to just leave bad enough alone

So I sauntered towards him, sword at the ready. I ignored the blood still leaking from my body; the sick, burning feeling running throughout my chest; and the searing headache that made it feel as if a part of my head was about to be torn off, mostly because a very morbid part of me was sure it was only hanging on by the barest of roots.

That was when the Devil’s Backbone smiled like an overeager lover, performed a gesture with the Kruzifix that felt obscene, spoke unheard words that I somehow felt in the core of my bones, and plunged the object into one of the many bleeding wounds he had to choose from.

“Te voco!” he shouted, tearing the bloody Kruzifix out of his chest and holding it high in the air. The Kruzifix suddenly spat forth a shimmer of black sparks, an arc of silent lightning racing from its points. The Backbone howled with laughed, screaming in an unnervingly orgasmic delight.

A shadowy but starry nebula emerged from the object. It washed over him as if drinking him in, or, I thought, like how a boar tried on bowling shoes. The stars within it seemed to twinkle in its darkness as the nebula separated itself from the Backbone. At first, it was like a mold, like it was trying to emulate the Backbone’s bodyshape. Then the nebula undulated like a lover who has no idea how this position was supposed to be performed, but insisted that she wasn’t a virgin but was a total pro boss at sex.

In the next instant, the nebulous cloud only bore vague semblance to the Backbone. Then, like a hamster on anabolic steroids, it grew. Still keeping that minotaur-like body structure, the cloud was nearly the Backbone’s size and a half. It looked plainer, though, no horns, only two arms with five fingers, and no whacky mandibles. The nebula seemed as if to harden as the twinkling stars all suddenly died.

With a sudden jerk, the figure’s arm struck forward and grabbed the Backbone’s tongue. It ripped the tongue out in a single, almost effortless gesture before shoving it into its cloudy mouth. Beady white eyes flicked open upon the hardening cloud, and they stared at the screaming demon.

“I have hunger,” a voice declared in dark tones that sent a chill up an down my spine, and also gave me the strangest craving for a strawberry-banana smoothie. I could see the cloud solidifying into naked flesh covered in strange black runes. With a single, precise motion, it jabbed its clawed fingers into the Backbone’s breast and tore out a chunk of flesh. It—he, really, judging by the voice—wolfed the flesh down. Then, with a smile, I watched him tear out chunk after chunk of flesh as the Devil’s Backbone shrieked in horror, even as the Backbone pissed himself.

One of the runes exploded as the nebulous horror broke apart the Backbone’s spine, sucked the marrow out, and then masticated and swallowed the entire backbone. Cracks spread along the wall and ceiling from the explosion’s epicenter, but with the sight before me, I could hardly care.

And then the Devil’s Backbone was nothing more than a gory pile of shit-filled intestines on the ground and smears of blood along the nebulous creature. The thing made a weird cat-like purr of satisfaction before turning his beady eyes to me and offering a smile thrice bigger than its head should have allowed for. It was so big that it exposed even his bloodstained white molars to the light. He bent down and picked one of the few things he hadn’t eaten, the Backbone’s jaw. Curling his spindly yet meaty fingers around it, he took a step towards me, and I took a step back.

The undulating mass of black nebula suddenly infused itself again with stars as crimson hues mixed with the black in a way that reminded me of a chocolate-swirl milkshake. Smile dying, he sniffed at the air with a nose that looked more like a cancerous sharkfin than a nose. And as I came to notice the Kruzifix dangling from his neck and resting comfortably on his chest, I also came to notice that it wasn’t that his smile was dying, his lips were literally sowing themselves shut from the edges in. His mouth issued two audible clicks as I saw teeth in his maw shifting position as if being carried by a million fleshy ants.

When finally his mouth looked to only be as big as it should have been on his head, he smiled again. “Long days and pleasant nights to thee.” His old voice was like a hooffull of burning smoothstone locked in a deep crevasse. When I didn’t reply, he frowned. “The tongue feels wrong in my mouth. Mine ears say it is spoken right, but it is… uncomfortable.” He eyes flicked to Cards and Dust. “Three of you. Sexual dimorphism. Two female, one male. Thy harem?”

“I-I—no,” I stammered. “Those are not a, uh, feature of my culture.” A rune exploded somewhere, not that I paid any attention at all to it. There was something about this thing that made it impossible to take my eyes off.

The thing stared at me and gave an almost audible click from the back of his throat. “Culture,” he said as if tasting the word. “The mares are thy zhah-rey?”

“Zhah-rey?” Sounds French, almost. Even the R was a gutturally trilled R.

He paused. “It is not a word that you have. Zhah… would be… Zhah is the physical yet nigh imperceptible representation of the chains that bind: the all-powerful force that guides the course of all, the omnipotent force that holds together all of the worlds not destroyed in the war between the Elder Gods.” He scrunched his face. “My forefathers told me that the Elder Gods were destroyed when the One True God awoke from its billions-of-years-long slumber to lead my tribe against those who has strayed from the One True God’s path. Still other forefathers have said the Elder Gods were not deities of evil but rather were stray, greedy lambs from the same flock as my tribe is descended from, that they were our lost tribes. The truth was lost to time eons ago. In any case, I suppose you could call zhah ‘fate’, but that is inadequate.” He shook his head. “A zhah-rey is a group brought together by the zhah.”

The thing took a step forward, then froze. He looked around as if being naked in front of a school classroom. In fact, he was naked, but only I was really staring at him. With a grimace of his face, he looked at us ponies. “The little one is dying. The bigger one is dying. Thou art dying. Bloodloss.” Another rune exploded, and a chunk of ceiling came crashing down. “Too many have died in this place over the millennia. I can feel their spirits. They do not know they are dead. They are watching us. This is a dark place. I do not like how they stare at me.”

More runes exploded. The very earth shook as pieces of wall and ceiling tumbled to the ground, kicking up clouds of limestone-smelling dust that I was pretty sure were hazardous to breathe. Twenty years later and it’d probably give me lung cancer. Today just couldn’t get any better, could it? He strode forwards with a strange sort of swagger, his hands balled and his arms swaying. As the top of his head became fully solid, I saw that the top of his head was a smooth layer of skin decorated with those same black runes as on his arms. I took step back. He wasn’t even so much as jogging, but his each stride took him absurdly far.

“The sin of damnation is near,” he said. “Allow me to help your Zhah-rey.”

“Are you a demon?” I blurted out.

He tilted his head at me. His feet materialized, and I saw they were not feet of any that I could recognize. They were each like four-pronged stilts stabbing at the ground like fleshy talons, and from each ankle extended smaller, metallic spidery legs in a circular formation. Rather like the world’s worst pom-poms, really. “Demon? No. I am a… the guardian of something long dead. In my day, they ingrained my name into my flesh so that I never forget who I was and am. I am simply named C.” The little spidery legs around his feet retracted into his flesh. “But in the days of yore, they called me a… Skendwalkarijaz.” C frowned. “It means—” a pause “—it means skinwalker, one who walks in the skins of others.”

He strolled up to Cards. The mare only whimpered weakly as he scooped her up in this nebulous arms. She tried to struggle, but there was no fight left in the mare. “This one is the most dead,” C stated. “I will help her. She is of good heart.” More of the caves shook and tremored. “We have at most two minutes before we meet Zhomala-cum-zhah.” He paused. “Meet the bad harvest song.” He paused. “Meet death, that is.”

“Why are you helping?” I asked, stumbling towards him. It wasn’t a question I could hold back.

The skinwalker looked at me. “As the last of the skinwalker’s line, it is my holy duty,” he said cooly. “All hail to the skinwalker: praise to the Skahlzhinh and the King.” C slid his fingers to Cards’ head and rubbed her ear. “Maid of sorrow, your times fades by—my world moved on eons ago, but I will not let you or your world fade just yet.” He shifted Cards, carrying her now just under one arm. With his free hand, C performed a strange gesture, holding the hand up, twisting one finger tend and holding the others . Then he strode over to Lightning Dust, who was only barely hanging on to consciousness. “I suspect that I could carry her, too. Or I could carry the male. Not the both. I do not believe that without my help you will survive.”

A single dreadful thought overtook me. The Devil’s Backbone was dead, and I was not the one who killed him. That meant one thing and one thing only: the Kodex would remain unrepaired. The only way to deal with a monster is to kill it. I bit my lip. Heroes never die, right? Right.

“Help her,” I said to him in a flat voice.

“GB,” Dust groaned, reaching a hoof out to me as C picked her up.

“GB? This is his name?” C asked the pegasus.

“No, my name is Jericho,” I replied.

Dust blinked hard. “Wait, what?!”

“Yeah, my name is Jericho.”

From under C’s arm, Dust looked at me as if I’d just betrayed her. “But I… Why didn’t you ever tell me!?”

I shrugged. “You never asked.”

C affixed me a hard look. “Well then, Jericho-tsaius, I have something to tell thee: The end of the road lies, straight ahead it lies. For done is done. From here shall there be no turning back. All journeys must to an end come.” With a deep, rumbling roar that nearly blew apart my eardrums in the enclosed but large room, something exploded. Chunks of walls were coming down, ceiling falling, ground trembling. “Catchst thou my meaning, Jericho-tsaius?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Hmm…” he hummed. “Long days and pleasant nights to thee, then, Jericho-tsaius. But with an abomination such as I now awakened, I can now discern one thing for certain: the march of time is now begun.” He dropped the jawbone of the Devil’s Backbone at my hooves.

I blinked and he was gone. Just gone, like he was never there in the first place. I blinked again and my nose was bleeding, my head pounding. In the next moment I was screaming, clutching my head as my nose, ears, and forehead bled. Gritting my teeth, I willed myself to stop screaming. Where was I? Lying on the ground? Scheiße! I struggled to stand back up, the pain throbbing and smashing and aching and stabbing and drilling all across my head and the wounds on my torso.

Looking down, I saw what looked like a spent rune. God’s blood, they were everywhere, and they couldn’t have been here a second ago! Why didn’t I have the foresight to bring corn products? I looked up and did not see Cards, did not see Lightning Dust, did not witness C. In fact, aside from all the blood, the only evidence that others had been in here with me was the pile of intestines over by the throne.

Had… had there even been a C? a thought asked. Had I even brought Cards and Dust down here with me? Or had I… had I killed them like I killed Sleepy Oaks, and simply don’t remember? What if without the Code I actually decided why not damn myself even further, and because there were girls I... Then I swallowed and looked down. No! It had happened, and the girls are fine! I willingly chose to save them over myself—the Code is not satisfied, but there is tape over the break.

As I wiped the blood from my forehead and tried to ignore the feeling of something only barely being attached to my head, I looked up at the ceiling. “Oh. I don’t know what kind of rune you are, but judging by how you’re all broken from the exploding ceiling, and how there’s all sorts of explosives spell runes all over the floor here, ten Mark say that that rune was designed to magically hide the other runes or something. Because the Devil’s Backbone was both a flamboyant schemer and a want-to-be painter.”

I looked down and grabbed the jawbone off the floor. Stashing it in my bag, I looked at the doorway leading to the elevator. My legs did what I had no time to think about as more runes ignited into fiery explosions. I felt metal and stone shrapnel claw at my cheeks, most of them brushed aside from. God, how did I even have this much blood to lose? This was getting ridiculous. I should open a one-stallion blood bank.

My lungs heaved in dusty air, and I had to fight to hold back a coughing fit. Into the dark tunnel I went as the large room collapsed. It was like the end of the world behind me, the cataclysmic crash of a million tons of stone, the fire and roar of explosions, the feeling of a thousand secrets forever lost in that ruble.. Somewhere far beyond in the darkness were the double doors, and the only reason I couldn’t see them was because they’d been closed. By what, I didn’t know, but it was a mystery I didn’t care to solve.

And here were the doors at last. I put a hoof on them to open them. They opened alright. I was halfway through the barely opened doors and looking at the stone bridge and—my world ended. A wave of fire and pressure tore me apart, nearly limb from limb as I was thrown onto the ground. It took me a moment to register the pain, to realize that there had even been an explosive rune on the door, and that I was missing my left eye.

No, scratch that. I missing part of my left eye, enough to kill my vision. In the light of the glowing crystals, I could see a small piece of my eye resting on my duster, and feel liquid weeping from my torn eye. And as I tried to lift my head, I saw the eyeball simply fall out of my eye, just like that meatball in that old child’s song about the meatball that got sneezed off its plate and ended up as a drug-dealer. For a second, I was staring into my own eye. It bounced around, held in place by sole virtue of being attached to its flesh stalk. But then it made contact with something else hanging onto my face by mere tendrils of perforated flesh. It was a hard, pointy object with a vaguely sharp end.

My heart did not beat for what felt like a full moment. Thinking hard against the murderous agony in my skull, I tried to levitate the eyeball back. The little thing dangling from my hornhead sparkled, then, with a wet schlop, the horn fell off. No new wave of pain, no explosion of fear, I just watched it fall off, bounce off my eyeball, and merrily roll off as if there was candy over there.

“Huh,” I said. “That’s bad.” With an almost dreamlike slowness unbefitting the collapsing underground, I raised a hoof and felt at the base of my horn. There was just a weird bony mark there. “The antithesis of good, in fact.” I manually picked up my eyeball, opened my eyelid as wide as I could, and pushed it back into my skull. I snapped the eyelid shut as hard as I could and never stopped holding it hard. “I’m an earth pony now. Jetzt bin ich ein Erdling.”

And then somehow I was standing up. I don’t know how I got there. It was probably gnomes, the same ones that’d stared at me menacingly like from the front lawn of my across-the-street neighbor back when I was a colt. Nothing hurt any longer. That meant I was in shock, that my organs were shutting down and I was about to die. Neat.

In the next second, I had my own bloody horn in my teeth. It tasted like copper, just like blood. Or like that one time I thought it’d be a good idea to put a bunch of coins in my mouth. Oh, hey, look. It was the ocelot, running around all terrified. I tried to greet it, but I couldn’t speak with a detached part of my body in my mouth. I almost thought Ugh, this can’t possibly get any worse, but then I also thought that this would’ve been tempting fate—and then a giant stalagmite… stalactite… a giant stalag fell from the roof of the cave and smashed into the stone bridge leading to the elevator, destroying the bridge utterly.

“Hey, that’s not fair!” I tried to yell. “You can’t do that; I was just saying it as an example!” Of course, it probably came out as a muffled series of grunts, but it sounded pretty coherent to me. So then. That limited my options. There was no way I could jump that, and the river’s current looked too strong to safely swim across. And with no horn, I wasn’t going to levitate myself across the gap. Not that any unicorn I ever met or knew could even do that. Well, maybe Jan Sobieski, a Bibliothekar—a unicorn trained by the Reich from childhood to wield their psychic powers for the Reich. Because magic was dangerous. Psychic powers were A-okay.

No! a voice in my head bellowed. Stay focused, or have you forgotten the face of your father?! Then another voice, a distant memory said, Make every swing of the sword count! For the sake of the mothers who bore you and the faces of the fathers who smiled upon you! Father’s cold eyes flashed through my head. The Mann seemed to take a special joy in utterly lacking any emotions, whether out of cold contempt for me or if that was really who he was, I never knew.

In a moment of thought, I put my destroyed horn into a pocket. “Perhaps I am just a madpony—ein Irrer—who’s dreamt of being sane for far too long.” Then, stepping forwards as rocks fell into the river with titanic splashes that deafened me, I whispered, “Pleasant dreams die; unpleasant ones live forever.”

So I laughed hard as reality slowly trickled back into my mind. As a pillar holding up this station-like place buckled and collapsed in a spray of dust and rock, I laughed. It was hilarious—I was now an earther because my horn had been blown off; my eye had been perforated and was now only kept in my skull because I was clenching the eye shut so hard, and it was probably going to get infected and it’d need to be cut out; there was a panicking ocelot running around as demonic runes blew this ancient underground straight to hell without any care for the millions of years it must have taken the water to carve this cave out; and now the only way out of this place was gone! It was the epitome of humor.

Laughter was like a hurricane: when it got strong enough, it became self-feeding, self-supporting. You didn’t laugh because the jokes was funny, but rather because your very own condition was just hysterical. The storm got even stronger when the only choices you even had anymore were either to laugh or to cry. I was going to die cold and alone in a dark cave no one would ever find again, coughing as I laughed and bleeding to death from several wounds, and for what? Nothing. That was what. And that was just the funniest thing I’d ever thought of.

But every storm has its eye, the place where it is utterly calm and orderly, and that place was the center of my mind. My body laughed, struggled to even stand from uncontrollable fits of laughing and coughing. With all of my willpower, I sauntered forwards, up onto the ruined bridge. I walked into something, and I almost opened my left eye. Angling my head to look at it, I saw it was fallen block of stone from somewhere. Right then. Missing an eye. Still had to get used to that. Back to walking the bridge

I smiled at I reached the edge of the broken bridge and stared into the rushing rapids below. It was the first honest smile I’d had in hours, and it was better than any orgasm. If I was going to die, I’d be damned if I’d let it be from something as stupid as a random series of traps painted by a demon who failed art class while I was on a quest from some idiotic Duke with a fetish for his Princess.

So I did the only rational thing.

I jumped into the rushing currents of the icy underground river and let myself be swept under the current and into the darkness. Because fuck you, Duke Elkington, Princess Celestia, the Devil’s Backbone, Father, and my third-grade math teacher. It was a good thing that committing a heroic sacrifice like I had was a temporary guarantee from God that you’d survive the unsurvivable. Right? Right?

Oh dear God, I’ve made a terrible mistake.

Author's Note

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Fatty Fat Fat Fat Fat — You are a fat pony and no one likes you. On the plus side, you now gain more health from fatty foods, like French Silk Pie. This means that with food in your stomach, healing potions work extra hard and heal for even more! Of course, it also means you’ll die of high blood pressure in about thirty years, but whatever. It doesn’t matter that you’re actually pretty svelte, I’ll still call you fat now that you have this perk. You fat bastard.

Companion Perk Lost: Dealt Her Hand, Cards

Companion Perk Lost: Dust to Dust, Lightning Dust

End of Act 1 — That Government Boy

To be continued in:

Act 2 — Thy Flesh Consumed

Chapter 17 — Mud

Chapter 17: Mud

“How about ‘a medium amount of dirty, not too little, not too much, just right’?”

Pain.

Some ponies can take a lot of pain without whining. Some ponies can also lie like a rug. And I don’t mean just any rug; I mean one of those Purrsian rugs made by that weird tribe of zebras in the Südlanden that trains cats to sew together really high-quality rugs that, despite lasting forever, perpetually smell of cat piss and old mares who will never be laid ever again in their sad, wrinkly lives. Despite me being the kind that lies, I uniquely do not smell of cat piss and never-to-be-laid mares. In fact, I think I smell of mud, pony piss, rotting flesh, and French silk pie at this moment in time.

|— ☩ —|

Have you ever tried to scream through your nose? Just keep your mouth clenched tightly and then try to shriek the N sound. Doing it angrily is optional but cool. See, I had just found out that I could do this because I really wanted to scream in agony. My left eye was pretty much dead and only kept in its socket by a clenched eyelid, my horn had fallen off, and my mouth was so numb from the icy water of the underground river that I wasn’t sure I could even work my jaw. Of course, this lead me to the discovery that screaming through my nose tickled my sinuses, and so I found myself screaming at once because I really wanted to scream but also because the tickling feeling in my sinuses made me giggle.

The tickling having reminded me that morale was such a thing to be had, I managed to open my eyes—no! Just the one eye, the right one. Remember, Jericho: keep leftie-eye closed. So I managed to open my good eye and look around. It was mud. My favorite. I was lying almost face-down in mud. But there was something else. I could see the mud—sunlight was pouring down on me and my best bud, Mud of Lud von Blood. That meant that I was outside, which was odd, considering how deep underground I must have been.

A thought about the possibility of standing up crossed my mind. It was appealing in the same way an overly eager mare was to a stallion who didn’t swing that way. The mud was nice. The sunlight was okay. The water sloshing up against my legs was cold, a little tide running up to my ass.

Wait. Water?! With a speed I should not have been able to muster, I managed to launch myself out of the water and into a stand and—oh dear God, eyeball bouncing around the inside of my skull. That was a new feeling for sure. With my good eye, I observed a thick, murky marsh-forest stretched out before me, like a mangrove forest. Then I realized there was a loud roaring sound coming from my left, and I realized I’d been hearing it the whole time. There was a waterfall, not a massive one like some of the falls back home, just a rather quaint one falling into a gutter-like stream that flowed into the murky bogwater that’d been submerging the lower half of my body for God-only-knew how long.

Then it occurred to me again that I didn’t know how I’d gotten here, and just how little sense me even being here made. I imagined a Deux ex Machina from the olden days, some pony dressed in a toga being loaded onto a stage via a wooden crane, only for the cable holding him up to snap, sending him plummeting to the ground and killing two fellow actors. In this analogy, I was the wooden stage.

I rubbed my cheek with a hoof, only to get a foul-smelling muck all over my cheek. “Oh. Oh, yeah, great. Just great. Thanks, Deus ex Machina!” I stamped my forehooves in the mud, splattering it all over myself. “Dammit, be smarter!” Something made a rapid series of throaty clicks to my right, and I twisted my head to it and demanded, “And what do you want for Weihnachten, little girl?!”

Two things stopped my thoughts, cutting them dead and replacing them with new ones. The first was that I wasn’t actually sure what language I was speaking. The other was that there a crab-like octopus just sort of sitting there on the murky water’s surface. It was as big as a small dog, was clutching onto the muddy shore of the bog with two tentacles that ended in savage pincers, had a head-sized body that resembled a bony octopus, and probably would go well with a side of chips.

“Um,” I tried, “you wouldn’t happen to have the time, would you? Maybe directions to a fancy restaurant? Know how to give a good massage?”

Instead of reply, it slid a tentacle almost tentatively towards me and poked my hoof with its pincer. The little creature gave a shake of its whiskers as if to say, “Huh. Big deal.” I took a cautious step back, up the muddy embankment. The friendly bogtopus ruffled its cat-like whiskers again, and then stood up on six titanic, crab legs that stabbed into the murky water, raising its body to about the height of my chest.

With a roar of sharp clicks, it lunged for me. A pincer tore at a forehoof, severing a chunk of flesh. My first reaction was to draw my sword, but when I tried to telekinect my sword, a searing migraine nearly torn my skull in two. I no longer had a horn, Scheiße! I felt a chunk of hoof crack and splinter off as its vice-like pincer bore down on them. But rather than scream and flail at the loss of forty-percent of my right hoof, I simply groaned and thought with vague amusement, Well, at least I jerk off with the left hoof. Though I can’t remember the last time I tired to m—

It rammed a pincer into my breast, the claw burying deep within the wound from the demon’s sword. Screaming, I failed backwards, falling onto my back. I freed myself from his stab, but now blood spurted freely from the open wound. The combined force was enough to make me involuntarily clench shut and then jerk open both eyes, and my left eyeball fell out and started to dance a jig to my suffering.

The bogtopus seemed to think this was the perfect opportunity to help me get rid of the penis that’s been such a dead weight between my legs, and I bucked its pincer away as best I could. It stabbed a hindhoof and snipped something off, but I couldn’t care less at that moment. See, then it thought maybe, just maybe, I’d help it achieve its lifelong goal of becoming a barber. And as its pincers reached for my hoof eye, I realized that I loved crushing the dreams of things that were technically smaller than me.

I rolled to the side, its pincer only nicking my cheek. “You have no manners!” I bellowed, jumping to my feet. Sharps pangs of agony ran up from my broken hooves as the bogtopus issued an almost curious series of clicks. “I agree, the current Equestrian government’s economic policy is bonkers!” I shouted, ramming it with my shoulder. Even though it was a terrible idea, my loose eye even smacking me across the face, the move knocked the bogtopus off balance, and it tumbled into the mud with me.

There was a hefty stone near where we’d fallen. I was about to levitate it up, only to stop before I started. Bad idea. So I reached over and fumbled with the rock, trying to get it into my hoof. Compared to the levitation, which I had grown so used to over the years, the task was almost impossible. But it wasn’t as if I couldn’t pick up, hold, and carry things with my hooves.

It swelled and clicked, kicking its legs uselessly against my much bigger body. The bogtopus stabbed at my face with a pincer, only to spear my ear straight through and giving me flashbacks to the night I surgically had to remove part of Cards’ ear. In return, I smashed its soft, shitty body again and again and again with the rock, spattering myself with teal-blue blood. Again and again I smashed, even when I knew it was dead. I had never been so fundamentally hurt by another living thing before—the Devil’s Backbone got me from the grave, so he didn’t count.

When I was done, I was straddling a terrifying creature with a pulpy head and body, myself covered in a weird gore. I panted and coughed, coughed and panted. “Stupid sonofabitch!” I snarled, and beat it some more. “I hope you have a bogtopus wife, and that she finds you and dies of a broken heart! And then your bogtopus children all starve to death after turning to a life of drugs, prostitution, and crime! I actually wish I could bring you back to life, give myself some life-ending STD, and then fornicate with you just so that you’d die of that STD!” Dropping the rock, I tumbled off the bogtopus’ gory remains and tumbled into the mud, coughing and panting, bleeding and wheezing. Not even awake and relishing in life for five goddamn minutes and already things were trying to kill me.

A slow, creeping realization worked its way cooly up my spine. My eye was still hanging from its socket and resting almost playfully upon my cheek. But that wasn’t the realization. The realization was that there was mud on my eye, that the eyeball was dirty, and that the flesh was necrotic. I could actually smell death on the eye, especially because it was snuggling up with my nose. Gritting my teeth, I tried not to think of the one, final solution to the eye problem. But the more I tried not to think about it, the more I did.

I would never see out of my left eye again. I had to cut it out to stop an infection. Stand up! a voice ordered, and I did. My arms and legs carried themselves over to the rocky walk by the waterfall; there the land was actually dry rock and flat. Looking over my shoulder to check if there were any more of the little monsters, I observed the bloody hoofprints I’d left walking the very short distance to these dry rocks. The thought that I had no idea what that thing really was and if its pincers were venomous made my stomach do a backflip, but all the judges gave it the five-point-oh at best. To say nothing of how dirty my wounds were. I might not have known how I was still alive, but I had a pretty good idea of how I’d die.

Bracing myself for what I had to do, I did something for the first time in Equestria that everypony thought was just so normal: I stripped down to the flesh and fur. It was a miracle that I still had my bags, and that they were all fine and dandy. Taking deep breaths, I checked my naked body over for any wounds I might not have noticed, but only found the reopened chest wound, the pierced ear, and the bleeding hooves. A strange feeling that Cherry “Mares can’t rape stallions” Berry was out in the bog with a snorkeler, staring at me, refused to shake itself from the back of my mind.

I ruffled through a bag and pulled out a small package of food. It wasn’t much, but combined with a healing potion, it was enough to stop the bleeding, and by some miracle, it managed to reunite my recently pierced ear. No longer would I be able to wear ludicrously massive earrings, though. Then I pulled out a pair of scissors, surgical thread, a sewing needle, and took a breath.

Have you ever tried to cut really thick construction paper, but instead of cutting, the paper just awkwardly folds up and twists into the scissors? Yeah, that was pretty much how I’d describe the act of trying to sever an optic nerve with a pair of scissors. It didn’t help that without the absurdly precise fine manipulation skills that a unicorn was privy to, this was pretty much impossible, but so long as I remembered the face of my father, my hooves would be steady. There was also the little mirror I’d found in my bag. It helped only a bit. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Only the strongest snips could cut the thick optic nerve.

And then it finally, finally, came loose and fell upon the rock. Some ponies can lie like a rug and feign having no pain. But all on my own, in the middle of nowhere, and having just cut out the lovely left eye which had been with me since before I was born, I didn’t… or rather, couldn’t hide it… because I wasn’t done yet. Not by a longshot. There was still the needle and the thread.

|— ☩ —|

My breaths slow and almost foreign to me, I leaned against the rock wall next to the waterfall. A hoof slowly came up and touched my left eyelid, the broken, jagged hoof feeling the triple layer of stitches. Never had I been a doctor, as my left eyelid could attest to. I brought the mirror up to my face. Without an eyeball and with my left eyelids sewn shut, my face looked hollow. In fact, I looked pale and sickly, like an old stallion on his deathbed, about to sign a will that granted all of his world possessions to his poodle, because his children were dicks. There was not enough blood in my body, and I could feel its lack. The last of my food had been eaten to survive the bogtopus.

I had counted the days I’d been in this godforsaken country. Judging by the sun, this was the eighth day. It took only eight days for this country to do to me what the rest of the world had failed to do. I had to hand it to Celestia, for the queen bitch of a nation of peaceful, love-the-earth, take-only-what-you-need naked pansies, she must’ve had a titanic set of balls to actually rule this evil place.

Then I recalled an old fact I’d learned somewhere that a certain external female sex organ responsible for her orgasm was a part of the female body that never stopped growing. Mature mares had bigger ones than young mares. And because in the womb, that external female organ was from what the penis actually formed from, it could get an erection. And if that science held true for thousands of years, then Princess Celestia must have had a certain external female organ larger than any penis, and capable of acting as one. After all, it was not an entirely unheard of, though absurdly and thankfully rare, disease that caused that female external organ to grow in size and essentially look like—but not function exactly as—a penis. The mental image of a tiny Cards wearing a fancy hat was now amended with a giant psuedo-penis. My testicles actually shriveled a little at that thought.

I resolved suddenly that if I survived this mess, I was going to ask Princess Celestia if I could examine her lady bits to see if she technically had a bigger penis than me. Maybe even have a sword fight with them like bonobos had. If that meant having to seduce her and then spend the rest of the night crying in shame and possibly pain, then in the name of science, so be it! Nature was so fascinating.

“What the hell?” I asked my head. I suspected that the bloodloss was getting to me, if only because that helped me cope with having just thought that though. “That previous line of thinking did not just happen… I need to see a doctor.” And so I closed my eyes, and rested my head against the rocky wall behind me. The sun was low, and I needed the sleep. It might restore some blood. So I drifted off into a good sleep. It was a good sleep because I did not dream.

|— ☩ —|

In the morning, I found out that I was still alive and hadn’t been castrated in the middle of the night by vengeful bogtopi. I also found a red line emerging from my right arm and running a few centimeters up, and the lines were as hard as a rock. What it was was simple: blood poisoning, and there was nothing I could do about that except to pray.

After I once again checked my naked body for all the fancy new scars I’d gotten within the last eight days, I used the last of my gauze to help bind my chest wounds. The scabs, to me, looked about as solid as the head of a goose after having a four-tonne weight dropped on it. Putting on fresh clothes, buttoning up my duster, adjusting my hat, and saddling up, I set off to the east, towards the direction of where I knew the coast eventually was, where I knew I’d find Equestrian hegemony. This meant going towards the waterfall and away from where the bogtopus had come from. I made a promise to heaven that if I ever saw another bogtopus, I would become a one-stallion genocide machine and destroy their entire species, turning their entire race into a fancy line of hats for the absurdly wealthy, because I figured Equestria was elitist enough to have a market for that kind of thing.

I climbed up the rocks and found that the swamp extended westward in a large basin. Up here were little forested hills, and I followed the fall’s stream until it ended not but a few miles to the east, where trickles of natural streams all poured out. Still no explanation as to how I got here from the underground river.

A little further up ahead and I reached another moor. Here, though, there was much more solid land, a lot less water, but still mostly water and muck. I could actually walk (hop, skip, and jump) through this infernal moor. But going through this place was slow. At this pace, I figured it’d take me about a day to go as far as I could go in a few hours on normal land. I promised some higher power that when I got out of here, I’d help save the world by burning down a wetland. How exactly I’d go about burning down wetlands didn’t occur to me. Around five in the afternoon, I was just singing songs about everything and nothing to stave the boredom off.

“Oh, I am the king of the swamp.

Was crowned by God, not by the church,

As my power comes direct from waffles.

Death to the bogtopus,

Put them in camps, destroy them all.

Ooh, look at that frog!

I say, hey!

Look at that frog, sitting there.

Ooh, if I keep singing,

Maybe I’ll forget the fact that I’m a…

Chiiiiild kiiiiiiller—yeah.”

And then I was sad for the rest of the day.

On the second day, I awoke with a fever, sweating like a pig who’s realized that his owners cleaned him and that he is no longer covered in shit. The hard red lines were running further and further up my arm, and within a few days, they’d be up to my heart, and I would die. Generally speaking, I figured that this was not a good thing, though I’d been wrong before. So as I sat there on a little isle of dirt in the swamp that second morning, I listened to the calls of the birds and distant howls of animals that I didn’t even pretend to recognize, and I started out across the moor and towards all the trees that blocked my view.

I imagined that if I had chosen a useful career path like a lumberjack, I’d be in no problem. I could cut down a few trees, kill a few bears, and forge a boat out of those to sexily cross the bog in style. I imagined trading in my duster and hat for a plaid shirt, a thick beard, and an axe, going around saving the world with my inherent lumberjack superpowers. Yes indeed, I’d travel around Equestria with my flying longboat crewed by exactly twelve gnomes and solve crimes. Oh, and at one point, I’d land my flying longboat, get out, and alongside my crew go break Duke Elkington’s knees with a bat.

A branch snapped to the north, and I jerked my head towards the sound. It was there for only a second before I blinked and it vanished: the tail of a black coat worn by a pony fleeing to the north. Though they were gone behind the trees and isles, I could hear them. Had the pony been standing there, watching me as I aimlessly thought?

Forcing my body onto my hooves, I called out, “Hey! Hey! I’m a friend! Can you help me? I swear I’m not an evil lumberjack yet!” I heard the sound getting quieter and quieter, and so I did the rational thing. I chased after the pony. As I got to where the figure had vanished, I saw no evidence that a pony had even been through here. I left indents and splashes and displacements and ripples in the water. None of that was here. I twisted my neck and eyes every which way, looking for the pony.

Far further away than a pony should have been able to go, I saw them standing there. Correction: saw her standing there. I saw that she was wearing a sort of coat not unlike but still not quite like the one I wore, and that it was navy blue and not black. From her little rocky island, she stared at me, her face obscured by a mask the color of bleached bones. The mask came with a large beak like a… sonofa… she was wearing a plague mask, like in the old stories where the Priester traveled around plagued lands to help people, often beating themselves with whips because it was hilarious to see at your birthday party as leprosy ate your tiny filly limbs. I couldn’t see anything of her actual body under her coat and mask.

“Miss!” I called out, raising a hoof. In the next instant, she was gone. Back up to the north. Great, I thought, the first Equestrian girl I meet who doesn’t want to use, kill, or rape me, and she’s running away. “Miss, come back!” I yelled, trying to navigate across the swamp after her. “I can give a really good back massage and I’m house-trained! I don’t really know what ‘house-trained’ means, but I’ve been led to believe it is a desirable trait. Though, to be fair, I don’t play well with others. When I was a toddler, I got banned from daycare because I tried to install myself as Lord-Protector of the Daycare and locked all the daycaring staff in a closet for daaays!”

So on I chased like a puppy chasing the master who randomly beats and loves it. The audacity of hope, eh? Even though I could feel a sort of pus of infection in my sewn eyelid, even though I could feel my chest bleeding under the gauze, even though I was sure my fever was at thirty-nine degrees (which I quick and dirtily multiplied in my head to one-hundred-and-eight degrees by Equestrian measurement, which I knew was wrong because that temperature usually meant death), I ran through the swamp.

This might have been a bad time to think about it, but I was also wearing socks at this moment. Of course, I was wearing them under my boots in order to keep everything neat and tidy as I slogged through swamp water and mud. Yet it struck me at that exact moment that I could never take off my boots in the company of others. If I did, I was sure some old southern mare would start to fan herself and go, “Oh, dearie me—I believe I have the vapors.” Then some strange stallion would pat me on the shoulder, wink, and say, “Oh, you dirty rapscallion, you.” And it would be pointless to try to explain to them that I wasn’t wearing them because I had a hoof fetish like they had, but because I was trying to be very clean. Stupid Equestrian sexual kinks. I bet that the first thing the Cherrypillar would have done to me back at Modern Times was suckle on my hooves, and that was a mental image I could not unsee. A thought that maybe with broken hooves I was now utterly repulsive to Equestrians also occurred to me.

I darted through a thick bush and came out near a little island. It was a patch of dark green grass with a lonely, dead tree upon the hill at the island’s center. Surrounding it was a treeless circle of dark water. I ran for the patch of land, hopping across rocks until I set my forehooves onto its dry soil, my hinds splashing in the water. Twisting my neck around to see if I’d caught on some root, I saw not a root but a filly with dusty eyes. My heartblood congealed into an icy, gel-like substance.

“Blossom…?” I muttered, staring into the huge furrow of flesh carved out of her little body from my sword. My fever pulsed, my arms and leg felt weak.

She opened her little mouth, a centipede crawling out of it and jumping into the water. “Why?” Blossom asked. Her grip on my leg tightened. “Why!?”

I twisted, grabbed her head—“No! That’s a bad filly!”—and slammed it dead into a rock. “Die, hallucination, die!” I looked around, expecting a small army of dead children to attack me. None came. Frowning, I looked back at the corpse-filly and saw that I had apparently killed some sort of beaver. Good. One less monster seeking to destroy all of ponykind. Backing out of the water, I tried to steady my thumping heart. “Great. Now I’m seeing things.” I turned up and screamed into the sky, “No! I will not be made to feel guilty over things. Stop trying!”

Taking measured, controlled breaths, I trotted up the island, up to the tree. “I hate you, tree, because you are probably symbolic of something. Impotency, maybe. In fact…” I looked at my flank “…I’m not entirely sure I can get it up. I mean, I just haven’t been in a situation where anything has interested me that much in years, but I don’t think anything happened to it. Heck, even when this evil mare was literally straddling me and undressing herself on top of me just last week, I didn’t feel anything down there. But would you believe me if I told you that I haven’t woken up with morning wood in years?”

From the far corner of this little clearing, I could see the mare with the plague mask staring at me. As she saw me looking, she darted into the forested bog and vanished from sight. “Hey, lady with the plague mask!” I yelled out. “Do you have any antibiotics? I’m sort of dying over here.” I trotted down after her. “Hey, if you’re running because you think it’s creepy that I was discussing morning wood with a tree, don’t be creeped out! I actually an okay guy for the most part. I’m even helpful and charitable!”

Tripping over a rock, I slammed my face into the dirt. believe it or not, this was actually a very novel experience because I hit my head in such a way that would have been impossible with a horn, bringing pain to a part of my body that had been unmolested for its whole life. “I mean,” I tried some more, standing up, “I once met this guy who was really sad about having a small penis, and I told him, ‘Want to know how to make your penis bigger?’ And he’s all, ‘Yes!’ So I tell him, ‘Then try having an erection!’ Long story short, he and his tribesponies made me their Chief Seer, which was actually pretty horrible because the Chief Seer was personally responsible for circumcising little boys and girls. And I don’t know about you, strange lady, but I don’t like the idea of cutting off vaginas—so I promise that I won’t try to do it to you!”

I jumped through the bush and nearly tripped and fell. I was exactly where I had entered the clearing from. The island and dead beaver were even still here. As I trotted and then slowed into a walk and finally ground down to a standstill, I was staring at the only real difference to this place: the fact that Cards and Lightning Dust were standing at the base of the tree, looking away from me.

Shaking my head, I trotted up to the island, ignoring the sounds of Cards sobbing, and how Lightning Dust had spread out a wing over Cards. “Hello, hallucinations.” They turned to me, Cards’ eyes red from tears and yet so utterly hateful. “Did you know that the word vagina actually comes from the ancient Latein word for ‘sheath’? As in, I currently keep my sword in a sheath. I put my sword in a vagina. Of course, auf Latein, it was pronounced more like ‘wah-gee-nah’, but it still counts.”

“You bastard!” Cards roared as I got near here. “What kind of monster makes jokes after what you… what you did?”

I shrugged. “The same kind that talks to hallucinations, apparently.”

Tears in her eyes, she pulled out her baton. “You… everyone… You killed everypony I ever knew. The stallions, the mares… the foals… All of them!”

“And to think,” Dust spat in an acerbic tone, “I called you my friend.”

“That’s very nice, but I’m talking to a tree right now,” I replied. “You’re not real.” Cards screamed and lunged at me. Rolling my eyes, I sidestepped her attack, grabbed her head, and threw her skull into the ground. With a single, casual motion, I stomped on and broke her neck. “There. Hallucination gone. Hey, Lightning Dust, do you know the way out of here?”

Rather than be a reasonable hallucination, she flapped her wings, hovered a few feet off the ground, and tried to tackle me. She was slow. I ducked down, she flew over me, and then I rammed my head straight into her gut as she flew above me. The hallucination let out a horrified garble as she dropped like a fly, rolled down the hill, and fell face-first into the water.

“I don’t like blood poisoning and all of these numerous infections I surely have,” I said to myself. “Because I seem to have some sort of mental disease that insists that I feel guilty for stuff. I sacrificed myself so that those mares could live. I know I’m not yet redeemed, and the Code is only held intact by duct tape, but it was a start!”

Somepony clapped their hooves. I looked up to the tree to see that mare sitting in the tree, her legs crossed as she clapped her forehooves. “Interesting outlook,” she said almost casually.

“I want to say that you’re not real, but something tells me you are real.” I adjusted my hat. “Do you have any antibiotics? Maybe a magazine about swords for me to read? A small child for me to bond with only to have to sacrifice her in order to obtain this mythical thing I’ve been lusting after my whole life?—ignoring how said object does not exist.”

“You know,” she went out in a voice that could make ‘good morning’ sound like an invitation to bed, “not many a stallion could so mercilessly kill his friends like that, hallucination or otherwise.”

“You know,” I said in a tone as close to hers as I could, “the word penis comes from the Latein ‘penis’, which used to mean ‘tail’ to them, and it still was the archaic word for ‘tail’ until the language died out. I find this funny because in my language, the word der Schwanz means ‘tail’, but it’s also slang for penis. I just find this connection to be amusing. So if I ever talk of my tail in any language, I’m referring to that fleshy thingy between my legs.”

“What?”

“Well, you said something utterly unrelated to what I said, so I figured I’d repay you in kind.” I narrowed my eyes. “Either give me some antibiotics or show me the way to Candyland, or I’m just walking away.”

The mare in the plague mask slid forwards and hopped out of the tree, landing on the grand with catlike grace. “Oh, I’ll give you something you need, alright.”

“That feels like a rape threat,” I said guardedly. “You know, where I’m from, the threat of succubi is very real, which is why we treat mare-on-stallion rape so seriously: it’s both morally horrific and the possible work of the succubus.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand you,” she said, inching up towards me. “When you get nervous, you start palavering. It’s a very strange defense mechanism. Kind of cute, in its own way.” She brought a hoof to her plague mask, lifted it just enough for me to see her lips. Then she lunged for me. Her lips forced themselves upon mine, and it was about as pleasant as dwarf with leprosy addicted to chewing tobacco.

When I blinked, I wasn’t in the swamp any longer. In fact, I wasn’t even in Equestria. I was in another life, from before the Dark Crusade. It was some sort of ballroom, a masquerade ball of some sort. Outside the large windows was the city of Zentrum, the governmental seat of the most powerful nation to ever reign upon this earth.

“Faust, huh?” the mare I was dancing slowly with commented in Teutsch. Her amber eyes reminded me of home. I was hit with a wave of disorientation as I realized that I was seeing her with both eyes, even though I could feel the stitches in my eye, the optic nerve bouncing around in my skull. “That’s an old name.” She flashed me an almost mischievous smile. “Then you can call me your Mephistopheles.”

I was struck with the sensation of having a working horn again just as soon as I was struck with the feeling of a literally God-given weapon on my hip. Looking over, I saw the lady with the navy blue uniform wearing a black masquerade mask. She slowly turned her head to look at me. Blue eyes, I thought. She has blue eyes. The blue-eyed mare winked at me, then vanished into the crowd of dancing ponies.

“Look, very nice meeting you, miss,” I said to my partner, “but you’re a hallucination and I’ve got something to hunt down.”

“I am not a hallucination,” she snapped back in a wounded tone.

“Yes, well, tough titty, said the kitty,” I replied in Equestrian, pulling out the weapon with my mind. It was such a good, natural feeling. Telekinesis. How I was going to miss you. “Everyone run!” I barked in Teutsch, firing the almost comically massive weapon for good measure. The absurdly masculine roar of the weapon just felt good. I missed that I had more munitions for it, but I didn’t, and so I never used it and its brother in the real world. But here in the land of hallucinations, I couldn’t care less for imaginary weapons.

The people here all screamed and scrambled for cover. Ol’ Blue Eyes was standing on the far side of the splitting crowd, by a large window that looked out upon a Zentrum night. She flicked me a smile before she dashed through the window. If this had been real, I would have pointed out that this should have either been impossible or severely cut her up to the point of major bloodloss. Instead, I just charged after her, holding my lone weapon high.

I really loved this weapon and its brother. The memory of where I’d gotten them ran through my mind. It was running through my mind because the image of a lake, murky forests, and warm sunlight flickered between the ballroom, like two realities vying for control of the very same place. The impossible sentation of my broken hooves landing not on stone, not on dewy grass, but upon both and yet neither at the exact same times nearly made me motion sick. Another me was lying there, having been stabbed through the chest—stabbing people in the chest, I had found out, was the customary way of greeting foreigners in most lands.

Like the very wind whispering its dark secrets into my ear, words spoken by an apparition of goodwill spoke to me, offering me holy arms. “Your angel told me that you were he to whom these were meant to be given. God Himself forged them for you, Jericho, just as He forged Kaledfulch for King Aloysius Pendergast, first king and founder of the Reich.”

The floating mare came down to me and held them out to me: two strange weapons and bandoliers filled with their munitions. “Think of them no different than how you think of your sword, Jericho: aim with the eye, shoot with the mind, kill with the heart, and forget not the face of your father.”

I leapt through the window, the place that was both a ballroom and a lakeside vanished as I tumbled down a short hill and into the gardens. Landing on my back, I found a hoof pressed tightly upon my throat. I looked up into her blue eyes. “Thou,” I croaked.

She bit the inside of her cheek. Biting the outside of her cheek would have been several kinds of freaky. “So, you are the Hanged Stallion.”

“Actually, my father named me Fffzzggrrll because he had an irrational phobia of vowels,” I said flatly.

“Were you aware that snark, playful sarcasm, was the mark of a prophet?” she asked. “All prophets in history—real ones, not evil sociopathic cult leaders, that is—”

“Which I would never be,” I added.

“—have been snarky?”

“Can you just get to the point? Just tell me what metaphorical demons of mine you represent and I’ll… give up sex or alcohol for a year or so to be rid of you. Sound fair?”

“Funny thing about that,” she said: “I’m actually real. Everything around us? That’s on thee. But thou and I? We’re real.” As I looked up into her eyes, something about them didn’t entirely seem pony. I couldn’t place my hoof on it, but they just looked… different.

“Weird choice of words,” I commented idly. “You remind me of that leprechaun I met last month who was really sad because he just found out that he wasn’t real. I offered to play the role of the rapist and help him to believe in himself.” She just looked down at me. “You know, because he’s a leprechaun.” No response. “And leprechauns don’t… nevermind.”

“What’s a leprechaun?” she asked.

“I believe it’s a small species of voraciously carnivorous trees,” I replied.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

We just sort of awkwardly stared at each other for what felt like a minute, but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. She took the initiative. “I-in any case, Hanged Stallion, a certain, uh, ‘mutual friend’ of ours led me here.”

“Is it that lesbian fiancée I accidentally had from that weird time I was a mare?” I asked.

“Look here, Hanged Stallion—”

“I appreciate the overly poetic title for ‘one who is thoroughly fornicated’, but—”

“Look!” she snapped, pressing her hoof harder on my throat. “The how and why are irrelevant, but I didn’t mean to show up. But to prove I’m real—” Blue Eyes pulled out and dropped a little purse on my chest. “I was told you tell you something, too. I was told to tell you: ‘The price of salvation is thy flesh consumed.’ Do you understand?”

“Autocannibalism is awesome?” I tried, but it came out as a little gurgle with her hoof on my throat.

“Oh, sorry. Is this better?” she asked, stepping off my throat, looking expectantly at the purse and I.

“Probably not,” I replied, and fired my weapon. Scheiße! I missed! I thought in the millisecond after the explosion of fire and light from my weapon. And then a hole appeared between her eyes, and she fell over dead, missing a good part of her brain. “And nevermind. Who doesn’t need a the rapist? I don’t. I am my own the rapist!”

The thousands of stars in the night sky all twinkled out. I glanced at the purse she’d given me, a sort of messenger bag that looked to have a respectable amount of carrying space, and seemed to have something inside it. Then the vision in my left eye flickered and died, the feeling of having a horn died, and the hallucinogenic reality around me faded from me.

I didn’t pass or phase out or anything cliché like that. One moment I was there, and in the now I was here in the dirt. But dirt was better than mud. A wave of vertigo hit me as I remembered that I no longer had that left eye, and that my optic nerve was jiggling and bouncing around in the empty hole where once its eye was. Rubbing my cheek with a hoof, I only scratched my face and sent a dull pain up my arm, the same arm where the hard lines of red were running through my vein. Worst of all, that really snazzy tuxedo I had on in the dream was gone!

With a tuxedo-less groan, I got to my hooves, trying to ignore the hot burn of fever. Let’s see: I’m under that same dead, white tree on that island. Nifty. Where’d that crazy hallucination mare go?

Then another thought answered. She was the only Equestrian mare who didn’t want to use, kill, or rape you. Of course she was just a figment of your imagination.

Sighing, my eyes drifted downwards, and my blood ran cold. Well, if it had, that’d’ve actually been really handy, what with the fever and the blood poisoning I had going on. There was that leather purse on the ground. For each second I looked at it, it looked more and more masculine and not at all like the typically girly purses those mares in Songnam had. And there was something inside it.

Bending forwards and only mostly sure that a bogtopus wasn’t going to come up from behind and fondle my genitals, I nosed the bag open. It had a drawstring of some sort, but it wasn’t tied or fastened in any way. There were four small boxes within the bag. I grabbed one with my teeth and pulled it out. It was a red thing of some kind of strong yet papery material, its edges all black, and it was heavier than it looked.

Looking down at it the box, I read the words inscribed upon it. “For the Hanged Stallion. 50 .45—Longs.” While I had no idea what that meant, I hoofed at the box till I got it open. Inside were, and I counted, fifty small cases of metal with a darker metal head. They glinted in the sunlight. My head shut down for a short while.

When the ability to think came, I took out my bag and orally pulled out the real-life versions of the weapon I’d use in the hallucination. I caressed them like how a stallion might caress a mare, except with actual love. It was the work of nearly two minutes to open up one of the two weapons, an embarrassing amount of awkward biting to dispose of the one munition within it that I had expended freeing myself from when the ponies of Sleepy Oaks had lynched me, and shortest of all was orally loading into it five new munitions and filling it up to its six-round capacity. I did it all in utter silence, a dreaded sense of horror creeping up my spine.

Yes, yes it was what I had feared. The God-given weapons that I never used for want of munition. About two-hundred units of munitions. I had no horn. There was hardly a way in hell to so much as pick it up, let alone use and fire it. Now that I had my weapons with more munitions than I could fantasize myself honestly needing, I was a cripple who couldn’t fire them.

I grimaced tightly as I put my weapons and the four boxes into the little purse. Eyes—well, eye twitching, I slung the purse around myself and wore it well. My body shaking with little trepidations, I tied the bag close. I swallowed hard.

“OH, YOU MOTHERF—”

|— ☩ —|

When it was all over, at least three flocks of birds had fled skywards, one of which dropped dead from having its virgins ears raped by the profanity of at least twenty-seven different languages. I was on the ground, drenched in sweat, dehydrated, suffering from a day’s worth of starvation, and panting hard as I tried not to cough. If there was a god—not just my own God, any deity—I was now on that god’s hitlist, I was sure. I was just going to be walking along the street one day when suddenly I get obstructed by the fanatic followers of that obscure deity and they were going to tear my balls and eye out, put my balls where my eye should be, and my lonely eyeball were my testicles should be. I’d be the world’s worst cyclops.

Wiping the sweat from my brow, I rolled onto my stomach and stood up. I took a long swig from my canteen of water. It ran dry less than a second into the drink. “I hate everything,” I groused, staring eastward with a focused look. With my boots on and my get-up-and-go having already gotten-up-and-went-without-me, I set about going east through the muck and mire.

As I left the clearing, I suddenly felt really bad. Why hadn’t I destroyed that white tree back on the island? It was a stupid, weak tree, and it’d be the perfect stepping stone on my road to becoming a lumberjack. In fact, where had those munitions really come from? If that mare was imaginary, then… Well, I either didn’t have enough blood or enough willpower to bother figuring this out. It was like being a unicorn without a horn: you keep trying to use that first-nature ability to levitate things and use fine-manipulation because the idea of now being an earther was almost incomprehensible, but all trying to use the horn ever did was end in a migraine.

If I thought about the logic of where the munitions hailed from too hard, my head just imploded. I relegated the “Where Did Those Come From?” thought into my “Endless Ocean of Apathy” folder. It was a mystery I could solve then I had comes to terms with my new state of being. Or when I actually had a full body’s worth of blood. Either or, really. For now, I had to focus on this wet, muddy, godforsaken swamp of limitless annoyances.

And so I slogged through the mire. So I hopped, skipped, and jumped in the places where I could avoid getting wet. And generally just had a miserable time. So I went on singing about everything.

“And now the second verse:

Oh, a leech tried to touch my balls.

So I set him afire.

Whoooa, you are some kind of snapping turtle

Please don’t bite the tip of my penis off!

But if we work together, thou and I,

We can both bite the tip of Duke Elkington’s penis off

And it won’t be gay, because—aww, that’s a blossom,

And now I’m sad—yeah!”

You are the worst singer ever and somepony should really stop you.

|— ☩ —|

On the third day, I woke up to the sound of a distant wildcat roaring. It was just before dawn, I figured. The lines running up my arm looked vicious, murderous, filled with a rage hot enough to consume entire worlds. Simply still being alive was astounding. My knees and elbows felt like that weird sex-lube stuff, much worse than feeling like jelly. As I just sat there, back propped up against a tree stump, I just found myself staring idly into the swamp and at the legions of fireflies, a hoof poking my sewn eyelid. The skin there was alive and healthy, but the lack of an eyeball made the skin a bit taut—at least, so it was after the stitches. It reminded me of a trampoline. Rather fun to poke at, even if it was likely infected.

Under the white, blinding light of the sun, I knew that staying here meant death. Going on meant death. But I would damned to just be an awesome collection of loot for some stupid adventurer to find. The swamp before me, to the east, made deep, distant throaty noises. They might have been the ragged last breaths of a rabbit about to be hilariously impaled by a carrot. Might have been the chuckling of a lion, because lions always showed up in my life, and lions were one of my natural predators (the other being Equestrian mares, it seemed). I couldn’t say for sure. What I could say for sure was this:

The Fatherland lay to the East, and Jericho chased after it.

If he looks familiar to you, well, that’s a reason for that. He is the kind of Mann who can touch a thousand lives in a single day, for better for worse. The echoes of his travels, his heroism, his villainy have been woven into a thousand tales spun in a thousand places, in thousands of ways—just like stories of the Great Flood, for instance, cut across the fabric of space and time and into the collective consciousness of all living things, so too does Jericho.

At once is he an icon and a fable, your best friend—praise be to the Mare Laurentia—and your worst nightmare made mortal flesh. Jericho is your damnation or your salvation. Sometimes he’s not even “or” but “and”. Aye, d’ya kennit?

The one thing he shares with us is the drive to make a better world. The one thing he shares with some of us is a fanatical hatred for eating raw tomatoes, though he can eat tomato-based products no problem, for some odd reason. He doesn’t really know how that works. But Jericho is also known by many names, if a creature such as he can even be “known” at all.

A creature such as he simply exists. He was born without a cause, a destiny, so he made one. Around the world went he, a million lives touched: countless lives ended. And right now, in the muck of a swamp with no name, on a continent far away from home, he is dying. Starvation, dehydration, heatstroke, infections everywhere, and blood poisoning.

“And he is monologuing creepily about himself in the third person,” I finished, sweating dropping down my forehead and onto the dirt beneath me. The hard line of red veins ran almost up to my chest, the fever made me the warmest thing in the entire swamp. I had been going for most of the day, I was sure, but it was hard to tell. I had simply stopped keeping track of the hours. And here, in a garden of strange flowers, my knees and elbows finally buckled. If there was going to be a Deus ex Machina, the time for it was now. I was going to end up the loot of some wet-behind-the-ears adventurer, and he was going to get gear that was way too high for his level, and he was going to become overpowered, and it was going to be horrible.

The bushes rustled. My ears perked up on their own. Something was coming. Probably swamp lions. I didn’t know if those were thing, but they would probably be a thing, having spent millions of years evolving to live here just to kill me. The Universe worked like that, you see. But I’d be damned if a lion ate me—I was going to eat it!

With the last of my strength, I reached out and grabbed my knife in my teeth. It was clean from the blood of the Devil’s Backbone, and it was still so sharp that the blade just went invisible at the edge. Like a newborn deer about to pounced upon and eaten by some kind of squid, I shakily forced myself onto my legs, a wide, toothy grin upon my mouth.

A blue earther mare came out of the bushes, humming as she carried a basket. The little thing looked so cute and innocent and probably secretly evil—I knew how Equestria worked by now. Her evil must be destroyed! She saw me and her violet eyes widened.

“Good for the Good God!” I tried to scream through my knife, and just collapsed into the dirt. On the plus side, she shrieked bloody murder, grabbed her head in her hooves, and collapsed alongside me. Great. She wasn’t a pony but actually one of those fainting goats dressed in a mare suit. Deux ex, anypony?

Sleeping suddenly seemed like a really good idea right about them. But that damn mare wouldn’t stop screaming and grabbing her head. She just kept shouting, “Le mauvais étalon! Le mauvais étalon!” That was odd because I knew that was meant. It was French for “the bad stallion”.

|— ☩ —|

The air gave me gooseflesh, even as I laid under the covers. It seemed to me that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I just stared forwards with a dull acceptance, unable to summon the willpower to wonder how I get here and why. My ears perked themselves up as I heard a sharp sound. I looked over the dark room and saw a large dresser, and sitting upon it was the Blue-Eyed Lady. At least I thought it was her.

She looked absolutely ghastly. Mostly because I was only seeing her with the one eye, but also because she actually was ghastly. She wore a short, navy blue jacket belted at the waist and what looked like faded Denim trousers. Lots of her gear was kept together with what looked like straps of leather. Her navy-blue jacket made her almost invisible, and I couldn’t see her face behind the plague mask. But even without the mask, her short jacket had a hood—it was up—and no doubt the hood would have hidden her face in its shadow.

She didn’t look up at me, just kept whittling at something in her hoof. The thing was, she wasn’t exactly holding it in her hoof, it was just sort of hovering there as if she were holding it. Was she carving a shiv?

“You know,” she said, still not looking at me, “most ponies would hold a grudge against a stallion who shoots them in the head with a schecht.” Schecht? That was the strangest word ever. The sch was pronounced like a sh, but sounded as if it came from the back of the mouth; it was not a sound I’d ever heard before. Her ch was like the Ich-Laut of my language, like the H in huge. It was just a weird mismatch of sounds to me.

She carved more, little wooden shavings flying off. “However, I am not most ponies. In fact, I am very forgiving. It is perhaps a bad habit of mine. I forgive too easily, but I never make the mistake of forgetting, Hanged Stallion.” The Blue-Eyed Lady raised her face to me, bearing down upon me with her plague mask. “He tells me to inform you to ‘thank Kain’. Or was it ‘thank Kane’? Kain-pine, Kane-mane,” she rhymed. “However you pronounce it.”

“You’re not real,” I tried to say, only to give a quiet groan.

“Tell me,” she said, “are you a follower of a prophet?”

“O-of the Mare Laurentia,” I croaked.

“Aye,” she replied in a thoughtful tone, “I ken the name.”

A doorway cracked ajar, a sliver of golden light trickling into the room. With all the effort of a child trying to ignore the sound of his parents violently doing it in the other room, a single gray eye poked into the room. I watched it scan the room, not even pausing over the Blue-Eyed Lady, and come to rest on me. The eye became a face, and then a head, and then a stallion. When I glanced back to the Blue-Eyed Lady, she was gone.

The stallion licked his lips as he looked at me. He moved to speak, then hesitated. “P-parlez-vous français?”

I blinked. “Oui, un petit peu,” I replied. And then went on in French, my voice like the scratches a horny dog makes on a wooden door separating him from his bitch: “I speak what is needed of me. I grew up in Neuorléans. Can we speak in Equestrian? I speak it better.”

He nodded. “Yes, I can do that. Around here, the… lingua franca? Òc, the lingua franca of the village is français. M-my name is Lothaire.” He spoke solely, almost carefully, like he was trying to tell me he’d killed my dog trying to dryclean it, and was now trying to get me to pay the drycleaning bill. “Little Felicitat found you out at the edge of the Sanha.”

I didn’t reply.

Lothaire cleared his throat. “Le mauvais étalon, she kept screaming. We heard her shrieks and found you both lying on the ground. She was put in the bed in her house, and the missus and I offered to try to help you. There’s no hospital for leagues, sénher, and I am the closest this town has to a resident médge.”

“Médge?” I croaked.

He rubbed his head. “Uh, my apologies, sénher. It means ‘doctor’. Sometimes I forget to translate little words—it’s a habit that Paire, that Father, got me into. Non-local ladies swoon over it, and non-local stallions see me as being educated, if a bit pretentious.”

I gave him a hard look. “Médge is not French for ‘doctor’.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Docteur is French for doctor.” I narrowed my eyes. “It’s probably just the blood poisoning and the fact that I’m dying, but your French is bothering me more than the fact that I’m pretty sure my eye is infected.”

“Òc. In schools they teach the langues d’oïl. Here in Caval, we’ve always spoken the Lenga d’òc—Langue d’oc, in standard French. Parlatz occitan? Òc, un pauc.” He flashed me a smile as he pawed at the floor. “I’m technically trilingual.”

“Huh,” I muttered. I looked down at my body, at the bed I was in. With tired slowness, I took my arm out from the covers. It lazily slogged out like a certain male sex organ coming out of a certain used condom, with all the sweat and shame that came with it. “Well. Blood poisoning. Looks fun.” And then I dropped my head onto the pillow and couldn’t stay awake

|— ☩ —|

“Jo pensi que,” a voice hesitantly said, “el surviva.”

My eyes… eye—I had to get used to only having one eye now—felt like a lead weight as I slowly opened it. I felt like so much flesh at that point. Not even a stallion. Just meat. Not even the good kind of nutritious meat you can cut off a demon; I was the kind of meat that tasted like Scheiße and clogged your fat arteries. Somehow, this made me wonder about that one prostitute mare I met who insisted that her genitals doubled as insect repellant, and that for the right price, she would confer unto you that power. I didn’t take her up on the offer, but, ah, how I loved my planet and its nutty occupants.

“My, look who’s awake,” a warm voice said. I looked over from the bed to see the gray eyes of Médge Lothaire. He was sitting in a chair, his legs a bit too spread out for my enjoyment. Well, at least now I know that Equestrians are uncircumcised. If he brings that thing any closer to me, I’m going to shove garlic bread up his urethra. “You were out so cold there that for a while, I wasn’t sure you’d make it, sénher.”

I regarded him for the longest time. “Ma bite est pleine d’anguilles.”

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“Mein Schwanz ist voller Aale.”

“Okay,” he hesitantly replied, glancing over his shoulder. “That’s not really helping me.”

“I wasn’t trying to help,” I said, looking at the wooden wall behind me. “It was just a French phrase that I know. Then I repeated it in Teutsch. It means—”

“Òc, I know what it means; I speak French,” he said, raising it hoof. “You just told me that your cock is full of eels.”

“Yes, yes I did.”

He scratched the back of his head and looked away from me. I noticed that he was a unicorn. “You know, this isn’t really how I pictured this going in my head.”

“You’d be surprised how often ponies tell me that,” I replied. Glancing to my body, I noted the thin white sheets, like a hospital bed, which sort of made sense. “So. I imagine this is the part where you tell me all the horrible things that were wrong with me and how your super doctor skill defeated them all.”

Médge Lothaire grimaced in a way that said better than words could, ‘No.’ Words would’ve been simple, honest. This was more like the look of somepony who was trying to tell you how he accidentally got your daughter pregnant. Even though that somepony was a eunuch. Lothaire wasn’t a eunuch, by the way; I could very clearly see that he wasn’t. Put some pants on, please—I can feel it looking at me, all cold and… feely!

“No, sénher, I cannot tell you that. I did managed to, uh, remove the stitches from your eyelid and restitch it up with clean, fresh stitches. Although, the old ones were good for clearly being impromptu and unprofessional.” He picked up a mirror. “Wanna tell me how I did?”

I looked into my battered, bloodied, bruised reflection in the mirror. Did I mention that I felt like so much meat? Well, compared to how I looked, I felt like a million Mark. It looked to me as if I’d passed out, and then a particularly pissed ex-girlfriend had beaten me with a frying pan for exactly two hours and twenty-eight minutes. My left eye, thoroughly black but nowhere near as cute as Cards’, no longer had the ragged stitches, at least. These ones were fancy and professional. I gave Médge Lothaire back the mirror.

“Òc, what I couldn’t fix was most of you,” he went on, seemingly unwilling to look me in the eye. “The Missus was able to help a bit, gars. I cleaned the infection out of your eye, but the poison is still strong in your foreleg, though we pushed it back good. And…” He looked at head, not my eyes. “Are you a unicorn?”

“Was, yes, until about four days ago,” I replied calmly.

He looked at the floor and shook his head slowly. “I… I can’t imagine what could do that to a unicorn. Can hardly believe you’re alive. That sort of trauma should have scrambled your brains into a fine paste.”

“I like tomato paste on pizzas,” I replied thoughtfully. “But I once saw a ugly mare who got naked, covered herself in pizza sauce, then offered herself in sacrifice to a giant bear. That was pretty fun to watch.” My tone grew steadily dreamier. “You know, there are tens of people everyday who are sacrificed in order to appease Princess Celestia. Well, not her herself, but there’s this one nation I found—and possibly wiped out because I once cleared my throat so hard that I coughed on one of them—where they believe the only way to continue making the sun rise is to ritually sacrifice sentient beings.” I stared up at the off-white ceiling. “I don’t think it does anything at all, and so I want to go up to Princess Celestia the Adorable and tell her of all the people, children included, who have their still-beating hearts cut out every day in order to arouse and please Princess Celestia’s lady bits.”

There was a pause.

“What in Celestia’s name…? You’re delirious, aren’t you? Do you need some water?”

“Half of my thoughts and internal monologues end up making similes and metaphors that somewhat relate back to my penis, someone’s penis, or vaginas in general,” I replied. “If it weren’t me, I’d seriously think that I just needed to get laid so that I’d stop obsessing over ponies’ genitals. But then I realize those genital-related thoughts are actually pretty funny to me, so I figure it’s best to keep the whistle dry. Comprends-tu?”

“Okay, I think I need to—”

I lunged out of bed and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Give it to me straight, doc! Will I ever play the clarinet again? Because my oral musical skills are what made all of the mares want me—you know, except for all of them.” A wave of heat sundered my chest, head, savaged hooves, and blood-poisoned arm all in half. As if hit over the head with a wet bag of marsupials, I nearly tumbled over. Instead, I fell back into the bed. But as my head bounced on the pillow, I caught a sight out of my eye’s peripheral vision, a sight I’d’ve seen clearly with both eyes.

There was a petite blue mare standing on the far side of the room, staring at me as if I were attempting to explain to her what it felt like to be raped by the bowling ball. Her violet eyes were so wide. Something in my head clicked, and I identified the mare as “Felicitat, the mare whose screams had ended up saving what was left of my life. Then she just vanished as if never there, and in her place I saw the Blue-Eyed Lady. She tilted her head and vanished too.

The Médge, I saw, was gone too. In fact, the sunlight filtering in through curtained windows was gone. When I blinked again, hesitant rays of light were creeping in through the curtain windows. Oh, nuts, I thought. Gritting my teeth, I tele—wait, no, no horn. Remember?—I grabbed the sheets and threw them off me. On my back I could feel a cold sweat. In the next moment I was shakily standing.

A mare’s voice asked something from another room. I couldn’t understand it. It was like the French I knew, but all wrong. I was half-sure she had just referred to me as “thin, tall, and ugly”. In reponse, a stallion said something to her in the same language—Occitan, he’d called it—and I could only pick up bits and pieces, not enough to translate properly, but enough to suspect that they were talking about me.

Slipping on air, I tumbled to the ground in a heap of naked limbs. Naked? Oh, hey, they’d undressed me. Fantastic. I could just sit there and stare at the Scham, the shame, between my legs. But instead, I looked at my chest wound. They’d been stitched up well and no longer looked like they were on the verge of bleeding at one moment like a mare bloated with menstruation.

Standing back up with a groan, I saw my bags on the dresser whereupon the Blue-Eyed Mare had sat. There was a mirror behind the dresser, and looking into it I could see my duster and hat cleanly folded up on the far side of my bags. It took me moments to shamble across the room. It felt like forever putting on fresh underpants, denim pants, a black shirt advocating a band I was fond of, and my hat. And then I saw it, lying under where my duster had been.

My heart thudded harder in my chest as I clumsily picked it up. Then I slid it on and adjusted it so that it fit perfectly. I stared into the mirror and at my badass new eyepatch. Screw it, it was almost worth losing the eye—who looked good? I looked good! Who was probably crazy and dying from infected wounds? See, now you’re just spoiling the mood.

And so here I was, a ragged, beaten, bloodied, mutilated, smiling stallion, his clothes clean yet rugged from well-worn use, his face in need of a light shave, his breath probably rancid, two of his hooves broken but manageable, his vision lacking proper depth-perception, his horn blown off, and with a completely badass eyepatch over his partially self-mutilated missing left eye. And what was I doing standing up? Hell if I knew, but lying in bed was apt to end in bed sores. A little, completely unreasonable lust to move and fight and try to repair the Code defeated the sane notion to stay put.

If Médge Lothaire couldn’t fix the infection, then I had to look elsewhere. Where? Shut-up, I’ll think of it! But something told me that the first thing I needed to do was find that mare who found me, Felicitat. Why? Well, because it was just a hunch, a deep intuition. I liked to trust my intuition; it was sane, helpful, and didn’t judge me when I committed mass murder.

Adjusting my head, I turned and headed for the door. It turned out that my room was on the second floor, a room labeled “Cambra 1”. I found the stairs and nearly fell down them, only barely keeping my balance. I fought to beat back the internal heat and pain. Bad body, I need you to work! There was no door leading outside here, so I entered the next apparent room, straight into the kitchen where Médge Lothaire and his slightly chunky wife were having breakfast, conversing in Occitan.

They looked up at me, Lothaire even dropping his newspaper unto the table. A part of me wasn’t surprised they were having French toast, and another part of me thought that it was really conspicuous. It’d be like me eating nothing but Sauerkraut while foreigners were in my house.

“Howdy,” I said, tipping my hat to them.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Lothaire exploded, jumping to his feet. “What are you doing up?”

“Well, at first I thought I should go for a walk, but then I fell down and realized you’d creepily undressed me. So then I found my clothes, and then this awesome eyepatch—thank you for that, by the way—and now I just sort of wish to leave. You mentioned not being able to specifically treat me, and I wish not to take any more of your time and effort.” I reached into my bag and tossed five gold coins onto the table. They two ponies just stared at it. “I have no sense of how much money is worth. This is a lot of money, right?”

The mare swallowed. “Òc—uh, aye, aye it is. An absurd amount. It’s more than I’ve ever seen in one place before!”

“Good,” I said. “That should cover whatever personal costs you had to spend on this one lost soul.”

Lothaire raised a hoof to me. “Look, sénher—you’re clearly not well in the head. Do not do this—”

“Recommend me so for I might be mad, but command me nothing!” I roared, and both ponies flinched. “I will not reward your kindness and charity with my horrid presence. I can but offer thanks and scraps of gold out of an eleemosynary sense that my presence will only bring unto you damnation.” Oddly eloquent for an Irrer, a madpony.

Eloquent? Is that what you call it? Sounds to me more like a pony who’s just discovered that thesauri are a thing.

Under my hard eye, Lothaire sat back down. He bit his lip and glanced almost nervously between me, the gold, and his wife. What, was he expecting me to go, “Nah, I’m just kidding. Give me my cash back and I’ll slink on into bed. I’m just an attention whore, you see”? Well, “attention whore” might not have been entirely without a lack of inaccuracy.

I adjusted the sword at my hip. Both ponies saw it, but it was Médge Lothaire who spoke up. “What are you? A Carolean?”

“Care-oh-lay-uhn?” I asked, cocking a brow. To cock was such a fun verb with so many fun uses.

They looked at each other, but again it was Lothaire who spoke. “Yes, the Caroleans—the trained ponies working for Duke Elkington. Like guards, but better-trained.”

I blinked. “A military?”

“Look, uh, forget I said anything. I don’t think you’re one of them. Aren’t—well, weren’t very many of those bucks, but they have a reputation for being tough.”

Rather that just wander out like I’d planned, I just stood there. “‘Weren’t’? What does that mean?”

Lothaire swallowed. “W-with the recent atrocities, Duke Elkington’s started calling for young ponies willing to protect Equestria, keep the roads safe, help with natural disasters, and other stuff. He’s all been passing weird legislation about that, too.”

Leaning against the wall because my hooves were hurting, I said, “Go on, Médge Lothaire. I’ve not been keeping up with current events.” And I still just might need to find a way to sexually humiliate Elkington in front of Princess ‘Cards-in-a-fancy-hat-with-giant-penis’ Celestia.

“Look, stranger, I won’t pretend to understand his so-called ‘allotment system’, but I know that many of his counts and barons are a bit peeved because it doesn’t exempt their sons, though most of the ponies being alloted are just us lowborn normal folk. The whole thing’s some sort of program to make sure his ponies can defend themselves, their homes, and their kingdom.”

Sounds like Elkington’s trying to build up his own cheap knockoff of the Rheinwehr, alright. “Well, I’ll have to chat with Duke Elkington about this. I know the guy personally. He showed me the bad touch.”

“Um,” Lothaire’s wife said. “Okay.”

“And has Elkington done anything here?”

Lothaire frowned. “No. The Duke in Songnam is Duke of Marcia. You’re in the la vallée de la Rivière Rouge, and no duke or duchess rules here, only local, weak comtes rule around here.”

I nodded, tipped my hat, and then proceeded to wander around their house until I found the door.

|— ☩ —|

My first thoughts were that this place looked like Ponyville or Sleepy Oaks. My second thoughts were that it somehow looked quainter, but in a fake sort of way, like the ponies here had been making conscious efforts to look quaint. Stallions trotted by with carts, a rogue chicken screamed as two fillies and a colt chased it, and the buildings weren’t so tightly packed. An average Equestrian morning, I supposed.

As I walked down the streets, I caught more than a few glares. That would be have been dandy, since I was an ill-groomed, oft mutilated brute with the sexiest eye patch ever—except that so many of them were mares, usually young ones. It wasn’t that they were mares, but it was that there weren’t enough stallions. There was actually an uncomfortable mare-to-cock ratio. Fratricide? That word popped into my head.

This whole thing felt worse than that one time last week where I tried to become a joint the rapist and analyst. It turned out that combining those two words and calling yourself a professional anal-rapist was seen as both a crime and threat. Except that that never happened.

There was one young stallion with a wagon who seemed to be delivering ice for iceboxes. As we walked past each other, he kept staring at my eyepatch. So I shook a hoof at him and growled, “Wha’ you lookin’ at, punk?”

“Nothing!” he replied quickly, looking forwards.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Don’t think I won’t punch you where your penis grows.” There. Now I’d demonstrated my superiority and masculinity over a stallion who was only barely an adult. I was a true stallion and the alpha male here.

At some local café lining the street, two mares sat at a little outdoor table. One of them slammed a hoof on the table and jumped up. “You did what with him?!” she demanded in understandable High French.

“Well, everypony gets lonely. I just happened to slip.”

“And onto his penis!?”

“Well, la Prophétesse said it would happen.”

The standing mare half-growled, half-groaned. “He was my boyfriend.”

“Well, not anymore, Sis.” The mare chomped down on some sort of eclair. She was paying so little attention that she missed her face and got chocolate all over her cheek.

“No thanks to you! And would you look at what you try to put in your mouth, and I’m not just talking about dick!”

“Oh come on,” her companion said, “you have to admit: it’s pretty funny, looking back on it.”

“Looking back? It was yesterday!”

“So? I’m sorry you don’t have a sense of humor.”

“Oh, so you don’t think I have a sense of humor?!” she snarled, and her companion nodded. “Yeah, well... Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” her friend asked in a tone so casual it had to be mocking.

“Fuck you!” And she stormed off, but not before spinning around and shouting in her high-pitched voice, “Bitch!”

Stupid Equestria. They were so damn weird. And for the most part, they’d been rather good about not swearing. Apparently, you swore more in this part of the country, or something. Of course, though, the raging mare stormed out in a direction that placed her on course for me.

Gritting her teeth—no, grinding them into dust—she jerked to a halt and pointed at me. “You!” she shouted, still in French. “What are you looking at?”

“I was looking at what appears to me to be a very angry mare,” I said auf Teutsch.

The way she scrunched her face told me she didn’t have the slightest idea what I’d said. Nevertheless, she replied, “Yeah, that’s what I thought you were looking at”—and stomped off.

Ah, and here I found a watering hole. La Taverne Bonne was its name, and I stepped into the dingy place. This early in the morning, there was nopony but the barkeeper and me. I approached and took a seat at the counter. With a single deft motion, I placed a coin on the counter and asked for “Something nice.”

He looked down at the coin, then to me. “I can’t make change for gold.”

“I never said you had to.” As he brought me a mug of ‘something nice’, I said in my best French, “I’m looking for a mare.”

“Aren’t we all?” he replied. Compared to the High French spoken in Neuorléans, he sounded like he was speaking with a mouthful of gravel. It was so deeply unpleasant that I couldn’t speak in French anymore, for fear of him speaking with that accent of his. Although, it was absurdly remarkable his dialect of French was even vaguely comprehensible to my own, since our two Frenchs has been separated by over a thousand years. I chose not to dwell upon that fact.

“A certain mare.” I leaned forwards. “One by the name of Felicitat. Know’st thou her?”

“Aye,” he replied in a low voice. Hooray, I’ve inspired him to act unnecessarily dramatic. “You seek la Prophétesse.”

“La Prophétesse?” I asked.

“Aye,” he said. What was with bartenders in this country and the word ‘aye’? “Many seek her. She’s the lifeblood of Caval, and Caval wouldn’t be the mighty town it is today without her.”

I rubbed my eyepatch. By the Archangel Thor, the feeling of having been beaten up by a bogtopus wasn’t getting any better. As I took a breath, I was also sure that time there were was a pressure in my sinuses. Great. Not only was my blood was not only poisoned, but I was also coming down with a cold. Or, like, the Rattle. Because if I was getting sick, baby, I was getting the kind of plague that could wipe out entire continents.

“And this Prophétesse, this Felicitat, where might I find her?”

The bartender looked around. “I can’t,” he began, but then his eyes flicked to the gold coin on the counter. Its very existence said for me: I am a stallion who has considerable assets at my disposal, the least of which being the steel that earned me this gold. If you won’t help me, I will dig a hole into your collarbone and plant a dainty flower in your wound. “What I mean is, Felicitat is a very shy girl. Not too fond of strangers. And, to be honest, a few days ago something happened to her, something about a ‘mauvais étalon’. Whoever he is, the poor little thing has been terrified of him and been hiding in her house ever since.”

“And why is this Felicitat so important to your town?”

“She is the Prophétesse. She can gaze into the future,” he said with a conviction that was almost religious. Of course, that just meant that I had to destroy his face. I was the only one allowed to start whacky cults around here.

“Impossible,” I casually replied. “Only the dead can see the future.” Or waffles.

“The dead?” he intoned.

“Ja, die Toten. Only those who can speak of experience in the afterlife can attest to what will come. Else you are dealing with a demon not wholly of flesh but not wholly of spirit, the old haunts who tempt ponies with dark secrets, and then drain their souls. The future is not for the living to know.”

“But fate would hold otherwise,” he replied, and I only just stopped myself from sneering. Blaming fate or destiny was about as reasonable an argument as ‘she dressed like a slut and was asking for it’ was a reasonable argument for refusing to buy your daughter a lollipop. “Fate brought us the oracle. And fate made la Prophétesse the only one who can go to the oracle’s shrine, speak with it, and live to tell us its secrets. Ever since she found the oracle, Felicitat has made this town the most successful town in the valley.”

I grabbed the drink he’d given me and downed it in a single swig. Aahh! This tastes horrible! Make it stop tasting on my tongue! With a cool façade, I looked at the old buck. Oh God, make it stop! “Seigneur, I dare think it would be very kind of you to tell me where I might find Miss Felicitat. It is in her best interests, I can easily assure you. After all, eleemosynary kindness is certainly its own reward.” I put another gold coin on the counter, flashing him a smile somewhere on the border between suave gentlecolt and ‘You gon’ get raped’. “And then some.”

He bit his lip and looked at the coin. He told me everything I needed to know. Greed sure was its own kind of magic, wasn’t it?

|— ☩ —|

“And here we are,” I said to nopony in particular. Probably to the voices. This place just seemed so scenic that I was pretty sure that this town had a really aggressive homeowner’s association: it was secluded, well-kept, had a garden with a little pond, a few trees and bushes, and it was guarded by a fence. Needless to the say, the gate had been locked before I arrived. Now the lock was picked and lying on the ground.

I walked up the path through the garden and to the house. The goose sitting on the little pond would have none of that, though. It took at look at me and squawked wildly, flapping its wings but staying put. As I paused to watch it, wondering if I should just kill it and chuck it through one of the house’s windows, the goose hissed and flew at me.

Fact: the average adult pony, regardless of gender, was much bigger than the goose in every way.

I flailed on the ground as the bird bodyslammed me, tackling me to the ground. With its dark, menacing honks of pure murder, it pecked at the one eye I had left. Its beak was surprisingly painful as it pecked and tried to eat my face off. Fantastic! I was going to get killed by a goose. A goose. Of all possible things, it was a goose.

“Honkers, no!” a mare shouted. “He’ll kill you!” As soon as it had begun, the goose just waddled off of me, leaving my curled into an anti-goose ball on the ground. Still trying to pretend like I hadn’t almost been killed by a goose, I stumbled to my hooves. I fell down, though, but I got it right on my third attempt to stand.

The goose waddled into the house through the front door. Standing in the doorway was an earther mare, likely younger than—if not as old as—Cards but still bigger than her, with violet eyes and blue fur. When our eyes met, she yipped in fear and slammed the door. I could easily imagine her pressing up against the door as I walked up to it and knocked.

“Miss Felicitat? You are the one who found me in the mud, yes?” I asked. That urge to find her was gnawing on the back of my eye, and that eye saw that the door couldn’t have been too thick or sturdy.

So with only a few blows, I broke the door off its hinges and flung it ajar. The mare was cowering away from the door, staring directly at me. With the dim light inside her house invaded by the light from outside, my shadow completely covered her.

“Hello, Miss Felicitat. I am the Bad Stallion.”

Author's Note

Footnote: 10% to next level.

Status Effect Added: Blood Poisoning — You should have known better than to hire that pile of monkeys in a mare suit that was trying to pass itself as a prostitute. Now your blood is poisoned. You “gain” -1 to all major attributes across the board, -10 to stats, have twenty-five fewer health points, fifty fewer mana points, and, because fuck you, are now allergic to whatever your favorite food is. This will get steadily worse if untreated. SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION OR YOU WILL DIE. Have a nice day.

Felicitat is Occitan for Felicity. Question for all y’all in the audience: How old do you think Jericho is?

Hey, did you know that Jericho actually got some fanart awhile ago? Not sure if I mentioned that, but I’ll do it here. Shoutout to you, Myriad o f Failure, for drawing me this. Tell Myriad how awesome it is, ’kay?

~~:Evil Voice: Yes, all the art! I need more to satisfying my ravenous evil! Muhahaha!~~

So begins Act 2 — Thy Flesh Consumed

Chapter 18 — Drown

Chapter 18: Drown

“Do you like my mystical orb of fate’s destiny? I just got it. Cool, huh?”

Eyes.

The I’s have it. Your eyes, ’tis said, are the windows into your soul. I always wondered if that meant that the souls of the blind were kept in the dark. That must have been annoying. Not only couldn’t you see, but also your soul was perpetually stuck in the world’s worst nightclub of thought. In my case, I was always wondering what happens when you looked into my eyes. If you believe what the nice mares all said, they seemed to unanimously agree that I had nice eyes. Hay, back during school, I remembered with a faint smile, if ever a filly looked into my eyes, she’d always tell me I had nice eyes. Although how exactly you can have “bad eyes” was beyond me. Unless bad eyes were a sign of some condition, like a disease, in which case, you mares should feel bad for discriminating against the sick.

And as I looked into the violet eyes of “la Prophétesse” Felicitat, I could only wonder what she saw in my one remaining eye. Whatever it was, it was enough to make her practically cower into a ball as she stared up at me. I had expected her to piss herself like Cards had when we’d met.

Somewhere in the background, I could hear a record player playing a song. The singer, I realized, was Sapphire Shores, the mare who’d performed the duet with Duke Elkington.

“Harajuku Girls, you got the wicked style:

I like the way that you are—I am your biggest fan.”

“Please,” Felicitat said in a pleading voice only barely above a whisper. “Please, sénher, leave me alone.” She gritted her teeth, and a trickle of blood leaked from her nose. A blood vessel in her eyes popped before my very eye. God, that phrase sounded weird when you only had one little fleshy orb in your skull. Note that the orb is the whole eye, not just the front of it where the colors were.

“But, my dear,” I said in a voice like syrup, which oddly gave me the craving for some non-evil waffles, “I am told that you can see into the future. Spoke they true?”

“Aye, they speak true, in a manner of looking at things.” The noseblood lapped her chin and dripped onto the wooden floor with a satisfying smack. That somehow gave me to urge to bitchslap Cards, which was slightly worrying.

“And why are you so scared of me?”

“You burst down my front door and started demanding I answer questions and stressed me out so much that my nose is bleeding,” she finally replied.

“Okay, given, but aside from all of that. What’s this le mauvais étalon business?”

“Because,” Felicitat murmured, limbs as shaky as her voice, “I can see the words written across you. Not literally, but you’re all wrong. A black void. I can’t feel you.”

“Well, I don’t like be groped by strangers, but that doesn’t make me a bad pony.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Now both nostrils were bleeding.

I stomped to her, and she pressed herself against the wall. “Then what did you mean, Fräulein?” Somewhere in the background, her goose was honking and hissing at me. “Because I got a lot of time to listen. I mean, I don’t really have any plans. Although I suppose I could, like, come back around five and take you out for dinner if that’d make it easier for you, because right now you’re—” Felicitat blinked, took a deep breath, and fell limply to the ground like a dead hooker. Not that I would know, but I’ve read books. “Well. That happened.” I looked up. “I should raid the icebox and eat all her food while she’s out.”

|— ☩ —|

“Huhruh,” I greeted through a mouthful of what I believed was some sort of cake-like substance. Felicitat, whom I’d dragged onto the couch in her living room, just looked at me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt the Blue-Eyed Mare staring at me too, like she was inside my head, which made sense for a figment of my infected imagination. I swallowed the mouthful. “So I ate all your food and drank all your drinks. I hope you’re not mad, but I hadn’t eaten in days and also I just wanted to spite you—hope you don’t die of hunger.”

“I wish not to converse in Equestrian,” she said in French, resting her head and looking up at the ceiling. At least, I was pretty sure the last word was ‘Equestrian’. I hadn’t heard it before, but given the context, it made sense. “Vulgar.”

“Well, tough forced enslavement of minors to work as sex slaves,” I said, and chewed on an old piece of celery laden with peanut butter. Yum! “My French is a lot rustier than my Equestrian.” I swapped to as scary a voice as I could, saying in Teutsch: “Of course, we would always speak in the tongue of the Fatherland. It is a most agreeable language for discourse, wouldn’t you say, Fräulein?”

“Wha-what?” she asked, lips quivering. Tied over in the corner, her goose honked uselessly. “What did you do to Honkers?”

“Nevermind him,” I said with a casual wave of the hoof. “Tell me, Frau Felicitat, what is your problem with me?” She opened her mouth, but I cut her off: “If it involves a sob story about having no friends, leave all that sad stuff out because I don’t care.” And she closed her mouth. “Figures,” I sighed. “Parents dead?” She nodded. “Socially awkward beyond all reason?” Nod. Rubbing my eyes, I groaned. “God, what is wrong with this country? Is nopony here even remotely normal? How old are you.”

“F-fifteen,” she replied.

“You father didn’t rape you, did he?” I prodded, and she vigorously shook her head. “Good, that makes two of us. Not getting raped by your father is the first step to not being a complete messed-up pony. Gets worse if Mommy touches you. Glad we don’t have to deal with that. So, are we ready to talk?”

She gritted her teeth and looked hard at my eye. “I can feel. It’s why I don’t like ponies so much. I can, like, feel what they’re thinking. Not exact thoughts, just… feelings. I always know in my heart exactly what everyone around me is feeling. I get a feeling from them.”

I stared off into the distance like a fool who’s stared too long at the sun after he saw his mother naked and realized he had the hots for Mommy. “Ein Empath? You’re an empath?”

The mare gave a weak squeak. “I guess.”

Something smelled odd. In fact, I actually sniffed the air. Wait. Was that me? How long had I gone without a shower or a bath? …Ew, it was totally me… “And so why do I frighten you? How do they relate?”

“You are a darkheart,” she said with a kind of hesitance like telling your girlfriend she looks fat, not sure if she’s actually asking your honest opinion or just doing a girl thing. In my experience, she never wanted your honest opinion. And that’s the story of how I broke my cheekbone that one day. “It taints your very existence. Everything you say is a lie, everything you do is a lie, because everything that you are is a lie hiding what you are—and you don’t even know it.” Her eyes moistened. “Even in monsters there is blackness, but you are hollow. Empty. Full of nothing. Abyss.”

I yawned. “Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know. It’s what I am without a whole Code.”

Felicitat’s eye twitched. “You scare me because even when you knowingly lie, you believe the lie. It’s as if you are at once incapable of lying and a compulsive liar. You are more paradox than flesh.”

Rolling my eye, I groaned. “Listen, hotlips, I’ve heard this same schtick from a hundred different psychics enough times to know it’s utter malarkey. Next you’re going to tell me that, like, inside my hollowness lies a true monster. Or, inside my heart is where I can find substance to fill up my hollowness. Or, to continue this session, please pay five Bits, thank you for your business.”

“It’s true, I don’t really know, because I can’t read you. Only guess.” She bit her lip. “That’s not possible. I can’t read you. I can’t! But I’m a good guesser.” Felicitat shivered, her rate of speech hastening like a jackrabbit hopped up on Kokain. “I’ve seen many, but you are unique. Impossible to miss. I can’t feel you as I can a normal pony, but I can feel your lack thereof. You’re a living, breathing blindspot. Unnatural. Your very presence makes me want to run and hide! Because I can see it written upon you, and what is written says le mauvais étalon—the Bad Stallion. But it’s as if I can’t see you because you are two separate entities sharing the same mind—!”

I put my broken hoof over her mouth. “Easier there, pilgrim,” I said in a calm tone, affecting a Southern drawl. Mr. Welch once told me that Southern Equestrian accents generally sounded friendly to others, that it helped put them at ease. But instead of being put at ease, she actually sneered, taking me aback.

“Not only do you look like one of those colonial brutes, you sound like one!” she hissed in a low tone. The white curtains on the window behind the couch swayed as if for effect, but it only made me think about just how little feng shui this room had. No wonder this girl was so unhappy. If I lived in a place decorated by somepony with no sense of design, I’d always be angry and scared too. Pink couch with baby-shit-green pillow? Ew.

“Yes, well, you’re a stuck-up bitch with people problems,” I casually offered. I leaned over her, and went on in that same drawl. “Well, pilgrim, now I want you to tell me why they call you a prophetess.”

Her breathing quickened. “You mean to kill her, don’t you?”

“Depends on who this ‘her’ is, pilgrim.” I tipped my hat for effect. She didn’t say anything, sucking in on her lips in defiance. I lowered my voice but kept the drawl. “Listen here, missie, if you don’t tell me who this ‘her’ is and everything else I want to know about her, I will press the point on my fractured hoof into your violet eye just to see how much pressure it’d take to pop it. Do not test me, girl!”

But as an empath, Felicitat must had an almost supernatural sense for detecting lies and idle threats. She stared into my eye; even without psychic powers, you can often tell a liar by looking into their eyes, the way their eyes move to indicate what kind of thought or memory you’re using. Eyes were also a great way to gauge emotion, which was why eyes were so absurdly important to equine socialization. As she looked into my eye, I looked into hers. She knew that I wasn’t lying.

“She…” Felicitat began slowly, shaking under my hard eye, “is the oracle.”

|— ☩ —|

I stared at the oracle’s shrine. It was a bit into the swamp near where her house was, down a little path that passed where I had collapsed a few days ago. The pulsing red veins, still rock-hard, burned like fire, or a really bad STD. Thank God that I always used protection because I was a smart stallion. But this thing? The centerpiece of the shrine had once been a mare; now it was just a skeleton tied to the top half of an ancient wooden cross, her—the hips and facial structure were decidedly feminine—arms had been tied behind the Kruzifix as if she were trying to cheekily hide a lover’s present behind her back.

My eye scanned the little stone chapel, hardly enough room for five ponies to stand in, even if they had to stand uncomfortably close to each other. So, I supposed that there was just enough room in here for a compact orgy, so long as everypony used protection. Still, I’d’ve imagine it’d take a special kind of pony to be able to get it on as an ancient corpse stares as you, not at least without asking the dead mare if she wasn’t to tag-team. Did the undead require protection during that sort of thing?

If not for the door that Felicitat had opened up, I could have mistaken this small place for just a weird rock formation, it was so covered in vines and moss. Still, this place just didn’t have a good vibe to it. That crucified corpse didn’t seem like a good sport.

“How did you find this place?” I asked.

“I… I just did. I found the oracle; she was hungry, weak, and dying. I cared for her, and in return she showed me this place… showed me how to finally become somepony ponies loved and wanted and needed. We’ve… been best friends ever since.” She sniffled in the way that a child did after their father made them watch as he mercilessly mauled their pet rabbit with a bag of steamed turnips. There was nothing she could do, she knew it, but yet refused to acknowledge it.

“Oracle,” I said, tasting the word. “Orakel.” I looked at her. “Does it give its advice freely, or does it charge a deathly price?” The mare didn’t reply. I grabbed and shook her. “Dammit, girl! By all the angels in Heaven, tell me! What price does it demand of thee?!”

“Nothing! It does not—”

The back of my broken hoof was a lonely hoof, mostly because he wasn’t my masturbating hoof. So, in his search for love, he kissed Felicitat upside the cheek and knocking her screaming to the ground. “Lie not to me, witch!” I roared. “None but the unholy can the future see! Speak’st thou to me of sorcery, witchcraft, Bruchmagie!”

She rose an arm to defend herself, tears streaming down her face. “No, no, it doesn’t! I swear! She’s my friend!”

“She?” I spat. “Thou hast clearly to me dealing with a demon been.” I blinked. “I appear to only be able to speak in weird, half-sensical archaisms when dealing with demons. Should probably see a doctor about that. A the rapist, mayhap.” I reached over and grabbed my sword in my teeth, pulling out in a motion I hadn’t performed for what felt like an age. To the crucified skeleton I went.

“No!” she screamed, throwing herself in front of the shrine and me. At her screams, a faint blue aura emanated from the skeleton’s eyes. “I won’t let you hurt her!”

I was about to very rationally explain my reason to her, but then I realized I had a sword in my mouth, so there went that plan. Yeah, I could’ve put the sword away, but that I’d’ve been defenseless. So, this was a problem. I watched as the blue light grew in size, giving me flashbacks to the skinwalker.

She was whole now. Not Felicitat, but the ghastly, glowing, blue image of a pegasus mare. It was a type of demon, alright. The kind that, as a Special Agent of the Reichskriminalamt, I had been tasked with finding and destroying. The branch I was assigned to was also the one partially responsible for rooting out, trying, and burning witches. Supernatural stuff was fun to hunt down. If I knew my demonology, and I did, this thing was physical enough to kill with steel, but no physical enough for me to cook into a fine stew.

“Felicitat?” it asked in a sweet, almost hypnotic voice. It was the voice like an old mare who had the habit of molesting the children she lured into the bushes.

Screw it. This was worth it. I spat my sword out, precariously holding its hilt with a hoof. “Listen here, you great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies: I am going to purge that monstrosity from the face of God’s green earth.”

Felicitat looked at the demon floating behind her and nodded. “Vai!” She looked at me. “Eat your own penis, you crazy freak!” The demon seemed to become more translucent, and then it darted into Felicitat’s body. “If you want to kill her, you’ll have to go through me first! I won’t let you kill my only friend!”

“It’s a demon! A spirit left behind from Anderwelt!” I seethed. Somewhere off in the distance, a flock of birds took flight. “You unknowing cow; you let it into your flesh! This is a demon of the tongue—a demon of no true form to call its own, only a kind of raw, rape-focused sexual glare with the lense of prophecy.” I sheathed my sword. “The price it demanded of you was sex, wasn’t it?”

She blinked. “No!”

“For every prophecy it spoke to thee, it demanded your flesh to pleasure its non-existence!” I accused, and she said nothing. “Stupid girl. A demon is incapable of higher morality, doesn’t even know right from wrong, is little more than pure emotion!”

“You won’t hurt her—I won’t let you!”

I took a moment to think. God, what was it so hard to think?! Stupid infection. Stupid fever, Stupid—

Whispery blue contrails seeped from Felicitat’s ears, mouth, and tear ducts. “Please don’t kill me,” came the voice of the demon. “Don’t kill her. Please. I… I can help you… both of you…”

“Both of us?” I asked. It was a bad idea to give a demon of the tongue even the chance to speak, but as it spoke, I had time to think through my fever.

“Yes,” it said. “The bad stallion and the one in your mind, the sorceress.” It came out further, contrails still coming from the mare, its eyes staring into mine. Reaching a hoof out to me, I saw that the demon was holding a card. The words on the top of the card labeled it as The Sorceress. Upon the card was the image of a mare in black robes holding a sword. Her long mane seemed to flow almost by magic as she took off a plague mask to reveal her blue eyes, which looked at me with an expression that I couldn’t quite tell if it meant either come hither or you’re mine.

The demon flicked her wrist, and the card changed into a new one. The Gun. Within the card’s image were two weapons like the ones the angel had given me; they were crossed like swords before the face of a battered and bloodied-looking pegasus mare closing her eyes as if in prayer. With a flick, the demon placed the card into the air, where I saw it floating alongside The Sorceress.

“The High Priestess,” the demon said, showing me a card depicting a mare in robes sitting there with a staff. Oddly, it looked as if her body was made of crystals, not flesh and fur. Another card. “The King.” Sitting upon a throne, leaning forwards and holding a sword as if it were a walking stick, was a stallion. His right arm was a darker color than the rest of his body, the crown on his head bloody, and his single remaining eye stared ahead with a homicidal vigor. “The Murderer.” A red-eyed mare looked out at me from the card with a look that wasn’t entirely sane. Her black-with-red-streaks mane was a mess as the unicorn mare held a knife to her own throat, smiling widely at me. I don’t care if I die! I could almost hear her screaming. “The Liar.” An alien face smiling so wide that it exposed even his molars, the eyes both insane and oddly seductive, eyes you just wanted to trust. It reminded me exactly of the skinwalker.

Each of the six cards now floating in the air before me. I looked at them all. “So?”

“No, there’s one more, the most important of all,” it said, and drew another card for its invisible deck. “The Hanged Stallion.” He was hanging upside down from a single hindhoof, his body limp as the raging conflagration below him seethed up like a hungry chick eager for its mother to vomit food into its mouth. The shirt he wore was a dusty no-color, his black pants tattered but intact. His right arm was darker than the rest of his body, the sword and guns—I supposed the cards called them—were falling from their sheaths and into the fire. Worst of all, he had been a unicorn before his horn had clearly been blown off, probably destroyed in the same event that reduced the hanging stallion’s left eye to a stitched eyelid without any eye beneath it.

“Seven cards in all,” it said. “A representation of who… of what you are, what you will be, and those around you who will shape you, Hanged Stallion.” It paused, then added, “Tu pendu. The dice of God are always loaded. It is a force you cannot escape: zhah, as the Old Ones called it.”

A smile crossed my face. Ideeeea! “Interesting jabber and mysticism, but I’ve had enough of your prattle, demon and witch.” The smiled widened. “You think it’s your friend, Felicitat? That it’s not just using you? Okay. We’ll test that theory out.”

“What does—” she tried, only to scream as I grabbed a hoofful of her long, silvern mane. In an instant, the demon gasped and vanished into the mare alongside its mystic cards. As Felicitat kicked and screamed and cried, I dragged her outside. A thought of what I was doing must have dawned on her, the way she was trying and failing to dig her hooves into the dirt, and then into the mud above the waterline of the swamp.

“No, what are you doing?!” she shrieked.

“Very simple,” I said with a calculated calmness. “I’m going to drown you”—and I shoved her face into the water. A moment later, I brought her head up, letting her gulp for air. “Here’s how it’s going to work, witch. You’re just old enough where I don’t consider you a child, at least not in the context of what evil you’ve wrought, so no moral backlash. So I’m going to drown you. If the demon truly is your friend, she will evict herself from your mortal body, allowing itself to be killed and sparing your life.”

“No! No! You can’t do this! You can’t!” She thrashed uselessly against my grip.

“If I’m right, the demon stays in your body, does not sacrifice itself, and you drown, killing both of you. Either way, the demon dies, and I win. Any questions, little French witch?”

“Yes!”

“Good. Now repent, thou bitch,” I said with a detached coolness, and slammed her face into the water. It was impossible not to hear Felicitat scream from underwater, short-lived though it was. There was only so much air in a pony’s lungs. For once, I prayed to God that I was wrong.

I’ve heard tale of children holding their breath to make their parents obey them. Theory was that as you hold your breath, your face changes colors, and your parents panic and do what you want because they don’t want you to die. Of course, the idea was ridiculous. You couldn’t hold your breath until you died: either the overbearing urge to breathe beats you over the head like a dog beats that painting of a porpoise you hung up in his doghouse, or you go unconscious and your body breathes on its own. I once knew a filly who tried that. She hilariously died of a brain aneurysm that very day. The two events were actually unrelated.

The point I’m trying to make is that if held underwater, you will not suffocate to death, you will literally try to inhale water. That’s what drowning was. It was a very personal way of killing someone, but still much faster than strangulation. God, that was the worst, most inefficient way to kill somepony.

Even though I knew I wasn’t wrong, I still hoped that, just this once, everything I knew was wrong. Hoped that maybe the demon would come out. So, God, please let me be wrong.

I was not wrong. Stupid reverse psychology God.

With a splash of water and a tremendous, strangling gasp for breath, Felicitat’s head came out of the water. She coughed and sputtered. I swallowed a lump in my throat as I held onto her. The demon had called my bluff… only, it wasn’t supposed to be a bluff. But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. There was a line in the sand, and I was a one-eyed pony with no depth perception anymore, but even the black pit that pretended to be my heart wouldn’t let me drown her. I could feel the Code looming above me, the tape holding it together creaking and groaning with every second I held Felicitat underwater.

“Release her, demon,” I growled, trying to pretend I myself wasn’t shaken up.

A ghastly little voice hissed, “Never! She is mine!”

Gritting my teeth, I could have sworn that I was being watched by blue eyes. The gritted teeth turned into a grimace not unlike the way eels sometimes seemed to grin after death and before the pot. I had backed myself into a corner, there was no getting around that. Gah! Why couldn’t I think?!

Brain, you have failed me!

So I shoved her face back into the murky water. I recalled that the swampwater did not taste all very nice, it was like eating the ocean, just shoveling it all into your slobbering gob. There was a reason I didn’t drink water. Fish fornicated in it! (Except that I actually drank water all the time.)

For a moment my mental cogs just stopped, jammed up with what I wanted to assume was the unholiest of unholies: peanut butter-flavored jelly. C had given me something before he took the mares. A dreamlike slowness to my actions, I brought Felicitat’s head from the water and threw her onto the ground, her legs splaying out in a whorish sprawl as she sputtered and hacked and coughed.

With blank eye, I reached into and fumbled with a pocket and pulled out a jawbone, a jaw of the Devil’s Backbone. By the great Archangel Thor in the halls of Walhalla, I knew there was a reason I was lugging around a somewhat-chewed demonic jawbone. It wasn’t just because I was creepy and like hoarding pieces of dead bodies; jawbones infused with powers from Anderwelt were always so useful against demons without proper flesh. Much like a towel, never leave home without one.

Clutching the jawbone in my left hoof, I held the bone out to the mare. “In Nomine Patris, et Prophetae, et Spiritus Machinae—I cast thee from her flesh!” I roared, and the mare’s eyes glowed.

“I can’t see! I can’t see!” she squealed. Well of course she couldn’t see; how in the nine Hells were you supposed to be able to see with glowing eyes? The demon within her, I saw, was slowly becoming whispy blue contrails which seemed to be on a general course for the jawbone. But it wasn’t enough…

Quick as a fox chasing the promise of learning the secret to seducing the hound’s wife just to play mind games, I performed das Kreuzzeichen with the jawbone in hoof: from forehead, to the heart, left shoulder, and right shoulder.

The demon screamed bloody murder in its high-pitched, feminine voice as it was visibly torn from Felicitat’s body. “No!” it howled. “I’ll end her pathetic life before I let you take me from her!”

“Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer! Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer. Death is speechless, so hear my speech! Demon of lust, I banish you from her—hear me and obey my command!”

With a single tearing motion, the off-blue, spectral demon was ripped from the mare’s body. Emitting a high-pitched, warbling sound, its blue essence was sucked into the jawbone held in my hoof. Driven by pure instinct, I threw the jawbone to the ground and stomped it into countless fragments.

No more oracle. Its new shrine had been destroyed. Yay. Time to celebrate with cheesecake. I liked cheesecake. Covered my teeth in plaque and made me need to brush afterwards, but I liked it.

“Wha’… what just…?” the little mare tried.

“That was a defiled jawbone,” I said casually, poking at the scattered bone fragments. “When dealing with demons of the tongue, such as your so-called ‘oracle’, sometimes the best way to deal with a creature of Anderwelt is to exorcise it into a mystical object from Anderwelt. In laypony’s terms: I fought fire with fire, yet never sullied myself with char or ash.”

“You… you mean she’s…?”

“Dead? Yeah, pretty much.” I shrugged. “Hey, do you know anywhere around here where I could get a nice strawberry-banana smoothie? I’ve been in the mood for one all week.”

“Je-jo-je-jo—”

“Stop speaking your crazy broken French and get back to the matter at hoof: smoothies. You know, if you know a place, I’d totally take you there and buy you one too.” I nodded. “It won’t be a date because you’re kind of too young and I don’t wish to be seen at a creep. Wait about a year, turn sixteen, and you’re technically free to date creepy ponies old enough to be your grandfather, but not right now. I mean, not that I’d really want to date you, what with you willingly consorting with demons and more-than-likely letting yourself be literally sexually violated by the demon in exchange for so-called ‘prophecies’.”

Felicitat broke out into tears, her head already soaked with swampwater, her nose bleeding. For all the waterworks, she somehow did it with more dignity than Cards. At that thought, I frowned. Why did my thoughts keep going back to Cards and, by extension, Lightning Dust? Looking around this little peninsula in the swamp and at the small, overgrown shrine, I wondered if, just maybe, I actually sort of missed the girls in some way, shape, or form. Of course, that was ridiculous. Me missing somepony? Be not ridiculous. Perhaps it had something to do with Cards just having a neat color scheme. Or maybe it was just because Cards’ patheticness always made me feel better about myself. That seemed reasonable.

I looked at my arm. The infected veins were almost glowing with hatred; it felt… weird to articulate the limb because the veins were still as hard as a rock. “Well, now what?” I asked the sky. Something moved in my peripheral vision. With a start, I jerked my head left. There was nothing by empty swamp. But I had sworn that blue eyes had been staring at me. I looked down at the sobbing girl. “Would you like to be walked home? It’s the least I can do for… destroying your world in my attempts to save your life.”

She only curled into a ball, stroking her tail as she sobbed.

“Sheesh. Aren’t you just a barrel of laughs today? I swear, something must really be bugging you, Miss Debbie Downer. Because that’s what you are, a Debbie Downer. And nopony likes a Debbie Downer.” I licked my lips. They tasted funny. “You know,” I said, “I always wondered what it’d be like to wear lipstick. Does it make your lips taste funny from the point-of-view of the wearer? I hear that most mares actually end up eating a lot of lipstick because they lick their lips and stuff. What do you think?”

“How,” she sobbed, “how can you joke at a time l-l-like this?”

“Pretty easily, actually,” I replied, rubbing the side of my face. “I mean, I just killed a demon and saved your life; that’s cause for celebration in my book.” I frowned. “Speaking of books, if I wrote a romance novel, do you think that ‘Me Having Sex with & Being Raped by Hot Mares’ would sell good just on the name?” She only stared at me. “No? How about ‘Kiss My Sister’, subtitle: ‘How Sis Slipped and Repeatedly Fell on my Penis: An Explanation for Mother’? Taboo always sells so well.”

“Do you realize what you did to me!?” she shrieked so suddenly and loudly that I flinched. “I’m nothing without her! Before her, I was just some freak everypony hated because they didn’t like me prying into their hearts! Then I found her, helped her back to health, and she made me the most important girl in the valley. So what if her price was… lustful? She was still my friend!”

“It was not your friend,” I said. My tone was hesitant as I picked my words, like the voice of a boy trying to carefully explain how he accidentally impregnated his sister.

“Stop calling her an it, you pig bastard!” Felicitat snarled. “I could feel her femininity, touch it, even, as it touched me. She wasn’t evil, she was good; she saved lives and helped make our comté the wealthiest comté in the whole valley!”

I shook my head sadly. “Since you’re so good with emotions, tell me: what did you feel when the demon refused to leave you?”

It was like I’d driven an icicle through her skull, her rage not dying but settling. “Hatred,” she said calmly. “It was like a blind hatred, a cornered rat bearing its teeth and snapping. I… we honestly believed you were going to kill me… us…” So had I. “She was unwilling to give a single inch for me, even though she believed that you wouldn’t hurt me if she let go.”

I sighed, offering her the closest thing to a sympathetic look as I could, not sure what she’d interpret from it. “Those who consort with demons are always bound for evil, as is the fate of all who dabbled in the occult, in magic. No matter what they say, demons are evil. Just look at ponies like Waltharius.” At his name, I felt a surge of hatred and confusion to my gut. It vanished just as soon as it occurred, leaving me confused. Why had I felt that all of the sudden for a stallion who died nigh a century before I was born?

“Wahl-tah-ree-oos?” She blinked. “The other one is upset at his name. The other one is familiar with the name.”

I ignored that bit of weirdness. It was the result of me dying of infection, most likely. “Ja, Waltharius, the so-called ‘Gute Mann’, ‘the Good Stallion’.” I closed my eye and thought about history class and how best to summarize without going too deep into details that she likely neither cared about nor would recall. My first thought was to dig into my bags and pull out my copy of Kapitän Teutschland and flip through the pages. When I got to the right page, I tapped the picture for her. “This buck.”

In the photo, the dark stallion with glowing red eyes sat in a throne. His armor was like a cross between plate armor and robes, a hood covering his face in darkness, enhancing the glowing eyes and shining smile that radiated menace. The bat wings on his back did not compliment his unicorn horn. “I am the Good Stallion,” he was saying and I translated into Equestrian for Felicitat, “I am the angel, I am madness, I am the word, I am the law, I am the key, and I am the door. But call me Waltharius.”

Putting the book away, I said, “To the south of the Reich there is a continent called die Südlande, the Southlands. It’s very creative, you see. Die Südlande were a continent covered in duchies, baronies, petty kingdoms, and huge tracts of unsettled land where tribes of zebras and ponies made their living. A little over a century ago, a stallion named Waltharius came to prominence in the center of the Südlande, the so-called Herz von Midlothian, since it was the center of the Kingdom of Midlothian. There’s a Schlachtschiff named after it, I think.”

I walked over and knelt down by the mare. She let out a yelp and scurried away from me and into the little shrine like a beaver in heat. Wasn’t sure if beavers could get heat or if they were always fertile, but the way her tail dragged in the dirt just made me think of a she-beaver. In fact, now that I looked at her long tail, I was struck by the thought that I had no idea how Equestrians kept their tails so clean when I’d clearly seen a few dragging around on the ground, they were so long.

Before I walked up and joined her in the shrine, I scanned the swamp for any bogtopi. I was not in the mood for a surprise claw-given prostate exam. Satisfied that my anus would remain an exit—I had once been told by Father that my mother had once seriously considered getting a mutilation of the phrase “Exit Only” above hers—I went into the shrine.

Felicitat was cowering at the foot of the crucified skeleton. When I came up, she didn’t flinch or cry; she only looked defeated. Her eyes said simply: ‘Go ahead. Do with me as you will. I’m just flesh now.’ But her mouth said bitterly, “Without her, I’m just a freak, a stupid girl who will never find happiness or fulfillment in life.”

Sucking lightly on my bottom lip, I sat down next to her. “And what do you consider to be a happy, fulfilled life?” My tone had softened considerably, as if I were trying to impersonate the sound of silk. Which, come to think, I actually knew about, since I had once met a semi-sentient silk monster who constantly yelled about its fetish for leather, and thus me by extension of what I was wearing back then and right now.

She sniffled, rubbing her eyes. “I always wanted to find Mr. Right, get married, have a couple of foals. You know, just like any good mare.” God, her voice was worse than caffeine-less coffee.

Like any good mare? I thought with a puzzled frown. What odd phrasing. So there is a sort of expected role for a mare in Equestria, that of a mother. Interesting.

“I mean,” she went on, likely more for herself than for me, “I’m a good filly, I eat my vegetables, help ponies out. Celestia! I’m still a virgin, even.”

I blinked. “No, you’re not. If the demon took you, that sort of ends that thing.”

“She was a girl,” Felicitat replied, eyes wettening. “You can’t lose your virginity to another girl. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Can’t lose your…? What? I sighed. Okay, weird Equestrian culture. I guess you require a penis and penetration to end virginity as they see it. Also interesting. Says a lot. “So you acknowledge that the price the demon took of you was sexual in nature.”

She looked at me, then at herself. I tried to imagine it was a generic looking down, and that she wasn’t staring at her sex. Stupid nudity. “Òc, éra…” She shook her head. “Aye, it was.”

Silence reigned Queen Bitch for a moment. Lacking anything to really say, I tried to steer the conversation back to wherein I was the one in the moral right and she the victim I’d saved.

“Look, the point I was trying to make was,” I went on, “the stallion Waltharius Pendrick rose from nothing and became history’s greatest villain precisely because he dabbled in magic, because he compacted with demons, lost any sense of morality and became an anti-messiah dedicated to his own fanatical beliefs that magic was perfectly normal and moral. He preached utter drivel about the ‘magic of friendship’, a deceptively named doctrine that stated that together as friends, as brothers, as sisters, as comrades, they could overcome anything, and that those without this magic needed to die. What was worse, he was thought to be perfectly sane, just that he fanatically believed that his ‘coalition of friends’ was the only way to live, that you needed to accept the vulgar heresy of fate and to resign yourself to that magic.

“But at the time, he was a simple raider with dreams of glory, perhaps even a terrorist on his best day. Yet he preached of liberty, a Teutschland-inspired democracy—which is why many believe he was an errant Teutscher—and an end to ‘class-based slavery’. But worst of all, he preached that magic was okay, that he would end centuries of mage-phobia partially inspired by the Reich. He advocated teaching magic to all who would hear it, to end the tyranny of magic-haters; in essence, to consort with demons. Mind you, this was in a day they only the Reich held witch hunts and public crucifictions of magi; most courts in the Südlanden had court magicians; but ots public use was nowhere, nowhere, near as tolerated as it is in Equestria. Quickly, his group of raiders turned into a popular revolution, and the Kingdom of Midlothian—by far the richest, wealthiest, most powerful state in the Südlanden—fell to the Good Stallion.”

I glanced at the mare to make sure she was listening and not doing something stupid like crying again. To my pleasure, she was looking at me, and she nodded with an “And then?”

It was all I could do to keep from smiling. This was a story my Reich and I were rather fond of, since we were the big damn heroes at the end of it all. “Well, within a few years, his army was the largest in the region, and he conquered nation after nation and tribe after tribe on his quest. With each conquest came new followers, new magi, new warriors, and more demons that they brought into this world from Anderwelt. To his followers, he was a messiah. To intelligent people, he was a monster and a terrorist, a mad tyrant who wanted to conquer the world. Or, as I said in history class that got me in trouble, ‘He was a stallion who just needed to get laid by someone other than his father’.

“His reign of genocide, murder, mass-yet-horrifically-organized rape, more murder, raiding, and piracy was all driven by him and his magic. For every spell he toyed with, his evil and depravity grew. He tested his magic on those who hated magic, tried to enlighten them with his ‘magic of friendship’. Waltharius built schools to provide free education and indoctrination to a generation of children, too, so he really did believe in his utopian version of the future.” I shrugged and looked around the little shrine. “It all thankfully came to an end by the hooves of King Viktor of Teutschland near a century ago, who personally slew both Waltharius and the Emperor of Nippön.” I rubbed my shoulder. “Any questions?”

Felicitat only stared at me, the blood from her nose having dried. “You’re not an Equestrian, are you?”

“Nein, das bin ich nicht,” I replied, and gave her a brief summary of what I was and of the Reich. A bunch of blah blah blah; a spiel I’d given enough times in the past week. I finished with a reference to the Viktor: “By 4117 ADN, the war was over, the forces of science and God had prevailed over the forces of magic and depravity.”

“ADN?” she asked.

“You… you don’t use that calendar?” I shrugged like some kind of dwarven hamster. “Fair enough, I guess. ADN stands for Anno Domini Nostri—the Year of Our Lord. It marks how long it’s been since the Mare Laurentia, the Prophet, was born. Tell me, what Calender does Equestria use?” Something plopped into the water somewhere off in the distance.

Felicitat shrugged. “I don’t know, we just use the calendar. We’re in right now the An du Lune of the Seventh Age. An du Lune because the Seventh Age began when Nightmare Moon was defeated and Princess Luna returned from the lunar prison to rule alongside her sister once more.” I barely avoided a sneer. Just how much of that was fact and how much mere myth? “Not that it matters how many years it’s been since Princess Luna came back.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked in High French.

“Your accent is odd,” she replied in French.

“But understandable. I could say the same to you.”

She gave me a half-sneer, half-smirk. Then with a sigh, she again looked glummer than a plum who’s just learned that plums did not ever, in fact, have sex. “On the one hoof, I’ll never meet the Princess,” she said back in Equestrian. “On the other, I have no life without the oracle.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked. “You keep telling me you have no life, but you never really explain what that means.”

Felicitat shot the low ceiling of the shrine a mirthless smile as she slid down and onto her back. “Did you know that the oracle’s helped me save lives before? Òc, it’s true. I once got a vision of a heavy object falling from a window and onto Médge Lothaire’s son.” He has a son? “I told them about it, and we barely managed to stop Péire. If we’d been a second slower, a heavy péira would have fallen out of a window, and Péire would be dead.”

“Where is Péire now?” I asked.

“He went off to Songnam a few days before you got here, wanted to join up and become a Carolean to help protect his town and ponies like me.”

“I thought this place wasn’t under Elkington’s control,” I said with a frown.

“It’s not, but the comtes here are all on friendly terms with Elkington. A few years ago after Nightmare Moon’s return, there was a lot of damage in the valley from the river flooded and when a few swamp beasts washed up into the various towns.”

The image in my mind flashed to a bogtopus with a surgical mask and gloves on its claws, Felicitat tied down face-down to a table, gagged for good measure. “Okay, Miss Felicitat,” Doctor Octobogtopus said, “we’re just going to stab your genitals and see if you’re pregnant. Oh, and I’m not a doctor, but I play one in the local theater.”

My mind snapped back to reality as Felicitat went on. “Duke Elkington spent a lot of his personal treasury repairing this damage and improving the valley by building a dam. So when we got news of Elkington’s call-to-arms, a bunch of stallions in the valley—many of them the sons of the valley’s comtes—got together and left for Songnam.”

Something smelled fishy about that, and it wasn’t just my ungodly stench. By the Prophet’s holy virginity, I needed to take a shower. I smelt like the juices of a dead whale vagina. Out of anyone I’d ever met, I think I could safely say that I was an expert on that topic. Sometimes we have to do shameful things to avoid the rain.

“But if it weren’t for the oracle, he’d be dead,” she concluded.

I cocked a brow. “Do you not recall how, in the end, the demon of lust was perfectly ready to just kill you out of pure spite?” She didn’t respond properly, just gave a little whimper and looked away. “I call it a demon of lust—Dämon der Lust—because that is what I believe it was, a dark representation of desires brought forth from Anderwelt. In my country, for pacting with it, you would have been very publicly crucified.” I glanced at her forehead. As with everypony I’d seen here but Lothaire and his wife, she was an earther. “I’m willing to understand that you Equestrians simply do not understand, much like children, so it would be wrong to punish you too harshly; as my teacher of Geschichte und Moralphilosophie said, ‘’Tis wrong to spank a baby with an axe.’ Make sense?”

“Not really…”

Shaking my head, I tried to hold back any negative and possibly racist thoughts again Equestrians. They were so much like children in a way. “You know,” I said aimlessly, “there was once a time where they used to say that spanking children was wrong, that it ruined them in a way. A rather ridiculous school of thought, and one my father had clearly never heard of.”

“But,” she replied slowly, “it is wrong… isn’t it?”

The only response I gave was to shrug and sigh. “Somehow, just somehow, I knew you’d say that. I’ll not discuss it any further. You keep your flawed parenting methods, and we’ll keep our flawed parenting methods.”

We sat there in silence. For once in as long as I could remember, I didn’t think it was the best idea to destroy the silence. Felicitat seemed content to lying the floor in a little half-ball, stroking her tail. I let out a set, looking out through the rotten doors and up at what I could see of the sky. The thought of pegasi like Lightning Dust up there messing with the clouds somehow made my stomach ache. Weather did as weather does. It was a wonder Equestria wasn’t crawling with demons. Since they weren’t everywhere, odds were that I might very well have found the only two in Equestria. I didn’t really know.

Taking a nasal breath, I remembered that I didn’t smell very nice. “Felicitat, would you like me to walk you home? It’s the least I can do…”

|— ☩ —|

“Ah,” I sighed with a smile, looking at the shivering mare curled up on the couch. “I don’t know about you, but I love using ladies’ conditioner for my mane,” I said, rubbing a hoof through my hair. “Just look at how soft my mane is! Oh, and I used all of your condition when I was in your shower. Hope you don’t mind.” I put my hooves on my cheeks and jostled them. “Because I’m worth it!”

“Yeah,” the mare groused, “you should become a model.”

“Odd,” I replied, putting a hoof to my chin. “I’ve been told that before by a girl, way back in high school. Of course, she was a compulsive liar and I knew it, but she laughed earnestly at my jokes, so I didn’t push her off a roof. Also, she had a cute butt, so all the guys would have murdered me if I hurt her.”

Felicitat grunted. “Why are you still even here?”

“One: Because I figured you were too upset to really care about me using your shower and most of your soap. They came in such nice glass bottles. Made me wonder how often ponies dropped their bottles of soap and ended up needing a trip to the hospital. And two: because is it really so hard to believe that I care?”

Yes.

Shut up! Nopony asked you.

The little mare just stared at me. She furrowed her brow as she looked at my shirt. “Why does your shirt have words writ upon it?”

“Why?” I asked. “Don’t you mean a question beginning with ‘what’?”

She shook her head. “Aye, aye, that. What do they mean?”

I smiled. “I like music. Always have, ever will.” I pointed to the three symbols lined up horizontally across the black shirt: the cross, the burning heart with barbed wire strapped across it, and the skull. “Glaube. Liebe. Tod. In Equestrian, it means ‘Faith. Love. Death’. Important themes, I suppose. Also an album I like.” I pointed to the large onomatopoeia written above the symbols. “Composed by these guys. You like Sapphire Shores, I take it.”

Felicitat nodded. “Aye. Her recent album, L.A.M.B., if you ask me, is just really cool. Nopony has her style, even if she does like pushing boundaries just to be controversial.”

Common ground at last! “Controversial? How so?”

“Well, her recent album had a rather raunchy song. Raunchiest one ever, really. Got to the top of the charts, so I hear, and has been there for two weeks.” She looked away. “No doubt thanks in huge part to the stallion she performed the song with, Duke Elkington.”

I felt a glass pane somewhere deep inside me shatter as if some clichéd hero were smashing through it, only to realize that this a terrible idea, and so ended up losing an eye due to glass shards. “The Smile Song?” I intoned.

She nodded. “Yeah, that one.”

“I watched it performed live by Duke Elkington and Sapphire Shores when I was in Songnam a few days before.” I offered. Her eyes positively lit up for just an instant. It didn’t take an idiot to know that she wanted me to go on. “And the Smile Song is what you consider raunchy?”

“Well, yeah. You heard and caught all of those sexual undertones, right? You’re not supposed to sing so… so openly about that sort of thing.” She nodded as if resting her case.

I object! “Well, maybe I’m just jaded,” I replied. “On just one—one—of the albums I have with me, there’s a song regarding underage brotherly incest, lace-and-leather bondage intercourse used as an allegory between pony and God, a song about a father who rapes his daughter until she kills him and writes that very song in his blood, a song about a girl not allowed to see sunlight and I don’t even want to go into what graphic sex is mentioned therein, and finally a song whose brutal beat and message can be summed up as ‘Your face is ugly. I’m going to anally rape you’.”

She gaped at me.

“You think I’m kidding?” I laughed. “Because I’m not. And no, it’s not the one I have on my shirt.”

“Con de Celestia, what kind of horrible country are you from?”

I laughed so quickly that I actually snorted. “Well, that wasn’t vulgar of you.” Brushing my hat to the side, I smiled, leaning back in the chair.

She, however, narrowed her eyes and stared at my head as if studying a particularly interesting can of whoopass. “That mark of your head…” she said, barely audible. “No, it can’t be…” Her eyes widened and she gasped. “You’re a unicorn!” Felicitat shouted, pointing at my forehead.

“Was, technically.”

“But-but-but-but how?”

I tapped my eyepatch. “Same way I lost my eye: I walked into a door like a battered wife. Doors are one of my many one weakness, you see. Happened, like, four days ago. Wait, no. How long was I with Médge Lothaire?”

The little mare sat up, still covering herself with her blanket. “I just—just that I… You were in his clinic for four days.”

I tried to whistle, but I couldn’t whistle. Who was I kidding? “Then it happened to me about a week ago today.” I shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about it, so I might as well smile and be happy that it wasn’t worse, right?” I glanced over to the room’s doorway leading into the little foyer where the front door was. At least I’d taken the time to repair her door. Again, just some ‘least that I could do’ stuff. Although, to be the fair, the front door was the only thing standing between me and Honkers the goose, even if he was trussed up better than a pelican with a bondage fetish.

Felicitat rubbed her forehead. “Just… Ow… I can’t imagine what could do that.” She gritted her teeth. “Reminds me of the story of that one stallion who got his horn blown off by a magical lock.”

Nodding, I recalled the story that—was it Lightning Dust?—that Lightning Dust had told me when I had asked about that box in the back of the Sleepy Oaks sheriff office, the same one that had held that bit of cute armor for Cards. Apparently, the magical lock could blow horns off. I felt a pang of irony that I’d made Cards open the lock for me precisely because I didn’t want to lose my horn, yet here I was, Whappo the Hornless Unicorn—coming to a freak show near you today. Hey, kids, make sure to throw all your popcorn and peanuts at him; he hates it! Make sure to thank his trainer, Cherry Berry and her whip.

As I pictured that in my head, I found myself thinking, Goddamn naked ponies in tophats.

“I heard that they managed to sort of fix him,” she said, and my train of thought crashed into an orphanage, burning hundreds.

“What do you mean?”

“Um, ’twas just a story I heard about that,” she said with a hesitant hoofwave. “Probably nothing.”

“It was something and you will explain it,” I ordered with so much venom that my tongue tingled.

The curtains behind her swayed slightly as Felicitat spoke. “Well, I heard something about that unicorn that got his horn sort of repaired in the Crystal Empire.”

“Crystal Empire?” I asked, cocking a brow and tilting my head.

Felicitat twiddled her forehooves, seemingly unwilling to look at me. “Well, I don’t think that’s its name anymore, since you can’t be an empire without an empire or an emperor. We here in the valley call it la Principauté de Cristal nowadays, but I think—”

“I don’t care about names; I care for the story.”

“Well… far to the north some time ago, an ancient, mystical state emerged from the ice and snow, a nation long ago vanished or… something. I don’t really know. Point is, it’s now ruled by Equestria, and its ponies are an odd lot. I hear that they don’t personally manage and control their own weather—”

“Get on with it,” I said with a grunt

She blew a puff of mane out of her face. “Well, I, uh—you see, I just heard that some buck who got his horn blown off by one of those magical locks got it repaired and all-better-ed by some ponies in the Principauté de Cristau.”

I cocked a brow. “And that’s all you know?”

“That’s all I know,” she replied without skipping a beat. Felicitat looked at me like how beaver eyes a venus fly trap, wondering if the plant would eat or protect its beaver eggs. “But it’s probably not even true. He was the only unicorn I ever heard of who lost his horn and lived, but I never really believed it until I saw that you… and thought that maybe it wasn’t just a myth. I mean, I thought that a unicorn died without their horn, period. Really, to tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about having a horn because, well, because it wasn’t a body part I was born with.”

Thinking hard, I stood up. Equestria was a land of magic and horror in equal measure. And if I knew my magical fantasy lands from countless hours playing tabletop roleplaying games, it was that all myths and legends were true in magical fantasy lands. Ignoring how this wasn’t fantasy, that is. Well, if it was, I was having a pretty boring dream. Not nearly enough clowns were trying to teach me the meaning of love.

A flash of warmth made me glance down to my infected arm. With the short sleeves of my shirt, the inflamed red was advertising my diseased state like how a nice, dry cave called out to an adventurer caught in the rain, a cave which later turned out to be the vagina of a giant whale of some sort, and no amount of showering ever got rid of the smell or the shame of having not entirely been displeased with the situation. There weren't many stallions who could safely say “I once slept in a dead whale’s vagina” aloud in this day and age.

Felicitat blinked. “You did what?! Oh Celestia, I think I’m going to puke.”

“Huh,” I said flatly. “Did not mean to say that out loud. I should probably learn the difference between my inner and outer voice, huh?”

“H-how do you get from ‘broken horns’ to ‘I once slept in a dead whale’s cunt’?! That’s not normal!”

“Which part isn’t normal, that I said it or that I did it?”

“Both!” She violently shook her head with horror. Or labor pains. It was hard to tell. “Normal ponies do not think like that—they do not go from ‘broken horns’ to ‘whale cunts’ within mere seconds of each other!”

“It’s improper for a lady to use such language, you know.” I have her a sagely nod.

“But—I—you…!”

I gave her a blank look. “You know, now that I think about it, ‘How I Came To Sleep Inside The Vagina of a Dead Whale’ is also an ideal name for my upcoming romance/pornographic novel.”

“I-I-I-I… I have no words. I do not have words.”

Putting a hoof to my mouth, I said with a puzzled frown, “You know, that’s the third time I’ve been told that very same thing this week.” Felicitat did not reply, only stayed there on her ugly-colored couch. As I’ve probably said before, I had learned the hard way that a minute of stunned silence was not an open invitation for me to go on.

So I set my hat back on right, put my duster and bags on, and steeled my nerves. My business here was done, but I’d need steeled nerves to get past Honkers the goose, who was still menacingly sitting outside on her pond. Now I was ready to resume my quest, whatever it was. Probably had something to do with this so-called Crystal Empire. Of course, I had to find out exactly where that was first, but details, details. I made my way in silence to the door.

“Where are you going?” Felicitat asked.

Without turning around, I said simply, “Away.”

“You’re just going to leave me here?” she demanded.

“Yes. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted always since the moment we met?”

“B-but what am I supposed to do?”

I adjusted my hat. it felt different without the horn. “Become a marine biologist,” I suggested. “Biology is the field of science where all the babes go. You become hotter just by knowing marine taxonomy.”

“This is serious,” she said in an icy tone. “You come into my life, wreck it, and just leave?” The mare spat out a mirthless chuckle. “A life without the oracle is still no life. I’m doomed to poverty and social ostracization for who… for what I am.” I thought that maybe I heard a teary sniffle.

Fixing my duster’s collar, I replied, “See you later, alligator. In a while, crocodile. Forget not me to write. My address is anywhere but here.”

I didn’t look back as I opened her door and stepped outside, mostly because I was staring the goose down. But by the grace of God, Honkers was asleep. I didn’t think I would survive another goose attack. The bastard was pure evil.

At a weird urge, I looked around, half-expecting to find somepony watching me. Though there was nopony there, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Code was hovering behind me. Why was anypony’s guess. I hadn’t murdered Felicitat. All was good for the moment… right? So I just stood there with the door half-closed behind me, lost in thought and fever.

A hero was a person who helped others at their own expense, wasn’t it? My heroic tithe was usually a literal pound of flesh. Heroes did good. And as a certain teacher of mine once said, “Good is merely that which pleases us.” I felt my jaw clench at that. The Kodex wasn’t fully healed, and it threatened to break at the slightest provocation. When it broke, I became a monster—worse, I stopped being funny. Or at least self-amusing. So long as I could cackle like a laughwolf at my own thoughts, I’d be happy. But that was hard with a broken Code.

But… but what if there was no single heroic sacrifice I could make that would repair the Code? That was a thought that wouldn’t leave me. I took in a sharp intake of breath as I swore I saw somepony standing in the shade of the great oak on Felicitat’s property. Of course, it was nothing. Fever madness, wee! But as I stared at the shady spot, I couldn’t help but wonder about what a normal heroic figure would do in this position. More importantly, what would the Code… what would he say I should do.

Looking down at my infected arm and broken hoof, I wondered. It was because of him that I was who I was today. It was he who helped me create the Code. Of course, the Code thus ensured I was a hero of sorts, that I never strayed so far from the metaphorical face of my father that I become a monster more than a hero. So with him, the face of my father, and the Kodex hovering above me, I realized something.

It was just like Father would say. “Der Herr ist ein Schatten über deiner rechten Hand.” Or, “The Lord is a shadow over thy right forehoof.” With every step towards evil and selfishness I took, the further I got from being funny. And the idea of not being funny could go get serially raped by some kind of squid. For a brief moment, I wondered if the ponies of Songnam were familiar with terrifying pornography involving tentacles, because of all the Nippönische living there. Shaking that thought from my mind, I took a breath, remembered Father’s face, and went back into the house. To appease the code, I had to sacrifice myself. The price of myself was… was my flesh consumed…

I found Felicitat laying on her couch, under her blanket and crying like a baby separated from its mother’s nipple by a barbed wire fence because its mother was terminally evil. It took her a moment to notice me standing there, and she poked her head out from the blanket. Her violet eyes drowned in seas of red crisscrossing white surrounded by the blue of her fur.

“Es tu…” she whispered.

I knelt down by her and spoke softly. “Look, I know I’ve been a real pain. And an ache in the ass.” Not to mention a milky drip from a soggy dick.“I get that. Really. You’re pretty much going to die without your patron demon, ignoring how messed up you must be deep down inside because of all that.”

Felicitat cocked her head to the side, just staring at me.

“So I thought that maybe I could help, actually.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, rubbing her eyes and sniffling. I had to remind myself that despite everything, she was still just a girl. No, not that she was female, but that she wasn’t yet a proper mare, and was emotionally immature. God, these Equestrians were seemingly more sexist than I could ever hope to be. Why I’d hope to be sexist, I didn’t know.

“Well, you know how you’re an empath, right?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she weakly hummed.

“I started wondering about that. Can you instantly tell a lie?”

Felicitat nodded. “Yeah. I can just sort of know when somepony’s lying.” She shrunk away a little. “But not with you. You’re—”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s well and all, but I’m not the point here.” I shook my head. “I imagine having a downright physic ability like that leads to a lot of neat little talents, right?” Like knowing exactly what to say in order to get that really weird threesome with you, some boy, and Honkers that you probably always wanted.

“Uh-huh.”

“And just who is everyone’s favorite Duke who’s constantly on the lookout for useful ponies?” I asked.

She blinked. “Duc Elkington.”

His name sounds weird in French. “Duke Elkington, yes. From all I know of the stallion, he’s on the hunt for all ponies of talent to work with him, no matter if you’re a freaky zebra good with dark magic or pony with the weird-as-hell name of ‘Pudge Farks’. I think that he’d have incredible interest in a filly such as yourself.”

The girl just looked at me.

“And as it just so happens to be, one of the two ponies in this room have personally met with, talked to, and worked for Duke Elkington. And after all that pony did, I think Duke Elkington would be very… attentive to anything that pony says.” I smirked. “He and I have a little repertoire. Mostly because with the Backbone dead, I am his foremost enemy whom he hates with, and I quote, ‘perfect hatred’.”

“Wait. I-if he hates you, then why—”

“He and have a very love-hate relationship,” I explained. “Sometimes he tries to kill me, other times he takes my penis in his hoof and firmly grasps it.”

Felicitat blinked. “Wait. So that’s why he’s single?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, I’d heard the rumors, but I never thought…” Her eyes darted down and to the side in thought.

“What are you talking about?”

She licked her lips. “Y-you know, the rumors that Elkington’s… uh… a coltcuddler.”

“A what?”

“Uh, you know, that he’d into other stallions, the rumors say. He’s literally the single most available bachelor in the entire kingdom; I hear every noblemare wants him, and that he gets countless marriage proposals in the mail every day. N-not to mention that, from what I’ve seen in the papers, he’s a total hottie. Most mares would probably kill to be his duchesses. But after over a decade of ruling, he’s still single. Hay, I don’t even know the guy, but if he proposed to me, I’d be dumb not to accept it. B-but if you’re the reason that—”

I cut her off with a sharp gesture. “Look, I was young and needed the money. Also, I was strapped to a hospital bed and had a switchblade up my ass.” I glanced to a little spider mocking me from the corner of the room. So I stepped away from her without explanation, killed the spider, and went back to her. “Sorry about that. Destiny had to be wrought. Anyways, Elkington’s rapetrain might have been lastweek. Oh, and he’s not gay; he actually just has a secret, absurdly creepy and stalker-like crush on Princess Celestia,” I added casually.

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah. Last week I was young and needed the money. Now I’m old and rich. Funny how that works, huh?” I shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, I only cried for five minutes but my butt stopped hurting.”

The girl actually inched her face towards mine. “I-I wanna say you’re lying, but the utter conviction in your tone of voice freaks me out. Then again, I’m pretty sure with your voice, you could convince Princess Celestia that there is no such thing as the sun.”

“Actually,” I said, “I wanted to seduce her in order to see if she actually has a giant clitorcock.”

“Wha’?”

“Yeah, I imagine that it looks like a really long, really sad pink hat just sitting in a hammock. Only it’s not a hammock; it’s her labia!”

“What are you—I don’t even…”

I jumped up and pointed an accusing hoof at her. “Welcome to the real world, Felicitat! I’m your guide. Now pack your bags with everything you want except food and shampoo because I used and ate it all, respectively.” I blinked. Said it backwards, didn’t I? “That’s right. I used your food and ate your shampoo,” I said, kicking over her little coffee table. “I don’t know how things work, girl!”

Her jaw just went limp.

“Ooh, hey—is there a legal age of adulthood in Equestria? Is it, like, sixteen or eighteen? Because I just had the idea that maybe I could legally adopt you and then just immediately abandon you in a Songnam orphanage.” With starry eyes, I gasped. Trotting off into the next room, I didn’t stop talking. “Aww! I could totally adopt Cards and we could form the world’s second worst family—after her normal family, that is. Oh,” I went on, my voice becoming progressively more childlike, “and you and Cards would be sisters and could have a creepy and technically incestous relationship that I openly disapprove of but secretly take pictures of to sell to my creepy old friends, and that’s how I make my fortune.”

Author's Note

Footnote: 20% to next level.

Companion Perk added: Empathic Link — Well, excuse me, Princess, for violating the sanctity of your mind with my cold, feely psychic powers. With Felicitat in your party, her creepy powers aren’t yours, but she can communicate some of her intuitions to you—probably via pheromones. I don’t know how. It sure as hell ain’t via twerking like some kind of gross bee, though. As long as she is a companion, you gain +20 to speechcraft and can almost always discern a lie. Sociopaths are the exception.

[Be it that time already? Aye, ’tis, ’tis. Anyone want to toss up any theories about what the tarot cards mean? Thoughts on where I’m going in general? Wanna draw Jericho fanart? Feed him a cookie? Cut out the stitches and shove the cookie into his empty eye socket? Anything, really. I like comments and people’s opinions on how I’m doing.]

Chapter 19 — Mirage

Chapter 19: Mirage

“Did you even read that book I gave you about obscure unicorn history?”

“Whore.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

The pink unicorn dismissively waved her hoof and fluttered her lashes. “Oh, but enough about why the the bastard eloped with some lowborn whore when we were betrothed—” she moved in uncomfortably close to me “—tell me about yourself, Mister Carolean Stallion.”

Something in my head felt as though it was suddenly slammed like a door. Rubbing my eyes, I stepped away from the mare. Despite the wide space here in the foyer of the local Comte’s manor, I didn’t feel like there was enough room for all three of us.

Felicitat looked over to me with a hesitant look. “Something just changed.”

This had been entirely avoidable. I didn’t know how, but I was sure it was. Felicitat had suggested that perhaps the local Comte could assist me, since he had ties to Songnam. Heck, his son was now in Songnam alongside Médge Lothaire’s son, a soon-to-be Carolean.

Now I was here in the Comte’s manor house, and the Comte’s daughter wouldn’t shut up. Normally, I’d take that as a challenge. I’d ask her something like, “You ever wonder what it’d be like to masturbate with a lobster claws?”, make a violent masturbatory motion, and then scream, “Ah, it’s more bruised than a banana!” That was literally my first thought when I saw her, her cutesy-wootsy freckles, and her well-styled mane of peach.

Of course, the little way she put her hoof up to her mouth and gave an unreasonably innocent single shake of her hips when she asked if I was a Carolean destroyed those thoughts with a rubber garden hose. Only it wasn’t a hose; it was a hammer! Don’t ask how I got those two things confused. Just like that one time I found a magical sword in the stone, except that it was a hammer, and that’s really where that story ended. Point is, I didn’t trust her.

Also, her story about the Comtessa on the other side of the valley was off. It was about how she was betrothed to the Comtessa’s son, and how the Cometessa’s son had left her on the altar when he ran off with some “lowborn whore”. I was pretty sure that this was not literally the second thing you said to a stranger.

Keeping a puzzled frown on my face, I said in a level yet critical tone as I put a hoof on her chest, “No.” I pushed her a foot back, sliding her. “Yes,” I said in a more excited tone. “You are very good there. The floor here is a no-go,” I said, gesturing to the wooden floor.

She looked down at her hooves with a frown. “You’re right, this floor is dirty. I should yell at the maid. Always wanted a whip, but Daddy always just gave me horrified looks of silence when I said that. Never understood why.”

“Probably because whipping a disobedient slave doesn’t occur in civilized countries,” I offered, glancing down to Felicitat.

The empath mouthed, “What are you looking at me for?”

“Hey!” the Comte’s daughter snapped. “He is a Carolean; he can look where he pleases.” She cocked a brow and giggled, “And, in all honesty he probably pleases where he looks, too.”

I looked past her to the staircase leading to the second story. There was a window at the top of the stairs, which I knew had a pool below it because I’d seen it when coming to this place. I didn’t know why I noted that, exactly, but it probably had something to do with a skittish urge to plan and note every possible escape route. “I don’t get why ponies say ‘in all honesty’. Isn’t that just to be assumed? I mean, I’ve never said ‘In all falsehood, your mother is a disreputable harlot’.”

“I… I—what?”

“Ah, so you are the Carolean I heard about, òc?” a stallion asked from behind, and I spun around before his second syllable. I presumed he had come in through the large front door, since he was closing it. He looked like his daughter except not at all. “Funny. I thought you’d be shorter.”

“I thought you’d be less pink,” I replied. “See? We all ended with disappointment and limpy dicks.”

The Comte blinked. “Right, then, Carolean.” He held out a hoof. Something about his smile felt forced, a lie. I didn’t think he really wanted me here. “Jo sui Gluepony; I’m Comte around these parts.”

I gave him a firm hoofshake. It was all I could do to not giggle like mad at his terribad name. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the Comte’s daughter glaring at the back of Felicitat’s head.

“I presume you’re here,” Gluepony went on, “about the little problem we’ve been having.”

Hello, hello, what was this? “I’m unfamiliar with the details.”

Gluepony sighed, massaging his temples. “Please, then, let us discuss this matter somewhere else.”

The Comte led Felicitat and I up the stairs and into a room with a fancy throne behind a mahogany desk. I noted dusty bookshelves filled with all manner of things, the least of which were actual books. Sitting down in a chair he offered alongside Felicitat, I watched him take his seat and look down at his desk. Frowning, he pulled out a knife—a letter opener, I realized, just before I drew my steel on him—and used it to open an envelope on his desk. Seeming to remember that I did in fact exist, much to the chagrin of many mares and stallions, he put the envelope down and looked at me.

“It’s not that I’m entirely ungrateful that Duke Elkington sent you to help out, just that many of my peers in the valley are… ” He shook his head. “Ever since the last full moon, we’ve been having problems with a certain thing. It’s been running amok in my comté. The peasants have taken to calling it a mirage-pony.”

I leaned forwards, trying to ignoring the stare of the comte’s daughter. It was the kind of the stare that said “I want to cut off your nipples and stick a banana into the new hole because I think it’s hot”. Maybe I was reading into it too much. Mayhap it was the way the awe-filled look flickered to a spiteful glare when her eyes tottered over to Felicitat.

“A mirage-pony?” I asked.

He nodded. “I, for one, just call it that accursed shimmer that’s been stealing things and terrorizing ponies. From afar, it’s invisible. Get really close to it—and I do mean rather close—and they say you can see it shimmer like a mirage, and the mirage almost seems to resemble a pony. Hence, ‘mirage-pony’.”

I blinked. “Eine Spiegelgestalt?”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, but in my mind I was no longer there.

Instead, I was deep in my mind’s eye like a monkey being eaten by a flock of termites because he tried to eat from the wrong termite mound. Termites come in flocks now. Shut up. Here in the mind, the wind was howling the blizzard’s warcry at the dawn of the night. As the snowstorm raged, two ponies in coats galloped through the paved streets of Esztergom after a third pony. Or rather, after floating mass of hot pink paint that just so happened to partially outline a pony in full sprint.

“Ever stop to wonder if—just if—it would be fun to set a firehouse on fire?” I asked loudly, trying not to trample the various ponies in the street. “You know, just so that you could shout ‘who is defended now against the fire?’ as they run around on fire?”

“Could you maybe ask this at a better time?” the stallion besides me said between heavy breaths.

“Not really, Agent Hirte,” I replied. “Scheiße, this whoreson is fast!”

The paint-covered Spiegelgestalt darted past a gaggle of young mares who were probably discussing penises because that’s what I’d be doing, and Agent Hirte and I followed. But as it spun to the right, it was stopped by the roar of a startled mammoth. The thick-brown-furred elephantine creature blew a loud eroooh sound from its trunk, the pony driving it shouting and holding onto his hat. A pony screamed, pointing at the floating paint. Waves of reality washed over everybody as they came to realize that there was an invisible pony being chased by two Reichskriminalamt agents.

By some miracle—phobia of shaggy carpets, I’d figured—the Spiegalgestalt just stood there, staring up at the mammoth. It spun around to face us too late. I saw it try to make itself scarce, and I also saw myself tackling it to the ground, and Agent Hirte help me bind it.

“Worry not!” I commanded as the entire city around me seemed to grind to a halt. Pulling out my badge, I shouted, “Reichskriminalamt!” Wiping my brow of sweat, I smiled at Agent Hirte. “You know, I think today’s been a good day, think’st thou not?”

In a moment, the memory faded. Next I was standing in the Esztergom city square, watching an invisible pony being hanged. The whole damn city had turned out for this event, like a gaggle of goldfish staging a public stoning. That is, when everyone’s goldfish escapes their fishbowls for a night of whoring and drugging. The Spiegelgestalt never spoke a single word when it was tried for its crimes.

When I came back to the present, I found the Comte and his daughter exchanging nervous glances. “It’s called a Spiegelgestalt,” I said to them. “At least, that was what it was where I’m from. So, tell me, Comte Gluepony, where most often does your mirage-pony strike?” And suddenly I had a fancy new sidequest.

|— ☩ —|

“So, you know what those things are, then?” Felicitat asked as we left the Comte’s manorhouse. The town of Caval, I noticed, was bigger than I’d first thought. Not a city, but still a large town.

“Not really, but people says things,” I replied. “The Reich once caught and hanged one for its crimes. After that, we dissected it. Never once did it become visible from the outside, but its internal organs were very red. On the inside, it was like a pony, except that it had no sex organs and seemed to lack any of the decidedly male or feminine features that ponies develop during puberty. We call them Spiegelgestalten—literally, ‘mirror figures’, although our word for mirage is die Luftspiegelung, air mirroring, so I… don’t know where I’m going with that.” I looked at her. “Hey, are there any places to get a fruit smoothie? I’d murder somepony for one. Of course, then it’d turn out that they had a tragic backstory, and so killing them was wrong and then the Kodex will break and then everything will be terrible. Still better than being a raped by a mare-knight.”

“What?”

I picked a rock up, attempted to skip it across a pond, and instead killed a frog. I was about to bury it with full military honors when Honkers swooped it and ate the frog’s corpse. This struck me as odd because I was pretty sure that geese didn’t eat meat at all. That led to the question: What kind of demons goose was Honkers?

“Oh, which reminds me.” I sidled up to her and put my arm over her shoulder. “I promise never to rape you.”

“Um.”

“Most mares live in constant fear of being raped,” I said with a sagely nod. “That’s why, over the years, I’ve learned that the best way to befriend a mare whom you do not know is to slide up to her, put an arm around her shoulders, and state clearly your intent never to forcibly fornicate her. This will put her at ease and ensure the start of a beautiful relationship.” I pointed at a little earther who was walking by and screamed, “I promise not to savagely rape you to death!”

The strange mare looked at me, performed with her hoof what I thought was some gesture to ward off the evil eye, and scampered down an alley shouting something in Occitan.

“See?” I said with a nod. “She’s going to tell all her friends about how I won’t brutally, savagely rape her.”

“P-please don’t touch me,” Felicitat said, squirming under my arm.

Letting her go, I said, “Now come on. Gluepony said that the mirage-pony likes to steal things from the market square area.”

With sure step I led my party through the streets of Caval. Although, I only had a vague idea of where I was going. “Hey, Felicitat,” I prodded as the number of ponies doing things on the streets thickened out.

“Òc?”

“That means ‘yes’, right?” I glanced at the signs, written seemingly all in Occitan.

“Um, aye, aye it does.”

“What do you keep saying ‘aye’ instead of ‘yes’?”

“I dunno,” she said with a shrug.

“Right, so…” I stopped and made eye contact with some random stallion. Narrowing my eye, I conspiratorially nodded at him. When he didn’t nod back, I nodded harder until he just nodded back at me. “Exactly. Tonight, the revolution comes. Bring all your swords and hide the mares. Punch and queso will be served in that exact order,” I told him, and sauntered off with Felicitat in tow. “Right, so, I was wondering: since you have those, er… those nippunaises, those Nippöner, do you understand the concept of tentacle-themed pornography?”

She jerked to a halt. “Huh—bu—wha’?”

Watching Honkers land on a nearby rooftop and glare murderously at me, I said, “Yeah, I mean… for you ponies, it’d probably involve a mare wearing socks whose limbs are being forcibly splayed apart by tentacles whilst other tentacles forcefully enter her every orifice. In my country, it’s a common stereotypical joke that all Nippöner are really into it, and so I wondered if, since there were a bunch in Equestria, you had the same song.”

The specific look on her horrified face said it all.

“Oh my God, you do!” A thought dawned on me. “God my oh, you didn’t pack a dirty tentacle magazine with you, did you?”

She shrunk away from me and said in a weak voice, “No.”

“You so totally do! Wow! Hey, is it full of mares or… ah, it’s one of stallions, isn’t it?” I laughed. “You know, where I’m from, it’s commonly believed that females never gander at such dirty magazines, but I’ve met two in Equestria in as many weeks that seem to do so. Are such things more acceptable for mares in Equestria?”

Felicitat shrunk so small that she was now standing about as tall as Cards did when she was trying to act all big and scary.

“Huh. So that’s a no?” I shook my head. “Equestria is so sexually repressed, it seems to me. Why is that? I mean, look at everypony.” I gestured over to a mare who looked like she’d just single-hoofedly fought her way through Hell with nothing but a toothbrush and the fundamental belief in brushing her teeth. “Seriously, everypony’s naughty bits are just there. If not for your long tails, I literally could not walk behind any of you. That was literally the first thing I noticed about you Equestrians, thou unclothed, uncivilized barbarian.”

A stallion carrying a chimney sweeper wandered a little too close to me. I jerked my head towards him and growled a uvular R. He looked at me like a mother looks at her ugly baby, thinking how nopony would know if she smothered it, and she could always just make another baby. A better baby! One with wings, even. Then he went back to his business.

“Have you ever wanted to just stab a baby monkey?” I asked a mare opening her front door. When I asked, she stared at me and slowly, very slowly, closed her door and decided that today was a good day to stay indoors.

“You know, you’re really freaking ponies out,” Felicitat said, “least of which being me.”

“Yeah, it’s what happens when I get antsy.” I fiddled with my sword so that my duster no longer hid it. The proud blade in its leather sheath immediately drew everypony’s eye.

Ponies talked and whispered. I didn’t understand most of what they said, but what I did understand made me feel special. “Is that a sword?” “Look at that outfit.” “He must be a Carolean!” “Is he here about the mirage-pony?”

I smirked at Felicitat in the way an evil toddler stares at a triple-scoop ice cream cone. Coffee flavored. “My lady, allow us to go into the market square.”

|— ☩ —|

Mongers marketed their wares. Peddlers plied their trades. Harlots hawked for weird things. One pony had a booth where you could rent a reptile for the day, and “trade-ins” were negotiable. Sadly, the vendor mare did not rent out rideable dragons. In fact, looking at the sign, I realized that it had nothing to do with reptiles. How I’d read it that wrong, I didn’t know, but I did.

I trotted out to the center of the large marketplace and all of its stalls and vendors and just looked around. Taking Felicitat with me, I went to the far end of the market. Nothing interesting. “Hey, Felicitat. How come nopony here recognizes you, since you’re apparently famous here?”

She pawed at the dirt. “Well… I don’t really like other ponies, probably a result of being ostracised for being a weirdo when I was a filly. Crowds make me hyperventilate. I like to keep to myself. Mostly Médge Lothaire and his son and wife, really. Uh, that is, they were with whom I talked to mostly.” Felicitat smiled a little, looking to the side.

“So. You wanted Lothaire’s son—what was his name? Péire?—so you wanted Péire inside you?”

Felicitat took a step back, flushing. She stuttered out something, but settled for silence and a red face.

A hoof to my chin, I said, “So. Have you heard of the Songnam Slaughter?” Smiling at her, I saw the hilarious look of dread on her face. “I wonder if the Butcher of Songnam killed him. Boy, would that be funny. Your Sénher Right dead, your livelihood destroyed, and all…” …by the same pony whose hooves you’ve put your life into. I shook my head and smiled. “Ah, the mass murder of tens of ponies. Funny, really. Now you’ll never get laid.” Her ears pressed into her head, and I ruffled her mane. “God, I think I have a problem; making mares act all like you are now just fills me with joy.”

I looked into her eyes and spun around, grabbing the hoof of a stallion reaching out to touch me. “Whoa there, friend, what’s your game?” I looked the black buck over, from his gray eyes to his toned but shorter-than-me build, to the… oh, what the Scheiße? No! Just… no! Only I was allowed to wear a duster and hat as sexy as mine! I didn’t know nor care who he was, but I wanted to put the tip of his penis in one of those things that cuts the edges off cigars, and then we’d just see where that took us.

“’Scuse me, sir,” he said calmly. His voice sounded like the kind of gravel road that was guaranteed to make you slip and gash your leg upon until you bled to death where no one but the undesirable ethnic minorities could hear. “It is most rude to speak ill of Songnam, and intolerable to do what you’re doing to a lady.”

“No.”

“No?” He cocked a brow.

I nodded. “Last time somebody tried being virtuous for the sake of a mare in my company, he turned out to be a monstrous bastard who threatened her with painful, magical death if she didn't sleep with him.” My blood burned as I glared at him. Mostly because my blood was infected, not because of my fiery teutsche passion, mind you, but still. “Precedent shows that I must protect her from you!”

“And you’re clearly not her father,” he replied evenly.

“And your mother clearly was a reputable lady and I can but offer her my respects in raising such a lovely son as you, but your father was a whore and left your mother alone, and so she worked her hardest to raise a good, honest colt who wouldn’t cheat on his wife, but instead her love created a child with a throbbing oedipus complex!” I snapped.

He tried to take his arm from my grip, but I didn’t let him. “Let go.”

“No.”

The stallion’s expression remained neutral. “How did you even see me coming?”

“I saw your reflection in the mare’s eyes,” I replied curtly.

“Impressive,” he commented.

“It’s all about position,” I said. “I like to be on top. My first girlfriend liked to be on top, too. That didn’t mix very well. She was fightier than me. Und ein Höllenstürmer. Real badass. But enough about me and my pet turtle.”

“Ma’am,” he said, not looking at me, “who is this stallion to you?”

“Um…” she went.

“Way to stand up for the team, Felicitat,” I groaned, rolling my eyes—eye! Rolling my eye. God, that just sounded wrong.

In a swift spin, the stallion freed himself from my grip. He took a step around me and put a hoof to Felicitat’s shoulder. “Ma’am, are you well?”

“Hey!” I snapped. “Touch not the Felicitat.” I craned my neck and licked her side. Felicitat shivered, squealed, and jumped all in the same moment. She tasted of regret, tears, and not nearly enough hair conditioner. “There. See? I’m the kind of pony who licks things to claim them as his own. I licked her so she is mine. Are we in agreement?”

He tugged on her shoulder. “Ma’am, I believe—”

“No,” I said, putting a hoof on her other shoulder and tugging. “I licked her. Under Article C of the Space Constitution, section number El Numero, she is now legally held in bondage by me.”

We two tugged over the mare, each tug getting harder and harder until he tugged hard enough that I released my grip of Feliciat and let her tumble to the ground, her bag opening up and its contents spilling.

“What the hell?” he sputtered, looking down at the ground.

I stepped up to his side, bent forwards, and looked at the picture displayed in the magazine. “I like his socks, but I’m… I’m pretty sure stallions don’t have that much room in their…” At my comment, Felicitat screamed and tried to rapidly collect up all her fallen items.

“Just… what in Celestia’s name did I…” The stallion just flustered. “That’s simply… simply horrific! What kind of mare reads something like—”

I jabbed a hoof hard at his chest, not caring that everyone was staring at us. “Hey! If she can only have an orgasm while looking at pictures of Neighponease stallions getting a thousand tentacles forcibly shoved up their bleeding assholes and urethras—who are you to judge her?! God, I wish you were a mare so I could hit you…” I grabbed a large wooden box of soap from a nearby soap vendor and dragged it into the street. Standing up it, I shouted. “In this world of ours, ponies can have all sorts of creepy fetishes. And do you know what? That’s okay.”

I pointed at Felicitat. “If this young mare gets her genitals all hot at the sight of tentacled monster slithering up their nostrils, down their throats, and into their assholes—that’s okay, too! How dare you have the audacity to judge her. How dare you! So long as it is safe, sane, and consensual, you cannot judge a pony for whatever unholy things get their dicks up and their vaginas moistened.” I swept my hoof around, gesturing to the whole market. “Let this be a lesson to all of you, friends, Equestrians, weird ponies who are into tentacle bondage pornography—we can all live happily together in a world without judgement, but first you have to understand, love, and tolerate!”

Smiling, I hopped off the box, gave it back to the vendor, and tossed him a gold coin. Back to where I was standing, I noticed that everypony was just staring at me with slacked jaws. Even the birds were doing it. “No, no, everypony, that’s all I had for today. I’m done. Nothing more. Go about your business. You’ve all learned a valuable lesson today in why you shouldn’t judge this young mare for being into ‘weird’ pornography, nor anypony else for that matter.”

My damn right arm was burning, and I could feel sweat on my brow. It wasn’t a sweat of exertion but the sweat of fever. The sweat, der Schweiß, of mice, a bird. I scratched at my burning, itching arm along the rock-hard, red veins. God, how I wished that healing potions could heal infections on top of just mending holes in flesh. As I itched, I looked down at Felicitat, who was trying uselessly to dig a hole in the ground and bury herself. I had no idea that Equestrians were apparently some sort of color-changing octopus/chameleons, but as I looked at her, I learned that they must have been. Although I considered telling her that red camouflage did not work in this environment and would doubtlessly lead to her being eaten by a pack of shrews, I didn’t.

Instead of dealing with her, I found myself staring at the soap merchant’s stall. Why? Well, because the gold coin was floating in the air. And no, it was not being picked up a unicorn. Even Felicitat gasped, jerking her head up to look at it. It was close enough that I saw the mirage-like shimmer.

Without hesitation, I whipped out my sword. I shouted something that was totally cool and awesome and explained everything, but since I was holding a sword in my teeth, it came out as a weird slurping noise. Immediately, the black buck barked that I had a weapon and tackled me to the ground.

Landing on my back, my weapon clattering across the ground, I watched the shimmer dart between stalls. Within a second, the shimmer was gone, and the coin vanished behind a corner. Blood boiling from something other than the infection for once, I snapped up at the buck atop me, “You unreasonable idiot! Thou hole that is filled with dick! Thou’st the mirage-pony get away let!”

“Pardon me, pardner?” he asked.

“You heard me!”

He stepped back, and I sprang to my feet. “Where did the mirage-pony go?” he demanded.

I rolled my eye. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t be able to catch it. It’s too fast.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” I chuckled, “I’m the closest thing to an expert on them in this country.”

He stamped a hoof, both us ignoring how everypony was still staring. “By what grounds?”

Again, I chuckled. “Well, you see—your alphabet only has twenty-six letters; mine has thirty. We got Ä, Ö, Ü, ẞ,” I sang, swinging my hips side-to-side. “So you can just suck my… vowels! Ä, Ö, Ü! You have not the Ä, Ö, Ü!” I sidled up to him and said, “Because it’s a matter. Of. Size. Ergo, I am the default master of all the topics. And if you disagree…” I took a breath and yelled, “I’ll ẞ, Ä, Ö, Ü all over your face!”

Sliding backwards, I said, “Okay, Felicitat, let’s blow this…” I looked the black buck and his bamboozled countenance. Then there was his duster, hat, and the sword at his side. The mental clockwork in my head ticked and tocked as if made of oranges. “You’re a Carolean.”

“Yes,” he replied.

“See, Felicitat?” I said. “He can say yes. Why can you valley ponies say yes? All you say is aye and òc.” I looked back at the Carolean. It was then that I noticed the black iron symbol hanging from his necklace: a left-facing equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, the cross itself tilted at an angle.

I recognized it as an old nippönisches symbol for good luck, eine Swastika. As I recalled, after the Reich conquered Nippön, we immediately freed all of Nippön’s slaves. Thanks to good old fashioned vengeance against abusive former-masters, having already formed forty-percent of the population, catastrophic death tolls of native Nippöner during the war, and all those Nippöner who fled the island, those former slaves quickly formed the majority of Nippön’s population. Accordingly, they rejected the Swastika in favor of the Iron Cross used by their liberators, the same cross I wore, an altogether superior symbol. So seeing it reminded me of an old board game centered around that war.

“Hey, what’s with that Swastika?” I asked, pointing to his necklace. Somewhere, a bird decided I wasn’t worth gawking at any longer. At the same time, Honkers flew down and nuzzled Felicitat.

“Huh? You mean, the manji?”

“Mahn-jee?” I shook my head. “Whatever. Why are you wearing one?”

He cocked a brow. “It’s a symbol of fortune and good luck. Not to mention it’s House Elkington’s coat-of-arms, and thus the symbol of we Caroleans.”

“Wait. Why is it House Elkington’s coat of arms?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “Lord Elkington’s great-grandmother was the last Princess and member of the royal family of Neighpon?”

I cocked my head to side. “Really? Also, Lord Elkington?”

“You know, this really isn’t the time or place to discuss the royal bloodline of Lord Elkington,” he replied in an annoyed drawl.

Casting my eyes over to where Honkers was trying to comfort Felicitat by shielding her from everypony’s judgmental eyes via his wings, I decided not to kill the goose out of pure spite. Instead, I put a hoof on the Carolean’s breast and said in a breathy voice, “Tell me all your secrets. All of them. Especially the dirty.”

“No,” he said, and casually brushed me off.

I sighed. “You know, you’re worse than getting a cyst on your eyeball.”

“I’ll take that into consideration and reflect upon it,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Proud.” He gave me a hard look

My ears drooped. “Aw, your name is actually rather cool. I was hoping for a ridiculous name, like Gluepony or Pudge Farks.”

“It’s my Carolean name,” he said simply.

“Excuse me?”

Proud shook his head. “Look, we’re wasting valuable time. Who are you and why are you looking for the mirage-pony? This is actually important.”

“I’m—” the Butcher of Songnam, Killer of Kids “—just a concerned citizen, and I’m looking for the mirage-pony because I had nothing better to do this day. Sidequests were my bread and butter back in the day.”

“I… literally do not understand your last sentence.”

“You know what?” I asked. “You are going to work with me because of reasons. We’re both after the mirage-pony: you because of your Duke, I because it seemed like fun. As the pony with the ẞ, Ä, Ö, Ü, I am the leader of our party. Question is, how are we going to catch this Spiegelgestalt? Er, that is, this mirage-pony.”

“Um,” Felicitat voiced.

I pointed at and admonished, “Felicitat, quiet—stallions are speaking.” I waited a second. “Okay, now you can speak, Felicitat. I needed to sexistly shoosh you because that would guarantee what you had to say was crucial to something. I know how things work.”

She blinked. “Well, when that thing showed up, I could feel it.”

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “Ah, you’re bloody brilliant. You can be like a bloodhound. I’ll just put a leash on you and make you wear a red or black thong—sexy colors—and walk you around town as you feel up everything in search of the mirage-pony.”

“What?” Proud ejaculated.

I frowned at him. “Well, I’m sorry you have no imagination.”

His upper lip curled up like a dog. Against the rest of his blank face, the sneer almost looked unconsciously done. The expression quickly vanished as he rubbed the bridge of his nose and groaned. “Uncreative? Sure. And pigs would dance on two legs under the unswotel Nightmare Moon of Winterfulth.”

“Winterfulth,” I said. “There’s the word again. What does it mean?”

“October,” Felicitat offered helpfully. “It’s another name for October.”

“Er, and ‘unswotel’?”

“Obscure.”

I frowned. “Your language is stupid.”

Proud shrugged. “It’s nar how it’s spake.’Tis cwethle, nay?”

“Okay, now you’re just screwing with me.”

“Actually, it’s just a northern dialect. I usually suppress the hell outta it in order to be understandable to ponyfolks.”

“Are you Scoltish?” Felicitat asked, perking an ear. Honkers, sitting on her back, glared murderously at me.

“Aye, I am,” Proud replied.

“No, Proud!” I whined. “You were the one good pony who didn’t say ‘aye’ around here. And what happened to being the serious pony around here? While you were busy thinking dirty thoughts about touching a thoroughly violated and underage filly, I was coming up with a plan to save the day. So stop hitting on that which I have claimed via licking and help me kill this mirage-pony for its inherently evil existence.”

|— ☩ —|

Duke Elkington plays for keeps, apparently, I thought, looking over the Carolean’s weapon of choice. The earther’s gear included an overly complicated-looking crossbow rig attached via some kind of harness. He fired the crossbow by means of some weird thing mounted to his jaw; he bit down to fire, but when not trying to fire it let him speak perfectly well. A set of cables set around a leg brace allowed him to kick his leg to reload his crossbow up to four times before he needed to load up more arrows. If he was to be trusted, there wasn’t a pony alive as accurate a shot as he. Sure. If I had my horn, I’d take out my dual heavenly weapons and show him a thing or two about love.

Along with his hat and duster, he reminded me of an old vampire hunter. Of course, he was nowhere near as cool as the vampire-hunter-come-king known as Jan Makkabäer Pendergast. Jan Makkabäer used an axe and once killed an entire army of undead, so the legend goes, just because he had nothing better to do that day. My kind of hero, really.

Stop itching, stupid arm! I nodded at the Carolean, but Proud only stared back at me. “This plan is fullproof.”

“Foolproof,” he said. “It’s pronounced foolproof.”

At that I frowned. “Never underestimate the sheer tenacity and genius ingenuity of a fool.” I scattered several gold coins in a neat little pile on the ground, mindful of the buildings around me, which could provide cover.

Proud whistled. “You’re no lowborn, I take it.”

“I’d take being lowborn anyday over being a self-serving, inbred noble.” I shook my head. “You think backwater countryfolk have it rough? Trust me, nobleponies take inbreeding to new and innovative heights. Who’s up for having a son whose father is also his grandfather and brother? Because I once totally managed to do that in this once feudal-based board game I once played. I was actually doing an experiment to see how depraved I could get. I ended up with flipper babies! Because hooves are overrated. Welcome to the world of blue blood, jackass.

“But the point I’m trying to make,” I said, nodding, “is that nobleponies, highborn ponies, are a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.” At that exact moment in time, my Jerichosenses tingled. “Somewhere in the cosmos,” I reasoned, “an encyclopedia from a thousand years into the future has just fallen into the present. Its entry on the Equestria nobility, I know, reads: ‘A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first up against the wall when the revolution came.’”

He rolled his eyes and groaned, “Oh, Fiddler play thee.”

“Since when have I been an instrument?” I asked. “I’d suggest that I’d be flute, but penis jokes are very childish and no one has ever liked them.”

What.

“Don’t be a smartass; you know what the phrase means.”

“Actually,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, “I do not.”

“Um,” Felicitat voiced. “Why am I tied up, again?”

I looked down at the little mare tied up on the ground. “You’re doing great, Felicitat. Don’t go ruining that mojo with stupid questions. Remember to scream bloody murder if the mirage-pony tries to touch you in a no-no place. Otherwise, just squirm pathetically if you begin to sense it. The gold is sure to lure it in.” I made sure that the coins I’d scattered on the ground were nestled up against Felicitat.

“And may the Fiddler fiddle his fiddle for thee,” Proud said, “if this doesn’t work.”

“Ah, so the other version of the phrase translates as Fiedler dir spielen, not Fiedler dich spielen. Dative case, not accusative. Understood.”

A part of me wondered briefly if it would have been a much smarter idea to have tried to use Felicitat as a bloodhound rather than a sensor. Of course, it was much more fun to have just trussed her up and peppered her blue fur with shiny coins. “Okay, Felicitat, now look pathetic and—perfect. Just try giving bedroom eyes at stuff and you’re sure to attract our monster. Pure fetish fuel. Naked girl trussed up, bedroom eyes, sprinkled with gold, and totally weak.”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” she whined. “I signed up because my life was ruined.”

“You were drafted and you know it.” I nudged Proud. “Come on, you hide over in this empty stall. When the mirage-pony picks up the coins, shoot at it and try to herd it down the street where I’ll be hiding in wait with these.” I pulled them out.

“Where did you…? Why do you have a pair of hoofcuffs?”

I shrugged. “I’m into the weird shit.”

He just stood there.

“Do I have to remind you why I have the plan and am in charge, Carolean? Because it starts with an Ä.”

Proud sighed. “Whatever. Except for how idiotically it’s been assembled, it is not exactly a terrible plan.”

“Good. Now then, to work!”

|— ☩ —|

“What are we hiding from?” a voice whispered, and I had to swallow my tongue not to scream.

“The hell are you doing here?” I snapped at the smiling countenance of the Comte’s daughter. This almost claustrophobic hiding place hardly had the room for us. And how in God’s name she got here so silently while wearing a dress was a question so terrifying in implication to me that I utterly forgot about it.

“Well, Daddy is Comte, so I do technically have the right to be anywhere in town I want,” she giggled. “But what are we hiding from?”

“Nothing!” I hissed. “I’m laying in ambush for the mirage-pony.” I poked a hoof at the wooden barrels and crates demonstratively. What it proved, though, I had no idea.

“Oh,” she said as if coming to an orgasmic realization. “So that’s why you tied up that little bitch out there, right? Suits her. But, what’s with all that gold?” Her eyes lit up with little stars. “Is that yours?”

“Yes!”

She gasped. “I knew it! After you left, Daddy said you had the noble features of a highborn pony—”

“An inbred freak?”

“—which is why he was puzzled by… wait, what?”

I looked at her like a wolf looks at a toddler covered in honey and swimming in gravy, except that the wolf is so full that it might just vomit. “Oh, nothing. Es war nichts.”

The Comte’s daughter tilted her head to the side, making a slight jingling noise from her fancy earrings. Were I a cat, I would have swatted them until her ears were all gory and missing pieces—like Cards! “I don’t… what?”

“Look, first research the concepts of Volkssouveränitätand, more importantly, Vertragstheorie, then we can talk of nobles and inherited rule.”

She nodded. “Ah, so you’re educated, too!”

“One cannot fight for his country unless one understands why he fights for his country. Hail to public education.”

The mare frowned. “I never really saw the point in public education. It’s not like lowborns really care or will ever make use of higher education. Except for the rich ones, that is. Bourgeoise and whatnot.”

I narrowed my eyes, glaring. Putting a hoof on her, I pushed her a few inches back. It was about as far aways as she could be from me in this little nook. “There. You have your side, I have mine.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, I’m just contractually obliged to be brooding and to always look angry,” I said evenly.

“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.” She glanced to the wall, then over the barrels to the street where Felicitat was bound. When she blinked, I noticed her fake lashes and all the little makeup she was wearing that she hadn’t been wearing only an hour or so ago. She looked at me expectantly, and I just kept glaring. “Um. Aren’t you going to ask my name?”

The peasants will crucify and probably rape you to death, mark my words. You mark them, alright.

“Because my name is Biche.” She took a step towards me and smiled

I know it means ‘doe’ and is pronounced ‘beesch’, but her father had to have realized that it looked like ‘bitch’. Or maybe that’s on purpose. Psychic ponies… “Hmm,” I hummed.

Biche was looking into my eye with a sort of hopeless fascination. “You know, for years, I’ve heard about Duke Elkington’s Caroleans.” She glanced over to where Felicitat was still on the ground like a pig. “Rather hard to tell myth from fact, all the stories they tell of them. Still never thought I’d ever get the chance to meet one.”

“Yes, yes, that’s dandy,” I replied.

She opened her mouth, pawing at the ground, when Felicitat screamed. I spun my head to face her and saw golden coins floating. Proud bellowed, jumped out from hiding, and fired a bolt straight for the center of the floating mass of coins above the flailing mare.

The bolt sailed straight on through and broke upon a wall. In an instant, two things happened: the coin dropped and Felicitat was lifted, screaming into the air by her ropes as if she were a package. I tensed up as Proud fired another bolt and missed. While the Carolean reloaded, Felicitat, still being carried, flailed uselessly as she was rapidly spirited down the streets

Biche gasped. “The mirage-pony!”

I stayed where I was like an old stallion who’s glued himself to his granddaughter. The invisible entity got closer, I could see from the mare it had. Closer… and closer… and just a little more… I vaulted over the crates and grabbed a pre-placed bucket of flamboyant pink paint. Natural twenties on my dice rolls. Critical hit. As I had done years ago, I covered the Spiegelgestalt in the paint.

It was carrying the mare in its mouth via the ropes. Then, with absolutely herculean force, the Spiegelgestalt threw Felicitat at me, its whole body seeming to twist as it launched her. Throwing myself to the side, I dodged the blue ball of fur and screams, and I didn’t look as I heard her impact smash and break what were actually rather sturdy boxes. Her scream went from terrified to agonized.

Rather than run, the mirage-pony just stood there, staring at me. I knew it was staring at me because I saw its eyes, and I saw that it wasn’t entirely invisible. There in the centers of its too small and too beady eyes, were tiny black dots, like the period at the end of this sentence. Were it not for the contrasting paint and the sun glaring hatefully into its flat, ungendered countenance, I would never have seen it. Of course, that made sense; if his pupils were invisible, he’d be blind; some light needed to filter through his eyes in order to allow vision. To me, it was proof that even magic obeyed science, proof that science was master over magic.

“Halt!” the Carolean bellowed, grinding to a halt behind the mirage-pony, but the mirage-pony only stared at me.

From the way the paint was moving, I could tell that the beast was smiling at me in the way that a pedophile smiles at a little girl with a lollipop who’s gotten lost from her parents. Only, my lollipop was a pair of hoofcuffs. Slowly, very slowly, it twisted its neck back to look at Proud.

I sprang forwards, cuffs at the ready, as Proud fired his bolt. At once, the Spiegelgestalt jumped and tumbled, the arrow striking… Oh dear God, what is this? So, yeah, it turned out that Proud’s bolts weren’t exactly very sharp nor likely meant to kill ponies. No, that’d make sense, and we can’t be having that, now can we? His bolt tips were, in fact, more-or-less balls of metal whose goal was to likely cause intense pain and incapacitate.

Really, though, I couldn’t complain too much. Proud’s bolt made the mirage-pony bark doglike and tumble to the ground. Or, scratch that. I could complain. The Spiegelgestalt sprang up, though limping. With the speed of a fangirl stalking her beloved superstar, I lunged for it, my hoof to his jaw and—oh God! Ow! Ow! Scheiße! My right arm and its poisoned veins and broken hoof throbbed.

The mirage-pony took my moment of agony to dart around me and dash to the crates behind which I’d been hiding. Proud fired another one of his bolts and hit the thing’s chest, yet the mirage-pony seemed to ignore it. Instead, he reached into a the crate he’d broken with Felicitat, and pulled out the screaming mare herself. I could see a nasty gash on her leg.

“Not this again!” I groaned, and the mirage-pony threw her at me. When she hit me, I twisted myself to deflect as much of the blow as possible, and the bleeding mare went tumbling across the ground. Without thinking—sometimes the best plans were the ones formulated by instinct—I threw myself forwards and tackled the mirage-pony.

I thanked God for just how supernaturally quick the paint on him had dried, although I’d probably be picking and removing bits of pink paint from my duster for weeks. Its body felt dry and leathery, not like the fur of a pony. As I struggled to hold the Spiegelgestalt, I saw the flash of a pink mare in a blue dress vault over the crates. Running, of course. Because elitist noble bitches were absolutely good for noth—I blinked.

Biche’d slid to a halt by Felicitat. The noble had looked down at the empath’s bleeding leg, biting her lip. But what thunderstruck me was how Biche reached down to her rather expensive-looking dress and tore a huge strip from it. In seconds, she was on her knees, quickly dressing Felcitat’s wound with her own dress, covering her hooves in foreign blood.

It was so strange to watch that I allowed the mirage-pony to punch my chest. Sadly for it, that reminded me that it existed, and I quickly cuffed it. Proud galloped over and tossed me a bit of rope he had, too. I’ll admit, it was harder to tie knots without telekinesis, but I was a determined pony, I was, and soon the mirage-pony’s legs were bound. For what it’d done to the mare in my protection, I wanted to strangle the thing to death, but I had to see to that mare first.

Getting off its body, my infected arm throbbing, sweat of fever and exertion on my brow, I went over to the mares. “Felicitat, is there food in your stomach? Tell me! Have you eaten in the last few hours?”

She nodded weakly, and the Comte’s daughter looked up questioningly at me.

I knelt down and pulled out a pink vial from my bag. “Here,” I said, and poured a potion directly into and over the gushing furrow. Felicitat screamed, but, to the noble’s credit, Biche held her down and sussurrated calming noises to her. She’d spoken true, and the flesh curled and twisted as it grew with an utterly unnatural speed beneath the blood-soaked blue bandages.

And then it was all over. Felicitat lay panting on her back. Biche sat on her haunches, back propped against a crate that hadn’t broken. She wiped sweat off her brow, not noticing the streak of blood she rubbed onto herself.

“Celestia, that was scary,” Biche sighed. “Is everypony alright?”

Nopony replied. Felicitat was too busy on the ground, I was just staring, and Proud was tending to the mirage-pony.

“Well, don’t everypony answer at once,” she groused.

“Why did you help her?” I asked.

Biche blinked. “I… don’t understand the question.”

“You went out of your way to help her, tore you own dress for bandages, even though you stated a dislike for her. She’s not even a noble.”

She looked at me and said, “No matter who your parents were, every life is precious.”

My mouth went dry. I had nothing to say to that at all. Of course, Biche le Bitch was correct… and in a weird way, despite her fantastic elitism, a part of me couldn’t help but think that she was still a better pony than me. Would I have ruined my own clothes, gotten myself bloodied, to save the life of a pony I hated?

Then she said, “There’s no need for you to be such an elitist.”

Screw you, bitch! “It was the right thing to do, just that you didn’t strike me as the kind of mare who would ever do that. You said that you didn’t like her, too. All combined, I’m baffled.”

She uttered a low chuckle. “Yeah, well… I always wanted to go into medicine. When I was a little filly, I dreamt of being a nurse, even.”

“Dreamt? What happened?”

Biche sighed. “Family happened. Daddy said that he needed me at home, needed me to marry that bastard from down the valley… and so I didn’t go to a university… and then that bastard broke the betrothal to marry some slut… and so—” she shrugged “—here I am.”

“And your problem with Felicitat?” I prodded.

“Well…” Her ears drooped. “I don’t like the way that harlot you’re traveling with looks at you. How can you stand it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it’s a…” She made a circling gestures with her hooves, as if trying to magically conjure the word out of the aether. Or a thesaurus. I glanced back to Felicitat as Biche went on. Something felt off. “It’s not a respectful or nice look, I guess. Me? Unlike that witch, I see your scars—your eye, hooves, et al—as being rather awesome, like… signs of respect.”

I adjusted the brim of my hat and gathered up the ropes from Felicitat, putting them into my pack. “What are you getting at?”

Biche bit her lip. “Just that… I think they’re really respectable, signs of all you’ve sacrificed for your lord and country, and, uh… kinda hot, and… stuff.”

Before I could say anything, Proud shouted, “No!”

Jerking to look, I saw Proud tackling a standing mirage-pony back to the ground. Die Spiegelgestalt had not been trying to run; it was facing the wall, working at something. I squinted at what it had done, and the squint turned into wide eyes. Slowly, I walked over to the wall it’d been at. There was a single word written on the wall in blood. Glancing down, I saw it was its own blood.

I looked down at the mirage-pony’s stupid Backpfeifengesicht. Backpfeifengesicht, neuter gender, was a very lovely teutsches word that Equestrian lacked a direct translation for. In short, Backpfeifengesicht meant “a face that makes you want to punch it”. Even though its face was invisible, it still made me want to punch it.

“What is that?” Proud asked, the mirage-pony not struggling under him. He was, of course, referring to what the Spiegelgestalt had written.

“Κῶρβαἴτ.”

It was not in the alphabet the Reich used, but it was still the alphabet wherein I signed my name. Sometimes, being pretentious had its advantages. This was the dead language of ancient Solonien, probably spelt “Solonia” by Equestrian reckoning. The language was certainly thus Solonisch.

“Korweit,” I said, my blood chilling as I read the name, which was actually a godsend because of how hot I was. “It says Korweit.”

“Kor-vite?” he asked. Unlike me, he pronounced his R. In the language the name was writing, the R was trilled; in mine, it was dropped like they did in Northern Equestrian accents.

I spoke softly, but not to him, recounting ancient lines from a story. “Curse me, hate me, hurt me, kill me.”

“I’m sorry?” Proud probed.

Slowly, I turned to the mirage-pony. “How do you know of Korweit?”

It didn’t reply.

“How?!” I demanded, stomping on his chest. “There’s no way you should know of Korweit! Dienst du ihm? Sag mir, du Hurensohn! Woher kennst du die Stimme in der Finsternis? Los sag schon, Miststück!”

It didn’t reply.

“Woher weißt du von der Stimme in der Finsternis?!”

“What are you talking about?” Proud asked. “Who is Korweit?”

Trying to get ahold of myself, I affixed the Carolean with a hard look. “Korweit is…. is not something to concern yourself with. What’s more pressing is what we’re going to do about the mirage-pony. Are we going to just, like, kill it, or…?”

He didn’t seem very convinced by my forced change of topic. Neverless, he replied, “Lord Elkington sent me here for a reason, you know.”

|— ☩ —|

In the musky tavern, I looked between Proud, Felicitat, and Biche. As the Comte’s daughter, she offered to essentially deal with him for us, reporting back the results of this little meeting. Upon learning that Proud was a Carolean, Biche hadn’t stopped fighting herself over which of us to ogle more. Speaking of whom, the Carolean took a swig of liquor. It turned out he’d arrived in town with a wagon that, strangely, he himself had pulled into town. The mirage-pony was “safely” tied and tucked away in the cart.

“So, you’re going to just leave a dangerous monster in your cart, then take it back to Duke Elkington?” I asked.

Oh, wait. I forget about Felicitat. She wasn’t allowed to do anything but sit there because she was too young to be drinking, in my opinion. But I ordered her a plate of so-called “hay fries” to keep her happy.

“Yes, as I just spent the last minute explaining,” Proud replied.

“You realize it will escape, right?”

“It will not,” he said with a confidence that I knew it’d be pointless to argue with. It was the confidence not of a pony who’d made up their mind but one whose mind had been made up for them.

I sighed. “It’ll come back to bite you, but have it your way, Proud.” I poked at my glass of water, trying to ignore the feverish sweat on my brow. It was a bit like trying to teach a spider the ways of the pony: it only worked if you were extremely unlucky. “But, Proud, there is another matter.”

“And that would be?”

My eyes went to Felicitat eating her hay fries. She picked one up and tried to toss it into the air and catch it. The fry hit her in the eye with all its salt, and she yelped and began furiously rubbing her agitated eye.

I nodded my head at Felicitat. “The girl.”

“What of her?” he asked.

Leaning forward, I said, “You will take the girl to Songnam, take her personally to Duke Elkington.”

For a moment, Felicitat looked horrified, almost betrayed. But she swallowed, rubbed her eye, and solemnly nodded.

Proud leaned back, cocking a brow. “I will?”

“You will.”

“Why?”

“Because the Duke owes me a favor.”

Proud chuckled. “For what?”

Allowing myself to sit back in my chair, I flashed him a ‘checkmate’ grin. “Do you know of the Devil’s Backbone?”

He blinked. “How—”

“Whom do you think Duke Elkington sent to defeat the Devil’s Backbone?”

There was almost silence for a moment here in the bar. Although the table wasn’t exactly at the center of the tavern, I could get a good look at the myriad of ponies here with us, and the lone fiddler playing up on the stage. She, the fiddler, wore black robes and played her somber music without the use of telekinesis. I’d once tried to learn to play the guitar. That had ended with a pet shelter burning down and one poor mare needing surgery to remove the parakeet lodged in her stomach.

“Th-that was not you,” he said.

“You sound less-than sure of thyself, good sir Carolean,” I said with a cocked brow. “Tell me, where were you when the Butcher of Songnam made his rounds, singing his own version of the Smile Song?”

The Carolean stared at me. “Lord Elkington did not release that information to the public…”

“I’m not the public, now am I?” I asked with a shrug.

“How did you come by this information?”

I dismissively waved my hoof at him. “Oh, you can tell by my equicidal demeanor, incoherence, and plethora of weapons that I, in fact, am the Butcher of Songnam.”

“That’s not funny,” he said sternly.

“Oh, but it is,” I chuckled. “So when you bring this little girl to Duke Elkington, you will tell him that Special Agent Faust sent her. Do I make myself clear? Trust me; he wants what skills she’s capable of bringing to his table. I’ve done enough sin recently. I think it’s time I do something nice for niceness’ sake, hmm?”

Proud continued staring at me. “Fiddler play thee…”

“Can the Fiddler play me Kraftmetall? Power metal?” I asked, and he just looked at me. “Because I really don’t understand just who this ‘Fiddler’ fellow is.”

“He’s being honest, I feel,” Felicitat voiced, and everypony glanced at her.

The Carolean stood up. “I’m going to step outside and get a breath of air. Carolean’s honor, I’m not running away.”

“Don’t get eaten by a tortoise,” I said with a wave as he left.

When he was gone, Biche looked at me. Her look told me everything I needed to know, and I answered before she could ask. “I’m who Elkington sends when he doesn’t believe his Caroleans have what it takes, his warrior from somewhere far beyond.”

“Far beyond?” she mouthed.

“Yes. I came from far beyond your little world, for all that it feels.” I took a sip of water. “I lost my eye to defend and protect Equestria, nonetheless, even though it’s not my home, simply because I believed—and still believe—that it was the right thing to do.”

“I… I see.”

I brought a hoof up and adjusted the brim of my hat, then wiped the sweat of my brow. A part of me really wanted to touch the place where my horn was, where now there was a bony scar. “So. Who is this Fiddler fellow? I honestly know not.”

The mares looked between themselves, but it was Felicitat who took the initiative. “The Fiddler… well, the Fiddler on the Green is, like…” She looked to Biche for help.

“The Fiddler,” Biche picked up, “is the one who guides the souls of the dead to Fiddler’s Green.”

“The Fiddler’s Green?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No ‘the’, only ‘Fiddler’s Green’.” I nodded for her to continue. Biche sucked on her lip for a moment. “Do you know what Elysium is?” I nodded. “It’s basically that. They say that the good receive a life free from toil, not scraping with the strength of their legs the earth, nor the water of the sea, for the sake of a poor sustenance. Good ponies, those with friendship and love in their hearts, are to be found there. And they are guided there by the Fiddler on the Green, the… the Reaper of Souls.”

Like Gevatter Tod. “You seem uncomfortable.”

She looked vaguely considerate of my remark. “Well, it’s sort of just one of those things that… that you know, but don’t really talk about.”

“The Fiddler’s Green?” Scheiße. Said ‘the’ again.

“No,” Felicitat said. “Death.” She licked her lips. “It’s just… it happens to all of us, b-but you just don’t think about it or talk about it. Make the most of your life, y’know?”

“I can see that,” I said. “Though perhaps not my countrymen. The faith of my home is all about death. After all, religion exists to explain the unexplainable, like what happens after you die.”

“Yours must be a very sad land,” Biche said, looking around the tavern. She noticed the bartender eying her, gave him a glare, and the stallion went back to pretending not to look at us.

I smiled, then chuckled as she returned her gaze to me. “Well, you worry about that, I’ll worry about dying a hero or living long enough to see myself become a villain. In the first way, I get my sins absolved and am taken straight to the Halls of Walhalla in Heaven, the Archangel Thor there to greet me and honor my sacrifice. As a wise mare, the Mare Laurentia, said, ‘Once you’re hardened in battle, there’s no coming back’.” I sighed. “But in the other way, I have to kill myself, because me becoming a monster is…”

The broken hymen of the Kodex lays heavy upon my chest. I let out a single laugh.“And I take it that ‘Fiddler play thee’ implies that the speaker hopes that ‘thee’ is killed?”

“Òc, in a manner of speaking,” Biche said. “It’s like when ponies swear ‘fiddlesticks’; they’re invoking the name of the Fiddler, of death.”

“Huh.” I licked my lips. “So that explains that really weird phrase.”

“Reminds me of a scary little story about the Fiddler of the Green,” Felicitat commented. She shoved a hooffull of hay fries into her maw before she see me looking. “Hwa?” the empath asked through the mouthful. She chewed, chewed some more, and swallowed.

“Aren’t you going to tell it?”

Felicitat looked up at me. “I guess, i-if you want.”

“I do,” I replied with a nod. A mare walked by with a mug of some odd brown liquid that reminded me of coffee except worse in every single way imaginable. I considered asking for her thoughts about vampires, but Felicitat began speaking before I could inquire.

“The story goes that once there was a little colt whose life the Fiddler took,” Felicitat said slowly. “But in Fiddler’s Green the colt become sad and lonely. To his horror, the Fiddler realized that he’d taken the colt’s life too early. The Fiddler, distraught and wracked with guilt, tried to right his wrong, but even the Fiddler cannot bring the dead back to life. So he did the only thing he could think of.”

“Òc,” Biche picked up. “And there was a beautiful little filly. She woke up that morning, Daddy’s little girl, and went outside to play. Last night, she’d dreamt of sad little colt on a lush, green field, and she could see a fiddler on that field. In her dream, the Fiddler had come up to her and said, ‘I took him too early. Would you mind… would you mind… would you mind… if I take you?’ But still outside she went.”

Felicitat nodded, taking a sip of her water. “That’s right. For you see, she was no ordinary little filly. She was the little colt’s soulmate. If the Fiddler hadn’t taken the colt’s life, she would have grown up to marry him. They were destined to be together. And the Fiddler knew this, and so he played his fiddle. His song made her cross a street, and then…” The empath swallowed, rubbing her eye. “Her face was pale, her body smashed, and her beauty… gone.”

I looked over at the Fiddler playing her fiddle on the stage and wondered. If the fiddle was the instrument of the spirit of death, did that make the fiddle their instrument of death? And if so, did that make all fiddlers utter badasses in Equestria?

The empath sniffled, and, tentatively, Biche reached out a hoof and patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, it’s just that this story brings such sad memories for me,” Felicitat explained.

Oh my sweet dicks in a hotdog! What’s with all the sob stories in this country? Can nopony be normal?I tried not to roll my eyes. Why was it that I couldn’t go a single step without stumbling across someone’s tragic, teary past? But do you know the real tragedy of this? If I didn’t show sympathy, I was the bad guy. Ridiculous.

She swallowed, getting a hold of herself. “Where was I? Oh, right. There.” She cleared her throat. “And so the Fiddler came up to her and spoke softly about why he had killed her. She didn’t agree with him, didn’t think it was right. ‘Isn’t it a shame,’ the Reaper said. ‘He is still quite alone here, and he’s waiting for you.’

“But the filly was horrified; she was still in agony over what happened to her, and it wasn’t her time. She was unconvinced by her killer. He was taken aback. Slackjawed, even. ‘Oh, I really did fail for the first time,’ spoke the poor old Fiddler on the Green. She was suffering because of him, and she refused to let him end her suffering. Finally, the Fiddler broke down and begged.” She rubbed her watery eye. “The Fiddler begs the little filly to just take his hoof. ‘Just take my hoof, please!’ he pleads. ‘I’ll take you there, to the Green. I promise, you pain will go away, and you will be happy forever with the boy you were destined to love… Please, just… please, take my hoof…’ A-and—” She tried to continue, but she broke out into quite, personal little sobs. Yet through them, she said, “Nopony knows how that story ended, if she accepted him or suffered because of him.”

I nodded. “Why are you crying, Felicitat?”

“Yeah,” Biche added. “I know that the story’s a bit heart-wrenching, but it’s not exactly something to cry over.”

Felicitat took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself. “Wh-when I was a little filly, I had a big brother.” Biche and I exchanged glances. “One day, when I… one day, Mommy came home crying. Daddy was already home, but he talked to Mommy and ran outside. I asked Mommy what was wrong, she only kissed me, hugged me. She told me how much she—” the empath choked up “—how much she loved me… a-and then she told me that story…”

Instantly, I understood both why she was crying and why the story existed. They were the same reason. Recalling Equitologie class, I knew how all myths had a purpose. This myth, based off the Fiddler on the Green, seemed to me like a story told to help cope with the death of foals, especially in a society that seemed to like not to think that death was a thing. Like how it was said in Teustchland that mares who died in labor were honored in Heaven by going to Walhalla, for their sacrifice was just as heroic as, if not more heroic than, dying for king and country.

Meh. You’ll be out of my hair in an hour or so. No need to get all sad. Now then, to ask about the Equestrian mythology surrounding the hymen. I frowned and sighed. But first… I grabbed a napkin and helped dry Felicitat’s tears. “There you are.”

“Thanks,” she said with a sniffle.

“It’s what I do.” When I’m not busy murdering children, of course…

My God! Are you ever going to let that one go?

Not really, no.

I went to sigh, realized that only I heard the voice in my head, and thought it best to hold the sigh in. No need to make them think I was sighing at Felicitat. Still, I gave the whole debacle about Felictat’s dead family a moment of feverish thought. Wait, no, not feverish thought. That was literally just the fever I had. In any case, wondering about her dead family logically led me to wondering what Felicitat would do if she suddenly had an eagle for a face.

“Alright, everypony,” the strong voice of Proud said as he sat back down at the table.

I turned my head to him and said in a suspicious tone, “Somepony.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Are you going to finish that thought?” Biche prodded.

“No,” I replied in a conclusive tone.

Proud sighed. “What would we do without you?”

“Probably die of an eye infection,” I said. “Just imagine a tiny Princess Celestia dying of being terribly inbred, a clubfoot, a quadruple chin, and just being so fat that she cannot walk. You can thank me for not letting that happen.”

“Well.” Proud looked at me. “That was a mental image that I could have lived without ever having.”

Felicitat looked up at me. “Can you buy me a chocolate chip cookie while you’re at it? I mean, I want one of the super big ones that taste awesome and last me a minute of solid eating. Pretty please with cherries on top?”

I shot her a look that could freeze seas into a frothy substance not unlike a bad smoothie. “The nigh identical appearances of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies is the reason I have trust and daddy issues.” I blinked tears from my… oh God! Tears from an eye without an eyeball did not feel normal! No, no, no, no! “Daddy always told me they were my favorites, but in reality they were always chocolate chip!”

“Oatmeal?” Felicitat asked with a wince. “Well, I guess I can’t fault you for that. I mean, I might disagree, but I can’t call you, like, crazy for liking what you like—”

“Just like I won’t judge you for all that crazy tentacle porn you’ve got on you,” I offered.

She let out a squeak, cheeks going red, but my attention was already to Proud. “Does your face ever get heavy? Your face looks kind of heavy. Maybe if you smiled for once, you’d look less like a pug.”

“I so want to beat you half-dead with a rake while you’re asleep.” Proud sighed.

“So, did you decide to help my young associate here?” I asked. “Because—”

“Yes, yes, I’ll take her to Lord Elkington when I leave. I will, indeed.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, drooping my ears. “Because I had this really creative threat lined up against you if you didn’t help.” I shot him a hard look. “It was going to be worse for you than it was for me that time I got laid at my high school prom.” I looked at the mares and, with a blank expression of utter horror, said softly, “I was homeschooled… by my father…”

Felicitat tilted her head to the side. “So… does this mean I don’t get a cookie?”

“No,” I replied curtly, and she frowned, flattening her ears. “You get a shoe. You can just lay there and chew on a shoe. Like a dog. Or like a meridian vase.” I briefly took out my bottle of Wodka, thirsty, and downed a thick sip. The burning ichor mixed well in my gut with the burning, itching blood. Because the first thing I needed now was a blood-alcohol level. “I can just picture you there, laying on the ground and gnawing on it as dogs do. Then you see me looking, stop, glare at me, and slowly go back to gnawing.”

“I don’t want a shoe,” she said, frown deepening.

I shot her a puzzled frowned. “No. You will be the shoe. So has life been ever since Ragnarök, when King Aloysius Pendergast, wielding the sword of Kaledfulch—” I adjusted the sword at my hip, because swords were awesome, and so was the Ach-Laut at the end of Kaledfulch “—led his Huskarler and Ritterbrüder against the White Queen and into Anderwelt to defeat the Dark Lady.” I nodded, a bit of drool dripping from my mouth as my head spun.

Biche looked at me, out of countenance. “Are you okay? You’re acting really weird all of the sudden.”

With a woozy shake of my head, I said, “No. I think it’s the infection and my newfound blood-alcohol level. Hey, does anypony got change for, like, a million pieces of gold? I-I still want to know the exact exchange rate…”

“Uh, do you need to see a doctor?”

“I can’t hit Proud to see if I can make him smile that way,” I said with a huff, a sense of vertigo bitch-smacking me like a mother slaps her newborn due to capricious and vague reasons, “because according to the law, one more case of assault and it’s technically a spree. And would you all stop spinning!?” I blinked. “You know, that reminds me of my father again. He once told me that one of the most important things in life is love, so he tried to cut off and sell my leg to a warlord in exchange for his hot daughter. That happen to anypony else? From the looks on your faces, I get the feeling that most dads don’t do that.”

The table jumped up and bodychecked my face. Oooh, drool! Wait, no, no, no, no. I fell face-first onto the table. That made sense. I reached out to grip the table and hold myself steady, and—ew, someone had put gum under the table. I hoped very much that their firstborn son was born with syphilis of the inner ear.

As I laid my head above the wooden table, I saw a distant part of the room where ponies were playing cards. Sitting there was a younger me, the boyhood forcefully slapped out of his face, looking at a card I somehow knew read “The Fool”. With a nervous look, he showed the card to the dealer mare, a mare with a dark jacket belted at the waist, jeans, and a plague mask. She took out the Hanged Stallion, looked at it, and shook her head at me. The Blue-Eyed Mare suddenly tore the Hanged Stallion apart, grabbed the Fool, and impaled the whole card upon the buck’s horn.

The masked mare turned to face me. She gestured a hoof to the Fool. With a tantalizing slowness, she lifted part of her mask, enough for me to see her lips. They were the kind of lips that most mares would kill for. The Blue-Eyed Mare blew me a solicitous little kiss and mouthed “Le Mat” at me.

I blinked, once, twice, and did not blink thrice. Sweet fever dreams embraced me. Fever dreams smelled like a place that lacked any penis jokes, and that made me sad as consciousness left me.

Author's Note

Footnote: 25% to next level.

Companion Perk Lost: Empathic Link

(So, Amacita says this chapter’s amount of dick jokes has reached critical mass. Can Jericho be blamed for his strange obsession with genitals? Probably. Oh, hey, and look what Pawndidater2 drew for us: More fanart! Muhahaha! Soon all the art shall be ~~mine~~ ~~ours~~ ~~Ron Burgundy~~ of Jericho!)

(Remember: no matter what it is, I live your for feedback, positive or negative, short or long, written or drawn—and I love it all!)

Chapter 20 — Foreleg

Chapter 20: Foreleg

“Now, first, you must lift your foreleg up to your forehead, like so.”

“Sing!”

Have you ever sat there and watched a cat sing its catsong in the middle of the night? You know, the kind that attracts vultures and undesirable ethnic minorities alike to try to dine upon it? Well, the mare dancing upon the bar counter, her hips vacillating mesmerizingly as she sang and commanded ponies to sing in her off-tune yet endearing voice, reminded me of that as I stepped through the batwing-like bar doors.

I had come in here after being chased around the town by an escaped seeing-eye dog named “Kimbles”, according to his collar. He had been happily assaulting a mare pushing a stroller with her foal in it, but upon seeing me, my black poncho, my steel helmet, and my black leather boots, Kimbles decided to harass me. While Kimbles didn’t bite ponies, his idea of playing with them was decidedly violent, hence the word “assault”.

“Bad dog,” I hissed as Kimbles the golden retriever stared at me from outside the batwing doors. Thankfully for me, Kimbles had an irrational phobia of two things: squirrels covered in honey, and the great indoors.

My steel helmet felt right. It covered the upper part of my face and part of my nose, leaving most of my face bare, like those of my Wikinger ancestors. Though it didn’t have any horns attached; the Wikinger never actually had horned helmets. Common misconceptions.

Adjusting my poncho, I let my sword show, and went into the tavern proper. It was always taverns with me, wasn’t it? But that was where all the quest-giving characters were. Evidently, the sight of me turned a lot of heads. Mayhap they simply never got enough travelers. Or perhaps ponies dressed partly as ancient pagan raiders never frequented these parts. A shame. I was a great cosplayer. The dancing earther mare didn’t notice me as she led the bar in song and dance.

“Whoooa, and if you fight hard for foal and wife,

Try to get something good in this life,

You’re a sinner and bad buck,

And ya gon’ be by the Fiddler dead struck!”

She hopped off the bar as I sat down at it, the piano player in the room’s corner keeping his stride. As I fiddled with my poncho and sword, a mare in a plague mask sat down next to me. She put a card on the countertop and slid it over to me. The Fool. A preemptive move if ever I saw. It reminded me of that one nation-based board game I’d played once where I’d provoked my friend into declaring war on me, a war I would have won, by sending several pretty mares out to our heavy contest border. These mares were told to loudly proclaim how they’d all seen my friend naked and hadn’t stopped laughing since.

Sadly for me, though I recognized the trap, I couldn’t help but lash out at those laughing mares. I spoke. “And so what is this supposed to mean?”

The Blue-Eyed Mare leaned towards me, lifting part of her mask as she whispered, “Give not up.”

“Lady, just who are—” I gasped, a surge of cold water running over me. Reality broke away from me, replaced by confusion, vertigo, disorientation, and the urge to start a dairy farm that serviced weasels only. I had no idea if weasel milk was any good, but dammit, I wanted to be he who tried.

“Is he awake?” a mare asked.

I coughed and sputtered, cold water soaking me. Ponies crowded above me, Felicitat was one of them, Biche was another. “Verpisst euch,” I growled, rolling over and forcing myself to my feet. My head jerked in the direction of the Blue-Eyed Mare, where she had been before the fever overtook me. There was nopony there.

Looking back over to where the ponies really existed, I blinked. Standing by the front door was a mare in a familiar mask, her black jacket belted at the waist. While I knew that flanking maneuvers weren’t dirty tricks, unlike some mares I could name, this seemed like cheating. No being everyone at once! That was just a rule.

A sudden, irrational desire reamed my skull sideways. It was a lust, a lust I felt as I stared at the masked mare: the irrepressible, untamable, overbearing urge to just touch the Blue-Eyed Mare. Not in a sexual way, no. It was like that feeling you got when you looked over the edge of really tall cliff: the urge to just jump, to see what happens, to fall a great height and die.

“Hey, you,” I said weakly, holding out a hoof. “Who are you?”

With all the casualness of a pussycat in a cathouse, she strolled through the doors and into the midday outside. “N-no, please! Don’t-don’t… I just want to talk, I swear upon the face of my father!”

Ignoring the protests of Felicitat and Biche, I broke out into a sprint and slammed the door open. Out in the street, my instincts told me to run to the left, to the north. So I galloped northwards, the Blue-Eyed Lady nowhere to be seen. I thought I heard Felicitat and Biche calling after me, but I didn’t know for sure. I kept kept galloping and sprinting and running and dashing and barreling.

Town turned into river valley. Stone into grass and dirt. Grass into weeds and weeds into trees. I could feel bile-like blood circulating through my body. Each pump brought about a wailing agony in my skull, for the brain itself literally could not feel pain. I think I vomited somewhere along the way; I couldn’t say. All I could say was that I had to go north, towards the Blue-Eyed Mare.

My duster practically flapped as I vaulted boulders, little hills, bits of streams, and at least one very startled doe. A quick thought reminded me that biche meant doe, but that was all I afforded the ponies behind me. And as I ran, I began to see more and more of the Blue-Eyed Lady. She was behind every tree, every rock, every incline, every hill, always vanishing just before I got there. She reminded me of my first girlfriend in that way, teasing whenever it fit her.

I recalled her amber eyes, her sharp features. In the memory she was dressing herself after our first time. Her look was two-parts vague amusement, one-part almost real sympathy as she said, “Wow. You really get girly after doing it, huh?”

Biting my tongue, I forced the memories away. The Reich, the Fatherland, was behind me. She was probably dead, just like everyone else I’d ever had any care about in the Reich, which was why Dad was alive and well, I knew. For all I could truly care about, the Blue-Eyed Lady was my whole world… and I was okay with that…

Acids festered within my leg, perfectly normal but perfectly painful. I gulped in fresh air, my throat drying so hard that I choked on it. Each step was agony. I must have banged my hoof somewhere, because my ruined hoof was now leaving little specks of blood as I sprinted. Faint… what was I… where as I… why… blue eyes… Find her!

And my arms and legs gave out under me. I collapsed, rolling and rolling until I smashed my head on a rock so hard that it drew blood… blood… blood…

I saw her face, a filly’s face full of terror and fear as she looked directly up at me. The corpse of her mother had a bloody mouth, a steak knife impaled through her eye. I peeked in through the hole in the stone wall, the ruins of Esztergom behind me. “Hey there, kleines Mädchen. Are you okay?”

She whimpered, stepping back from me.

“It’s okay,” I said with a smile, not that she could see it through my Atemschutzmaske. The mask only let her see my eyes, if lucky. I reached out for her. “You look hungry. Would you like something to…” The lips died on my tongue as I saw why she was crying. She wasn’t scared of me or because of the dead mother and father by her side, no. That would be too easy. She was crying in silent agony from the bite wound that shredded her blouse. Equine teeth. Dead mother…

She was infected. There was nothing more to it. It was only a matter of time before the necromantic fungus got into her too deep and she turned into one of them. The Code looked down upon me, and it refused to comment as I raised my sword and… and so much blood… and the first time I contemplated suicide, even if my brothers-in-arm solemnly commended me on having the guts to do what none of them could do.

If I could laugh in the face of horror, I could keep away the monsters from my lack of dreams. So long as I didn’t dream, I could sleep soundly. So many bad things, so many smiles from me.

“You can’t give in,” she said, snapping me cold out of my stupor. She was sitting in there in front of me. Slowly, I rose a hoof to touch her, but she stood up and took herself from me.

“Please,” I begged in a weak tone.

“Give not up,” she insisted. “Only a little further now, Fool.”

“I feel as though our relationship has become verbally abusive,” I commented, and she slowly walked off into the brush and vanished. Nothing within me could work up the strength to go after her. I let the sun high above burn my eye and dry my blood into a crust that would not have gone very well on a pie. Trust me, I’ve tried. It never goes like you’d think it would.

A sudden fit of laughter overtook me as I remembered the last time I’d seen my father. I laughed like it was the funniest thing ever, so funny that I coughed until my throat felt about ready to bleed. One of his eyes, the one mirroring the one I lost, had something new: a battle wound. Where once the pupil had existed now only a sea of color surrounded by the image of an Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. When last I saw him, he’d been holding out his Iron Cross out to me, the one I still wore today.

Gritting my teeth, I grasped the Iron Cross. What was I anymore? What was I doing? Gone was Jericho Amadeus Faust, replaced by some diseased brat whose every other word, every other thought, was some genital thought. I… why?

Get your ass up, maggot! my father’s voice screamed in my ear. Move like you have a purpose!

Purpose. Hmm… Now, there’s a foreign word. As distant from my life as my mental image of Princess Celestia was from being anywhere near intimidating. Cardsie-wardsie-hatie-watie!

I took a deep breath in through my nose. With nothing but willpower, I rolled onto my stomach and stayed there until I lost track of the time. I could feel Father’s hoof in my mouth mixed with blood. Worthless boy. You have forgotten my face. So I gritted my teeth, swallowed the bile in my throat, ignored the headache, and stood up.

Before me stood trees by the banks of the river that had spent eons carving this little valley. I ambled forwards into the brush wherein the Blue-Eyed Mare had vanished. I could not run, only slowly drag myself through brush and bramble.

The drag led me to a little clearing choked with dry bits of bramble and leaves and dead wood. As I stumbled out into the clearing proper, still a distance from its center, I looked down at my right arm. The veins were black. Black as the darkest night with a dash of peppermint. Red meant infected. Black meant necrotic. The limb had been dragging not because I lacked will, but because it was dead. Not metaphorically. Literally dead.

So I thought long and hard, and eventually I dragged myself over to the center of the clearing. All of my efforts were focused on gathering up all the dry leaves and everything here, putting it into a huge pile at the center, and setting it alight via the magic of friction. I kept growing the flame until it was a bonfire, until the heat of the fire made me wince, my very bones filling with warmth. My good forehoof found its way to my empty eye. What had I done when it had died?

What I had done was… solve the problem. So I reached over, grabbed my sword in my teeth, stuck my arm into the fire, and went to work amputating the dead limb. Hack, slash, slash, slop, hack, saw, cauterize. Cauterize. Cauterize!

The rotten, diseased flesh came off easy enough; death made limbs so weak, flesh so maimable. I laughed like a banshee as the severed portion of the limb fell off. The nerves turned to a charred crisp, the veins, capillaries, and artery burned into a sickly-sweet smelling substance that made my tummy rumble, my mouth salivate.

When I pulled it out, half of my face felt burned in the first degree. Part of my flesh had melted over my arm, like a freaked scab that reminded me of the way a clown glares at a little filly. Still smiling, still laughing, I collapsed onto the ground. So much blood gone, but so many clear thoughts!

I don’t know how long I lay there, cackling like a hen who’s just eaten the fox. It was long enough for rain to come and for night to fall. At first I was soaked, but the bonfires dried me so well as it cast its dancing shadows all over the clearing like pagan witches who’ve just discovered what sugar was, but didn’t yet know with what orifice you consumed sugar. Only, not all of them were shadows. Figures stared at me from the edge of the clearing, their eyes flickering in the pyrelight. None of them dared approached me, even as my voicebox went raw and I could no longer even moan.

“You live,” a sweet voice said, and I suddenly found myself myself staring into beautiful blue eyes. Problem was, I was no longer dying beside a bonfire. Above me was the ancient vaulted ceiling of a castle or cathedral. I reached out a hoof to caress the face that held the eyes, but she pulled out. “Thank all the holies for that.”

“Where…?” I croaked. Literally croaked. My sudden desire to be a frog came out like a croak. “Ribbit,” I added. A part of me now wanted to find and severely annoy a witch. When I asked myself why, I drew a blank

“Don’t speak,” she said in a soft, motherly voice. Now that I looked, she was again wearing that masque from my earlier hallucination. Catching my look, she feigned a smile. “You know, not many a girl would forgive a guy for blowing her brains out through her skulls, that’s for sure. Lucky for us—” There’s an ‘us’? “—I’m a forgiving, understanding lady.” She winked at me. My internal organs couldn’t decide if I liked that look or if that look made me want to strangle her by her ovaries while carving the alphabet into her back with a spoon. ABC—Die, bitch! “Wait, no, I think I said that already…”

The mare shook her head. “You’ve come so far, Fool, so far,” she whispered, moving her lips closer and closer to my ear. “There’s just one thing left to do.” I could feel the heat of her body against my ear now. But words never came.

The night sky flashed before me once more. A tall figure was standing above me. There wasn’t much I could tell about the figure save that it was impossibly tall and its smile was three times too big for its face.

And then I was back in that cathedral-like room. She wasn’t standing over me, I realized with a wave of panic. I flailed until I was on my stomach, and I grunted as I lifted myself up with only three limbs to support myself. For some reason, I imagined myself with a pegleg ending with a hook. That mental image ended with me getting caught in a closet making out with a suit of armor, and me screaming, “This is who I am now—a machine with machine desires!”

I needed to get a hobby, I figured as I hobbled through the large room. It was like a throne room, years after the king was overthrown and the republic declared. In fact, there was an area that looked like it had once held a great throne. Tattered banners hang from the walls and ceiling, mayhap symbols of noble houses. Whatever this was, I stumbled wobbly through the place until I got to where I thought a throne might have been.

Then the faint but distinct scent of incense tackled my nose, screaming something about the square root of lemons. Behind the throne there was a little doorway once hidden by a bannister of crossed swords behind a snarling wolf. Walking the little passage led me into a larger corridor. I stopped to catch my breath. Apparently, losing your arm made you more prone to getting winded than a fat chick in an “ice cream and hot guys who will never love you” emporium.

Hah. Obesity. The lethargic killer. Still less scary than a brain aneurysm. Those things just haunted my nightmares. You never knew when they could happen, and they just instantly killed you. How ponies went around not in constant fear was beyond me.

Licking my parched lips with a tongue so dry that a cat would call it scratchy, I went back to walking, following the smell.

The hall vanished into a large semi-circular balcony for no adequately explored reason. Beyond the balcony was an ocean, its waters red in the setting sun. I could see that this was indeed a ruined castle. Tall spires connected by narrow bridged rose out of the bay beneath the castle, as if some giant had lazily been trying to build up a goal post, gave up halfway, then decided he was going to become a painter who painted only small rodents. He was probably dying of poverty.

But more importantly, there was a half-dressed mare sitting on the balcony, a half-circle of burning candles before her. She was half-dressed because her jacket was around her waist where it was belted, a plagued mask tossed to the side.

When she slowly turned her head to look at me, she sighed. Her face was striking; not because of radiant beauty or anything, but because it was the face of a mare whose childhood had visibly been slapped out of her face. I couldn’t tell her age, but I estimated her to be somewhere in her early-to-mid thirties. I liked her mane. A strange part of me wanted to shave her bald, stitch her mane into a wig, and then staple it to Cards’ forehead—just because it’d totally be cute.

You need help, Jericho. You need so much help.

“Long days and pleasant nights to you, Fool,” she said in a voice that was cool, but not hostile.

“I liked it better when I was the Hanged Stallion,” I replied. “Sounds less daft.”

She shrugged, still not facing me fully. “We cannot choose who we are.”

“I like to think it was my choice to do this and not become a ballerina like my father wanted me to be.”

“Did he really want you to…?”

I shook my head. “No; I just say things. Doesn’t change the fact at hand, though.”

She grunted. “You have interesting eyes… interesting eye, that is,” the half-nude mare commented, turning back to her candles. “You have the eye of a corpse. One who is far too alive and mayhap stupid to know that it has been dead for a very long time.”

“Are you hitting on me?” I asked, narrowing my eye. “Because if you are, appealing to my mutilations only makes you seem like one of those ponies with weird fetishes. You’re one of those mares who’s into cripples and tentacles, aren’t you?” I accused.

Her manner remained just as composed. “No.”

I deflated. It felt as if I needed to be blo—no, no, there was absolutely no way to phrase that without sounding like a sex joke. “So, you’re saying you judge for me the blood and flesh I lost defending the good and virtuous?!”

“No.”

“Oh, you are just an utter bitch,” I groused. “You can’t just be so calm when I say unusual things.”

“I try my best, Fool,” she said in a casual tone.

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

The Blue-Eyed Mare turned to look at me, the distant sound of waves crashing ringing across the barren cliffs below the castle. “It is your card.”

I nodded, leaning to the side and up against the little doorway to the balcony. How I had ended up here was a bit foggy, but hopefully I wasn’t carried here by exactly four and a half dwarves or a sleigh team of gerbils. It happened to me once and I could never again look at sunsets the same way again afterwards. “Oh, I get it,” I said, nodding my head. “This whole thing isn’t real!”

Smiling at the mare only made her grimace. I went on. “So you’re not real! This castle is but a bad thought. You call me Fool because my fever dream dreamed up that card.” I pointed to my right arm… and promptly fell to the ground. “And I didn’t really cut my arm off!”

Her grimace deepened, and she scrunched her neck slightly in a way that reminded me of my first pet. My first pet had been a tortoise who, upon seeing me for the first time, became so scared that he hid in his shell until he starved to death. “No… that really did happen…”

I blinked, my smile going from ecstatic to the kind of fake smile you gave your grandparents so that they wouldn’t commit suicide because they were old and nopony loved them. “Well then.” I laughed twice. “My life is so going to suck from now on.” And the frown came. “Oh sweet God, I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“It’s not all that bad, considering,” she replied hesitantly. “I once knew a pony who had to amputate all four limbs, then perform open heart surgery on themselves.”

I laughed, but she didn’t. “Oh God, you’re serious. Huh. Here I was, thinking that you and I had the same sense of humor.” I frowned. “Why does nopony ever share in my sense of humor?”

“Have you ever—”

“Hey!” I exclaimed, pointing at her. “You don’t have a shadow.”

“What?”

I pointed at her, then at myself. “I have a shadow. You’re not casting a shadow. Stop it. That’s weird.” A seagull… or something—it had four slit-like eyes and talons but was otherwise identical to a seagull—landed on the stone walls of the little balcony and made a sound that was somewhere in-between a seagull’s cry and a very small filly screaming ‘mollify’. “See? This abomination has a shadow. Why don’t you?”

She stood up, her jacket remaining on the ground. Raising a brow, I noted dully that she wasn’t wearing pants proper, just vague undergarments. Something about that seemed like a bad idea to me. What kind of lunatic sits outside with candles, watching the sunset in her underpants? They were white in that way wherein they were practically see-through, too. Because my fever dreams hated me, I doubted that she’d just so happened to be wearing something so provocative.

Taking a sniff of the air, I noticed that the smell of the candles was gone as the wind picked up. “If this is the part of the dream where things get fun and I wake up feeling weird, I’d like to just wake up please.”

The Blue-Eyed Mare rolled her eyes. “Can I ask you a question?”

“I do enjoy syrup on my waffles, yes,” I replied. “And yes, I will gladly make us breakfast—provided that you have the waffle mix and syrup, of course, because I’m just nice like that. We can sit at the table and talk about… uh… taxes, because that’s what normal ponies talk about.”

She looked longingly up at the castle and sighed. “I don’t pay taxes.”

I went to clap my forehooves together in excitement, but instead fell back into the floor. “See? We’ll have something to discuss. I don’t really know for exactly how long I’ve not been in my home, but depending on some estimates, I may owe up to ten years’ worth of a back taxes to the Reich. Aww! When I get home, some government ponies wearing black coats are gonna drag me onto the street and publicly break my knees and face with baseball bats! And it will be great.”

“Waltharius!” she blurted out, stamping a hoof.

“Ja?” I goaded.

“Everything you said about him was correct, right?”

“Well, I don’t like to lie about history. I like it. Lying about others things, though, no problem.”

The Blue-Eyed Mare bit the corner of her lip, looking down. “That is a name I recognize. When you first said it, I snapped somewhat.”

I blinked. “You mean, that sudden burst of rage I felt when I mentioned his name to Felicitat?”

She nodded, looking off to the weird mutant seagull. “Yes, that was me.” The mare paused to take a breath. I spun around a full revolution just to see what it was like without my right arm. “So. You defeated Waltharius?”

“In absolutely every way, the Good Stallion was outmatched by King Viktor,” I said. “Waltharius made a move against the Reich, they say, when his agents burned down our capital of Zentrum in order to try to keep us from interfering. There’s few crazy conspiracy theorists who insist Viktor burned down his own capital to provoke the war, though. Ponies who buy into that are daft. Anyways, within a few years, the flag of the falcon and Iron Cross flew victoriously over two continents other than our own.” I narrowed at eye. “But you’re a figment of my imagination, not my history teacher. What gives?”

“Because that’s not how it happened here,” she said.

“Here?”

She cast her eyes off to the castle. “On the other side of this castle there is… was a city… the greatest in this world.” If she expected me to question her further on this, I didn’t. While I was listening, I was trying to think up the next greatest dance craze that didn’t involve your right arm. “It was thriving, great, magnificent, rich, mighty, beautiful. And then the Good Stallion came. He was just like he was in your world, from raider to messiah, preaching the same message of equality and an end to class-based slavery. Though, he said nothing of magic like yours did.”

Tscha-tscha-tscha, supertango! “So, without the Reich to save you, your homeland was destroyed?”

She hesitated. “And now I am the last of those ponies. Then he went into your world, I suspect, and there was he slain.”

“Come again?”

The Blue-Eyed Mare sighed, turning around. She walked over to the edge of the balcony. She had nice flanks; they looked to me like ones exercised through a hard life, not vain exercising for its own sake. Were I a lesser stallion, I might have stared at it instead of wondering just how many jackrabbits I could hide in my now-armless sleeve. Imagine just what kind of shenanigans I could pull of with a sleeve full of jackrabbits!

With a sudden leap, she hopped up onto the balcony’s railing, looking right at me. She held out a hoof and smiled, like a mother offering to help pick up her foal who had fallen into a cage of rabbit jackalopes. “Are you coming?”

I had found once that sometimes unexpected things waltzed into my head if I let the door open for them. Useful things, often. Now, though, was different. Suddenly she had my rapt attention and interest.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Come here,” she offered in a siren-like tone.

Against the screaming in my head not to walk, I went up to her. She grabbed my left arm and helped me onto the balcony. It was at that moment that, with horror, I realized that going up stairs was going to suck. Great. So. In summation, I was a whacky cripple who most certainly would still gnaw your fetlocks off.

Eh, I’ve probably had worse.

No, no you have not.

“Why are we up here?” I asked, already knowing the answer. She meant to kill me, and I had just stopped caring. Of course, that was exactly what I thought whenever I was standing on a ledge and another pony was near me, but whatever.

“You are trapped in this dreamscape, this place between mind and reality. There is one way out.”

“Does it involve you pushing me to my death?” I glanced down. “It’s a long way down. And contrary to popular belief, water does not soften a fall; in fact, it often worsens it; it’s about as hard as concrete when you fall into it from a great distance.”

“Well, I only need you to do one thing,” she said softly.

“And what is that?”

She brought her lips to my ear and whispered one word: “Fly.”

But I didn’t know how to fly any more than a dog knew how to carry all of these limes, so all I could do was fall. I was not wrong about what she wanted to do. All I could think of as I fell was a dull I wonder if they serve continental breakfast in Hell.

I didn’t die when I hit the water. In fact, once again I was on my back, laying beside my bonfire. The rain was gone. It blinked out the daze of fever dream away, and my blood went cold.

There were two balls of fire—no, not fire. They were reflections of the bonfire upon the eyes of a tall creature. It was like the way a cat’s eyes light up when flashed with light whilst in a dark place, only worse. Its… his mouth was locked in a smile too large for his face.

“Jericho-tsaius,” he said in a dark voice. His body seemed almost ethereal as the firelight flickered across his body, the moon high above him in the sky.

“C,” I stated, my eye feeling heavy in my skull.

He crouched down, and the look of his smile sent pinpricks of worry oozing down my spine. His teeth looked whiter and stronger than mine; when he spoke, I could see his version of temporalis muscles flexing his jaws, and they looked strong. I noticed that he was no longer naked but instead wearing a pair of what looks like work jeans and, oddly, a black poncho.

“You are hurt,” C said in a flat voice, his face knitting its smile into a more reasonably sized one. He raised an arm, lifting his poncho with it as he touched my stumpy arm. “I can help you, Tsaius.”

“Why are you here?” I croaked.

The question seemed to make him have to think. His eyes darted off to the side in the way that a pony trying to remember something will do. I had no idea if his body language corresponded at all to that of a pony. “Because ye are in trouble, Tsaius. Because I have been tracking you for some time now. And because a little lady asked me to look out for you.”

I had to think about that for a second. “Lightning Dust?”

“Nay,” he said, shaking his head. “’Twas Cards.”

Her name hit me like a rampaging herd of elephants trying to learn how to wear stockings. “What?”

“Yes,” he went on, “Cards. When I saved them, I noted that I doubted you’d die. And so she said—” C cut himself off with a jerk, pulling out two strong, serrated knives. I went to telekinect my sword, but that didn’t work, just giving me a sharp stabbing pain in my forehead. With his knives, he stabbed himself deep in the cheeks, dragging the blade up through bone and muscle.

When the blades cleared, a shadowy, star-filled void leaked out of his face, followed by root-like extension of black char. They enveloped his face above and around the cuts. My skin crawled as his skin twisted and jerked, his eyes going with it.

It didn’t take long for the process to stop. When it did, I was no longer staring into C’s eyes but the saddened yet fiery red eyes of Cards. In fact, his upper head was now hers: her face with his lower jaw, his upper jaw. Then he spoke in her exact voice, his… her… the face moving in the exact subtle ways that Cards’ face did.

“H-he’s alive?” Cards’ voice said, like a perfectly clear recording.

A sharp but quiet click sounded. Then it was C’s strong, horrible voice from his twisted face. “Yes, I doubt not that he is a cadaver. He has the smell of ingenuity about him. His flesh is weak as is yours, yet I trust in his broken mind to persevere and succeed this day.”

Click. Her voice. “If that’s true, then… then…” Cards’ face scrunched up like a filly asking a colt to a dance. Only instead of a dance, it was spiders. Everything was spiders. It might have been cute if it hadn’t been literally the worst thing ever.

Click. His voice. “Then what?”

Click. Her voice. “Then…” She sighed, looking off to the side. “Make sure he doesn’t, like… get too hurt or anything, please. Like, look out for him, maybe. I just… I hate him but… I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Click. His voice. “Of course, milady. I swear upon the Skahlzhinh that I will look out for him, if only for a short while.”

One of C’s big, strong hands came up from behind the Cards-head, grabbed the top of the head, his fingers digging into the tops of her eyes. I was a first-class witness to Cards’ face being torn apart by C’s hands, blood and gore and all, her face an impartial blankness. Her eyes fell out of her sockets as C clawed off the rest of the face.

Then it was just C’s face watching me with an amused little smirk. “Those were her words, Tsaius.”

For the first time in as long as I could recall—which didn’t amount to very long at this moment—I was speechless. No witty remark, half-baked joke, or stupid thought. I just stared up at C.

“So, I’ve been watching you for a time, Tsaius,” he went on, “and now I think I can help you.” He shrugged. “For what it’s worth.”

“Why now?” I asked wearily. “Why not help me when I was dying in the swamp?”

C frowned, looked around, then looked pleased with himself. He pointed to a little sapling that was all on its own, too narrow and thin to be of use to my bonfire. “Do you see this cocoon?”

I squinted. “I… I think I do.”

The skinwalker pulled out a knife and pointed it at the sapling. “This here is a moth cocoon. From what I know of cocoons, the little way its moving and that tiny little hole in it means that the larva is matured into a fully grown moth.” He brought the tip the knife very close to the cocoon. “Now, I could help this little fellow get out: I could just take the tip of my knife and help widen the hole, help the little guy out.” C pointed the knife at me. “But if I did that, the moth would be too weak to live. You see, it’s that struggle, that fight for survive, whence strength comes from.

“Now, I could have helped you early, maybe even helped you keep your eye and horn.” He gave a single mirthless chortle. The word ‘chortle’ always made me think of an enormously fat pony trying to eat a hippopotamus. “But if I did that, you’d be too weak, Tsaius. I let you suffer because it made you better, made you stronger, made you able to survive worse.”

“A-and now?”

He sheathed the knife and stood up tall. “Now, if I don’t help you, you’ll be too weak to continue. Take the word of the last in the skinwalker’s line that there are those who would rather you alive.”

Without warning, the skinwalker fell forwards onto all fours, holding himself up above me. He opened his mouth as wide as a snake eating a mopey mare bloated with ice cream because nopony loved her. Exactly eight black, spider-like legs curled out from the back of his throat. I could only stare with morbid, horrified fascination as the legs set themselves down around the edges of his face.

I watched as each leg tapped once on his face. “Hmm,” he hummed, and the legs curled back into his mouth and down his throat. “I will help you, Tsaius.”

The skinwalker’s flaming eyes darted to my stump of an arm as his hand grabbed for it. He positioned himself over my arm, a foot pinning my shoulder. “But first… this stump needs to go.”

My world erupted into unimaginable pain as his thick, clawed fingers slashed and savaged the scabs and burns off the edge of the stump. I screamed, or tried to scream, but my sore throat only hacked out a bloody cough in place of agonized shriek,

And he manually tore and clawed off what little of my arm there was.

Everything went black. The last thing I saw, the thing burned into my retinas, was his smile literally tearing his face in half.

Author's Note

Footnote: 25% to next level

Status Effect Removed: Blood Poisoning

Limb Removed: Right Foreleg. This limb can no longer sustain damage or be crippled. You know, you’re losing body parts like it’s going out of style. I can only imagine the hilarious therapy sessions to follow this!

(We here at the Jericho Team heard you wanted more Cards. Well, there. More Cards. Are you happy now? And then some C. See C? ¿Sí? ¡Sí, C! How’s that for a complete plot jackknife? The old Jericho is back.)

Chapter 21 — Arm

Chapter 21: Arm

“My first thought was, he lied in every word,

That hoary cripple, with malicious eye.”

— Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Robert Browning.

Oz.

That word kept running through my sick mind. Oz! Oz? Oz.

“You know of zhah, right?” C’s voice had said through the blackness, that much I could recall.

Your word for destiny, yes. I thought it was a thought, at least. But I must have said it aloud, for C’s voice replied.

“Yes, destiny,” he said as if it were a lemon covered in hairy-yet-bald ponies. “Well, that was how it was in Demotic Vulgate. Where I was from, they spoke a certain dialect of the Vulgate. In that dialect, we had another word for the chains that bind. It was a word that the hwair of Cabaleth chanted as they marched: it was the word forgotten by all but I when thirty-million wair, kinsmænner of mine, died on the fields of the Manassas Wasteland, muskets and bayonets still so hateful.” C paused. “But it was still my favorite word to describe zhah, for no other word meant it so… straightforwardly. It was Oz. It will be Oz. It is Oz.”

C had laughed mirthlessly. “So then, dear child, pay no attention to the skinwalker… to the mæn behind the curtain.”

More than that I couldn’t remember. Just that the word Oz kept running through my head. I didn’t even know—

“Huh. Well, I sure as rain didn’t see you saunter on up in here, sugah,” said a mare’s voice.

Suddenly, my eye opened, and I was looking into the face of a mare at least ten years beyond having been pretty. I blinked my eye free of disorientation—the left set of eyelids spasmed weirdly under the eyepatch, the stitches keeping the lid shut, the muscles nowhere near strong enough to so much as threaten the stitches.

“Now, I’m no stranger to terrible ideas, sugah,” she said cautiously, “so I’ll dare to ask ya what you’re doing here.”

Likewise, I was no stranger to terrible ideas. There was this one time when I was a colt where I was standing on a beach next to a pile of at least twenty captured stray dogs that I’d tied together. A filly, about my age, came up and asked me why I had tied so many animals together, to which I replied, “Because if I tie enough of them together, I can create a raft and because a sailor! It’s been my lifelong dream since this morning.” She’d just looked at me and said plainly, “That’s a terrible idea, and you’re a terrible pony.”

I rubbed my eyes with my left forehoof. So. Where am I? Looking around, I… Oh, really? Wow. This was the most original thing I’d ever seen, he thought seriously and without any trace of humor. Of course, I was sitting at a bar counter not unlike the one in my fever dream with the Blue-Eyed Mare. Why couldn’t it have been a public book burning or an abattoir? Needed it be another bar? I actually wondered there if some secret part of me was actually a terrible alcoholic, and that was why it was always a bar or a tavern I ended up in.

It was a lively bar, if that made any difference. ’Twas filled with happy young ponies, the only really mature pony being the mare speaking to me, who stood behind the bar counter. Given that she was wearing an apron, I guessed that the pegasus mare was the bartender. Yay. God, I suddenly felt so old.

“I suppose I just ended up where—” Oz. Where Oz took me “—the nice ladies were.” I smiled at her, suppressing the urge to wince at how stupid that had sounded.

Despite the cheesiness of my line, she smiled. “And here I was, thinking there was some monster you were here to fight at noon.”

“Pardon me?”

She made a gesture like tipping a hat. “The way you’re so dressed up, you make me wanna think you’re one a’ them bladeslingers.”

“Blade. Slinger,” I said slowly, the sound of singing, drunken ponies coming behind me.

“Yeah, like them Caroleans try to look like.” She put a drink on the counter. “Since Buffalo Duckbill’s Wild West Show ain’t in town, I can’t figure why you’re here.”

“What does a bladeslinger do?” I asked, and she tilted her head at me like I’d asked her where do babies come from. While on fire. And eating biscuits. “I have never seen one of… Buffalo Duckbill’s Wild West Shows.” That seemed to slightly ease her, I thought.

The bartender mare shrugged her wings. She shot a glare suddenly at somepony behind me, a buck hitting rather aggressively on some dame, then looked back at me. “Funny. The way you look… well… the only thing you’re missing is one a them ten-gallon hats. Even the way you carry your sword—yeah, sugah, hide it all you want, I still can see it—is utterly unlike that of a knight but of a bladeslinger. All in all, it’d look silly on anypony but yaself.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

She smiled curtly. “Oh, you know—the legendary badass drifter strolls into a troubled place, fights the bad guys, and goes off on his own. You look just like the sort.”

I blinked, then reached into my pocket and… oh. Well. That’s new. Or old, rather. New old. Nold! I stared at my right arm, the limb I’d supposed hacked off not… it felt like ten minutes ago. Literally ten minutes ago was I cutting my arm off. But this was the limb attached to my body. Gee. It really managed to take away all the meaning behind cutting a limb off, didn’t it? Hey, kids, if you lose a limb, a random contrived circumstance will give it back!

The problem was, it wasn’t my arm: the color was off, the fur darker than the rest of my body, as if a distant shadow were being cast over it. My mind drew a blank as the voice in my head drew up the cards that the oracle had drawn: The King and The Hanged Stallion. Though I apparently wasn’t the latter, said the lady in my head, both of them had an arm darker than the rest of their bodies.

I pulled up the sleeve to get a better look at the arm. Around the shoulder, in a line was a mutilation that read, “शान्ति शान्ति शान्ति Schantih Schantih Schantih ” It wrapped around the limb like how a tentacles wraps around the feely bits of a nippönischen mare. And felt just as violating. Though only half as pleasurable. Then, as if I knew there was more, I looked down at the underside of my arm. There were more words. “दत्त दयध्वम् दम्यत — Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata”—all the way down to the hoof.

As I looked at it like a beaver looks at the child’s ice cream cone he’s fixing to wear as a hat, I realized that I knew what they meant. I didn’t know how I knew, but I could read the words on my arm. शान्ति was Schantih was Peace. दत्त was Datta was Give. दयध्वम् was Dayadhvam was Sympathise. दम्यत was Damyata was Control.

Peace! Peace! Peace! Give. Sympathize. Control.

This was what they all meant. That I knew this made me sick. Sick enough that I honestly considered trying to get laid just to try to forget. And that was just weird.

Check and mate. This day was officially one of the odder in my life, right up there with that time I tried to make “International Bring a Shit Ton of Bees to Work Day” a thing back when I was volunteering at the hospital. Little foals in the cancer ward loved playing with bees; it made them forget they were dying, because bees. Needless to say that I was banned from all hospitals, and to this day was not allowed to receive medical treatment in the teutschen federal state of Eposz, where the city of Esztergom lay. Why that was weird was because I had never stepped hoof into Eposz at that point in my life, and wouldn’t do so until much later when I was sent to help deal with the Spiegelgestalt, when I’d first seen an invisible pony-like thing get hung. I had begun today in a hospital bed, and now I was in a bar with a weird new arm. Yay.

“Sugah, you alright?” the bartender prodded.

“Bu-huh?”

“Ya look like ya ain’t never seen your foreleg ’afore.”

“Well, I suppose that wouldn’t be too inaccurate,” I replied with a false smile. It felt like it was more of a threatening smile to me, so I quickly hid it beneath my lips.

“Not hoolings,” she said, “I’d think. Sometimes, it’s more arthrotsome to be sober than tipsy, am I right?”

“Here here!” a chorus of not entirely sober ponies replied from behind me.

I gave her a dumb look, the kind of look that asked ‘Is there a sale on lobotomies and finches at the local petshop, mayhap?’ “I… haven’t the foggiest idea what you just said.”

“Ain’t a misfeng a hers,” a buck to my left offered, gesturing his mug at me.

Misfeng? That’s not a word and you know it!

“Can it,” the bartender said with a casualness unbefitting of her words. “It’s just some northern jargon I picked up, really. I feel fancy, and not a mite bit pretentious, when I say it. But it’s spread to many of the ponies ’round here, so by you not kennin’ it, that tells me that you’re not from anywhere around our little shire.”

“I could have told you that myself, “ I replied. Suddenly, I wondered what the bartender’s face would look like buried under twenty pounds of birdseed while surrounded by coatl and laughwolves. If nothing else, all the implied streamers made me feel a little better.

“Yeah, but I like to think of myself as the queen bitch of the seedy underbelly of Hoofington,” she replied with a wink.

“Where now?”

“The Folkdom of Hoofington, its capital here in the bound shire of Hoofington, mostly a college town, but big enough. If only just.” She smiled. “We swear no oath but to the Ladies in Canterlot.”

“All tree a dem,” came a voice from somewhere off.

She scoffed. “’S just the two and ya know it.”

“Oui, says the lady who’s ne’er been to Châteaucéleste, to Canterlot.”

The bartender scoffed. “Margarine, y’ain’t never been there neither.”

“Non, madame, but my cousin, oui, he has.”

“Get back to ya drinking,” she spat. “’S just rumor, is what. Say we get three alicorns up in Canterlot, so they do.”

My blood felt a little colder than blood should be. “What?”

“Aye, the lady of magic, so she is. So good at it that she ascended to royalty,” somepony added. “Apparently, ya don’t need blue blood to be royalty, just a scary enough daughter-of-a bitch, beg pardon.”

“I hear the princess title just an honorific, won’t pass on to any kiddies a hers.”

“Can the royal sister even have kiddies?”

“Nah, mate. They’s too old. A mare gets menopause at, like, fifty, and our Ladies are over a thousand years old at minimum.”

“I heard myself that the new princess and Duke Elkington got into a fight once over something silly.”

“The nature o’ curses, methinks.”

“Curses ain’t real, says she. Duke thinks they is real.”

“Yeah to that, so ’tis. Curses is real, lemme tell y’all. Once had me a cuz up in Hayseed what dun—”

“I once got to see the new princess. She be kinda cute.”

“Bullshit, you old drunkard.”

“Didja ask ’er if she could have kiddies?”

“Nah, ’tweren’t none a my bidness.”

“Make the accents stop!” I shrieked, putting my hooves up to my forehead, falling out of the chair and onto the hardwood floor. The ceiling was a dark oaken color, I saw. “Make them stop, please, you’re killing me!”

“Aw, now ain’t ye just a lil’ babby.”

“I didn’t learn this language properly just so I could hear you destroy it all!” I menaced, panting and gasping for breath.

“Alright, can it, the whole lot of ya,” the bartender growled at the tavern, and the line of chat died away. “Sorry about that. We get a lot of folks ’round these parts. Hoofington might not be the biggest city ’round ’ere, but we gets all sorts of ponies from all over the kingdom, and they get theyselves all sorts of accents. Partly ’cause Hoofington University is so nice to the common folks. Up in Canterlot University, so I hear, the standards get crazy for us lowborn, whereas them nobleponies get in all easy-like.”

“I think I’m going to have a headache,” I groused, standing back. “And probably a brain tumor. No, worse, their accents are so horrible that it somehow prompted a giant alien space beaver to lay its eggs in my esophagus. They’re a wily race, the giant alien space beavers.”

“Oh, and this is for you”—and she pushed up to me a glass full of a brown liquid alongside an envelope.

“An envelope?” I said with a puzzled frown.

“Ayep,” she said. I thanked God it wasn’t aye again. “Strange fellow came by here earlier, really scary-looking chap with a poncho and sombrero. He told me to hand it to a strange buckaroo with an eyepatch. Had a real strange name, that pony. When asked, he told me it was simply Vaquero. Bah-kay-roh,” she said slowly, enunciating each syllable of his name, taking care for the tapped R, unlike the Equestrian R. “Fella tossed me a few bits of silver—a helluva lot more than I’d reckon I had any right to even dream of charging—and told me it was for ‘postage and a glass of scotch for me mate’. I remember ’cause he said that, me mate, not my mate.”

“It’s the mating call of the wild jackass,” I said idly.

She snorted in what I hesitated to think of as a racist species of laughter. Why racist? Didn’t know, but that was the word I felt like using. “Yeah, that’d about sum it up real nice like.” She jerked her head up and snarled, “Fudge Sundae, stop hitting on my waitress! You’re no good at it, and you know it.”

“Hey, don’t be slappin’ my penis!” some buck called back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I could slap something so tiny,” she chuckled. “Something so vagine-ish and abstract.”

“Sexism,” I commented under my breath, taking a sip of the scotch. It was okay. “Implying that a lack of penis equals inferiority.”

“Oi! That ain’t nice,” the buck whined.

“Look, why don’tcha try hitting on Princess Celestia; see where that gets ya, hmm? You know, if ya don’t get hurled into the sun for offending her, hmm?”

“Hail, hail, Celestia, Luna!” the stallions all over the bar chanted. Somepony’s version of hail sounded like hyel. One of them, I swear to God, sounded like he said “Heil!” instead, like how it’s pronounced in Teutschland. The thought of that was so funny to me that I snorted.

It reminded me of the events at Bäckershügel, Baker’s Hill, just south of Zentrum. As I recalled the words of King Alphonse at what he believed to be the last stand of the Reich, I took a sip of scotch. The King, so I’d been told, had blown the horn passed down from father to son since the days of Skantarios so many millennia ago, and his ragtag force had charged down the hill into pure suicide just buy a little more time. So they said, he and his soldiers had fought tooth and claw against Niedervolk and demon alike. Heil to the King in Heaven, Heil to the Mare Laurentia, and Heil to the Fatherland indeed, for the Reich stood as it had always and always would, the King and his soldiers lived to see another day.

I blinked. “Wait. Celestia throws ponies into the sun?”

The barmare gave me something that was half a scoff, half a laugh. “Oh, sugah, that’s just a local figure of speech, is all. Now, really, what’s that letter you got say?”

Ah, yes. The envelope. With all the care of a stallion sneaking through a wolf’s den because his privates are covered in honey, I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter within.

“It took a while to fix you up, dear childe. Not many are willing to hack their own arm off, no matter how beneficial. I couldn’t exactly bring the dead limb back to life, so I made a compromise I think you’d find most agreeable. Your new arm is on loan from me: I forged my flesh into one befitting of you, hacked my arm off, and grafted it onto you. It took mere moments for the arm to obey me and attach, but it took two weeks to adjust your body to the arm, lest the arm overpower and kill you.

“Problem is, there was only so much I could do. My flesh is stronger than yours. My flesh attached to you will kill you, given time. There is nothing that can be done about that on such short notice. But your flesh is strong enough to give you ample time to do what need be done in the interim.

“Right now, there are bigger things for me to concern myself with than your arm, really. The Dark Lady lives again, somehow, and her depleted forces mobilize. Those fighting her don’t even know whom they’re fighting, just that there is a new threat to them. This warrants my attention more than you do. May Oz let your days be long and your nights beautiful.

“—C ”

I sat back, staring at my arm as if it had suddenly turned into a really racist duck with a monocle. Only I could get away with a monocle, and this duck refused to acknowledge it! Not my arm, but that of some horrific abomination, of a skinwalker. I moved the arm, even flexed it. Now that I thought about it, it didn’t feel quite right—it was as if I controlled every aspect of how it moved, except that I wasn’t the one moving it, it was. The feeling didn’t exactly make much sense, but it felt distant, like it was numb yet had perfect feeling, like a trip to the dentist, only the dentist was high on Kokain and was convinced that the fireaxe was the next best thing in dentistry. He’d always wanted to be a lumberjack, not a dentist, you see.

“Hey, Clear Glass,” some stallion said to my left, addressing the barmare. “Hit me up with another shot of whiskey.”

The bartender, or Clear Glass, I now believed, rolled her eyes. “You’ve had enough tonight. If you get drunk and start a fight, the Tin Mare won’t take to kindly to you, ya hear?”

“Ah, piss on the Tin Mare; I want me my drinks,” he groused, and slunk away.

I turned my head to look at all the ponies in the tavern, the few waitresses delivering drinks, the mares and stallions enjoying themselves, and the palpable spirit of merriment. “Who’s the…” I went to ask, but when I turned around, the barmare was gone, and there was a young mare sitting next to me who looked like a much younger, prettier version of the barmare.

Something about her eyeliner and lipstick made me distrust her. Didn’t help that she was looking at me funny as she sipped from what looked like a tall glass of tea that probably was anything but tea. She reached a hoof out and poked my arm, giggling.

“Is there a problem, ma’am?” I asked, drawing my arm away from her touch.

“Maybe,” she said in a coy voice, giving her shoulder a little jostle. The mare touched my… C’s?… arm again. “You’ve a strange-looking foreleg. Different color than the rest a ya.”

“Forgive me,” I said sharply, like a wedge of cheese honed to a fine end because the revolution lacked sufficient knives. “It’s what happens when you lop a limb off because of blood poisoning.”

She finished her tea and set the glass aside. “Ya know—”

“Well, I can’t say I do know, ma’am.”

The mare looked at me funny, then giggled. “You’re a right funny one, you are. Don’t see many of you ’round here, just the usual, boring old sods.” She gestured her head to the tavern’s patrons. “Mum says they’re alright, and I guess they are, but they’re all so… mundane, y’know?”

“Yeah, I don’t do mundane,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Mundane and I go together like a frog in an oven. Only the oven is made of moles. The star-nosed kind. Those things scare me. I mean, it’s like—I get it, God, You liked how tentacles looked swimming around in the ocean, so You decided it’d be a pretty neat idea to attach tiny ones onto the faces on small, burrowing rodents. But really?”

She erupted in a fit of little giggles. “That right there’s what I mean. Gets lonely ’round here when everypony’s so B-O-R-I-N-G..”

“And Bingo was his name O,” I replied, taking a sip of my scotch, but that only got more laughs from her.

“You I like,” she said amicably, the kind of smile on her face was the type that wasn’t familiar with the word no. The kind that really needed to have friends with a cheese grater. A few of the stallions in the bar, I noted, were trying not to seem as if they were glaring at me. When I didn’t reply to her, she took the initiative. “A lady like myself often finds herself pining for interestin’ company. And ya seem to me the exotic type, to boot.” She slithered out a hoof to touch the arm that wasn’t mine; she tapped her other forehoof to her tongue and then ran it down her chin, breast, and down to her navel as if she were the world’s worst surgeon.

“Would you not!” I snapped, jerking my arm from her touch.

“Whoa-whoa—” and she tumbled onto the ground, wings splayed out. I wasn’t exactly sure how it’d happened, but it had.

The bar went silent, everypony staring at me. I met each and every one of their glares. Their eyes held the breed of spite like the kind a she-wolf got when you decided to tie all her still-living pups together and make a kite out of them. I should know.

“Was?” I drawled in Teutsch, the kind of voice and accent associated with the mythical Klingenstürmen, sort of the Reich’s version of the what I believed to be the bladeslinger.

“Ow,” the little pegasus barfly moaned as she stood up, accompanied by the murmurs of ponies essentially stating the obvious. Their pointless drivel was already hoary, and I was tired of it. “You… you pushed me,” she said as if I’d just revealed to her that God was actually a squid of some description.

“No, I—”

“He pushed me!” she shrieked.

I looked around as the murmurs got angrier. There was a little stage in the bar where a few ponies had been going up and doing something, some bad poetry or whatnot. The volume on the speakers was mercifully low, so I hadn’t really known. But as I looked at it, I suddenly knew how I was going to get a handle on this situation before I was lynched. Only music could sooth the savage lynch mob.

|— ☩ —|

“On what charges?!” I demanded of the two lawponies, both stallions, sent into the bar.

The one in the lead looked around at the horrified expression on everypony’s face. “Well, besides all the ones we listed, you’re also being charged for what you… ‘sang’ about?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, pushing over the microphone like a perfectly reasonable pony.

The earther looked down at his notepad. “Well, just looking at a single line of the lyrics, I can safely charge you with exactly fifty-four counts of sexual harassment.”

I blinked, and said in a flat voice, “I’m not apologizing.” We stared off at each other.

“Yeah, well, you’re still being charged.”

“You’ll never lock me up, copper!” I shouted, and he remained without expression, the patrons of the tavern all just staring at me.

“Look, just pay the fine, and we’ll be on our way,” he said with a roll of the eyes.

“I refuse to pay you thugs anything, purely out of spite and moral principle.”

The lawpony sighed, rubbing the side of his head. “Then we’re going to lock you in the county jail until the judge comes up with an appropriate amount of community service for you. Shouldn’t take more than a week for the trial to be all set and match.”

A part of me knew that all I’d need to escape such a place was a lockpick and knife. It’d be a little hard without my horn, but doable. Of course, any good officer would strip me of my gear. I turned around and looked at the stallion’s restroom, indicated by a blue pony, as opposed to a sleek pink pony on the door beside it. The fact that both of these ponies were bald didn’t really bother me.

“Er, give me one second, officers,” I said; “I believe I must urinate some blood because I drank the water.”

|— ☩ —|

They never stripsearched me. And according to the bored-looking unicorn mare with the auburn eyes, “There was no such thing as a ‘right to be stripsearched’.” I went into my cell thoroughly unmolested by strangers. An hour later and I was a free pony in dire need of mouthwash.

|— ☩ —|

I thanked God that I still had some mouthwash left. Wasn’t sure if it expired, but if mouthwash ever expired, it had gone bad years ago. Didn’t stop me from using it, though.

So. As it was, the county lockup was actually located within a part of Hoofington University. Since the town and its college were in bed with each other, it seemed. Now all there was to do was get out, but the guardscorps and the administration part of the town and the college were all in the same four-story building.

Trying to hide myself, I exchanged my duster for a black poncho, hefted most over my shoulder, and a deerskin tunic over an off-white shirt. I kept the hat. It made me feel rugged. Of course, like my Wikinger ancestors, whom the Reich conquered and integrated, I had the compulsion to keep myself clean, which is why I could only look so rugged. Nothing screamed “Rugged!” quite like a stallion who smelled chiefly of ass and yeast infection.

And as I finished gurgling water and mouthwash from a sink in what I could only assume was the breakroom, a stallion walked in. He was an older sort with a thick gray mustache that made me think of my father’s surly handlebar ’stache. His thick brows arched as his steely gray eyes locked onto me. I myself looked over the half-naked stallion of silver fur, since he was wearing the top half of a suit at least.

“What in the Sam Hill is going on here?” the old gent asked with an air of ‘I run this shit’ in his voice.

I wiped the water from my muzzle. “Well, it all began about a month ago,” I quickly replied. Scheiße, had I already been in Equestria for a month? Ave Laurentia, it felt like it’d only been a few days. “That was when I first set fire to an orphanage, deflowered a noblemare, lost my virginity to a very fluffy stallion, and learned that my real father was actually that very fluffy stallion.”

Rather than do what was normal and act shocked by what I’d said, the stallion let out a throaty chuckle. “Well now, my boy, that was the most original story I’ve heard in a long time. Credit where credit is due, indeed.” His chuckled died as quickly as an infant whose mother doesn’t like it and so decides to send it right back up where it came in exchange for a newer, better baby. “But why are you in the faculty lounge, boy?”

“Well, I escaped your jail, really,” I said with a shrug.

“What’s your name?” he demanded. “I would hear of it.” He spoke in short, clipped sentences that sounded like they should have been longer.

“Chubby Buggers,” I replied, matching his tone.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Just the way you speak, mate. Where are you from?”

He shot me a smile. “The Pale, place to the far northwest.” He softened his voice to a more conversational one . “Just don’t go spreading that fact around the staff. This far south, the only thing that most folks know of The Pale is that they’re pretty sure that everypony’s favorite pastime up there is fucking reindeer. That is, if their sisters are too fast to catch.”

“Oh gosh,” I chuckled. That bastard—saying absurdly off-color things was my schtick!

“I tend to slip into that terse accent when I’m being authoritative. They seem to go well.” He smiled at me. “So, Chubby Buggers the fugitive, eh?”

“Eh, I prefer the term ‘Mass Murderer’, but that might be… Oh, how would they say it? … Might be gilding the lily, I think. It’s far scarier, and far less accurate.” I went to walk past him “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

As I slid past him, he said, “Not so fast”—and raised a hoof to me.

“Nope,” I spat. In the next moment, he was pinned to the ground beneath me, a stunned look on his face.

“What in the… how did you…?”

“Weird. This totally reminds me of how I met my first girlfriend, except she would’ve been the one to kick my ass and pin me.” My face went blank as I said, “Gooood memories…”

“Blood hell, this is a bit embarrassing,” he told me “Here I was, thinking I’d be a hero and stop you, and now I’m the bitch here.”

“Yes,” I replied, my face still blank, “the one on the ground was the bitch…”

“Hmm,” he hummed. “You know, you remind me of a feller I’ve heard a bit about.”

Some mare gasped as she walked down the hall and saw us. I shot my head up and barked, “Go away, we’re having a father-to-son moment here—nothing gay, your filthy-minded floozy!” The mare scampered off like a doe.

“That was my secretary,” the stallion under me said flatly. “She’s a very skittish thing, you know. It’ll take me a solid week to coax her out from hiding in the broom closet now.”

“Well, she shouldn’t have been writing pervy stories wherein you and I do it sexily—I’ve seen her diary.”

“What?”

“Nevermind, honcho!”

He looked at me for the longest time. “Say, I don’t suppose you’re, say, some sort of bladeslinger, are you? The kind who fights monsters and beasts on the borderlands in exchange for coin?”

“I might. What’s it to you?”

The stallion smiled. “Step off me and into my office. I think I have something for you.”

|— ☩ —|

Dean/Mayor Kitten Whispers, so said the plaque on his desk—seriously, I couldn’t make such stupid names up if I tried—sat in his chair behind his mahogany desk. On the desk, aside from your standard mishmash of important-looking junk, was a worn newspapers about the so-called “Sleepy Oaks Massacre” covered in little notes written in the margins.

He never offered me a seat, so I stood and watched him settle into his chair. “What do you know of Sleepy Oaks?” the mayor asked calmly.

The image of that little filly’s body being torn in half by my sword and the feeling of my balls drawing into my stomach came immediately to mind. It was worse than it should have been because, just like the chant said, I had killed Sleepy Oaks with my heart, not my steel, for I had not forgotten the face of my father. But with the Kodex still only held together with duct tape, did I really remember my father’s face?

“More than anypony should rightly want to know, I reckon,” I said in a Southern drawl that I didn’t mean to speak in.

“Lesser in national implications than the Songnam Slaughter, but more dear to my heart,” Kitten Whispers replied. He telekinected up a cigar and lit it, taking a long puff of the brown phallic-symbol. “Everypony in that town who was there died. The only who survived it were out of town for various reasons, like two of my relatives.”

A part of me wanted to apologize, and another part wanted me to say that the Code would avenge them, but I remained silent. It felt weird to stand on my new arm, almost. In a way, I half-expected it to grow pincers and spawn a throne of termites. Which made me wonder what it’d be like to be a pirate with termites in his pegleg. Could they be weaponized like you could weaponize a milkshake? I tried not to shudder at the image of my ex dressed as a sexy cow. Those were a thing, it seemed.

“I got a small note about some new stranger they had in the lockup, and no-doubt that’s you. See, I have no reason to trust you in the slightest, but two things make me want to think otherwise: my gut for one, and the fact that you seem familiar.”

“Familiar?” I asked, glancing to the shelves full of academic, charity, and business honors.

“Yes.” He took a puff, looking at me. “My grandchild told me a story some time ago about a chap like yourself, a stranger who dressed like a cowpony with lightning-quick reflexes and the eyes of a killer. And like all Equestrians, I know the legend of the Magnificent Seven. Now, you ain’t the buck nor any of them ‘magnificent seven’ bladeslingin’ bucks, not by a longshot, but something about that image combined with my gut instinct makes me want to ask of you something. It doesn’t make sense, I can’t really find base reason for it, and I can’t even trust you, but its like a bad itch that won’t go away, and it just keeps telling me you’re somepony I can’t ignore.”

“What would you ask of me?”

“I want you to find somepony for me. One of the survivors of Sleepy Oaks.” Kitten Whispers tossed an envelope onto his desk. “My son.”

Hesitantly, I took the letter. Its seal looked almost like the letters O, Z. Oz. Somewhere, C was laughing. I remembered Cards saying that there’d been some hundred thirty-two ponies in Sleepy Oaks: she had killed one, I had killed a hundred twenty-nine. Of course, her count was probably only in the general vicinity of correct. Heck, I couldn’t name the exact populations of any of the cities I’d lived. Even if I did, after the Dark Crusade, those numbers would doubtlessly no longer be accurate. Hooray for mass slaughter—so many ponies died that you could have a blood fight with all the gore. It was like a snowball fight, only worse!

Lieutenant Pudge Farks, I distinctly recalled, had mentioned a stallion who ran out of the town of Sleepy Oaks, screaming something about spiders underneath his skin, then he’d vomited up about of pound of cobwebs that he ate and went comatose. I remembered that because Pudge Farks hadn’t saved the cobwebs, and so I couldn’t knit her a nifty scarf out of them. Was Kitten Whispers speaking of that guy? Suddenly, I had the urge to knit and sew something.

“Any idea where I should start looking?” I asked.

He nodded. “I do. I don’t have any idea how he got there or why, but I think I have an idea.”

“Where?”

“The Crystal Empire.”

|— ☩ —|

High above the Hoofington railyard, the moon leered creepily at me. I waved a hoof at it—the moon was a he in my language, because clearly a giant rock in space had a penis, even though Equestrian identify it more with femininity—and said, “Quit it!”

The teller buck just frowned at me as he handed me the train ticket. He told me where to find the train, and I thanked him curtly. My guard-escort made sure I didn’t get off track, because me going off track would have caused my derailed train to plummet into the valley and ruin at least seven families. As I wandered through the railyard and to where my train was docked—a train that would eventually take me far, far to the north, a place called the Crystal Empire—I turned my head to him.

“Hey, I forget to ask,” I said: “who’s the Tin Mare?”

The buck gave a quiet whinny-like noise. “She’s the new girl.”

“And that means?”

“Just…” He looked around, like a child searching for its father in a pile of garbage, because that was where its father belonged. “The Mayor brought her in, distant family or something, and gave her a job. A few nights ago, there was a thing at one of the bars, and the little thing just flips out and goes crazy.” He chuckled. “She’s called ‘Tin Mare’ because it’s slang for a lady guard in most rural counties.” He poked at a badge on his chest. “Because of the tin badges we all wears. If she were a fella, she’d be the Tin Buck, I’d wager.”

“Oh, well, that was less scary that I’d hoped,” I replied. The concrete concourse led up to a parked train, I could see, idling for the night like a hobo waits to be eaten by Wolpertinger, these weird, little bunny-things in the Reich that had fangs, antlers, and wings. “In the tavern, they spoke of her like she was a demon.”

“Mayhap she is, if you’re a drunken sort.” He shot me a smirk, and my response was a grunt.

I looked up at the moon again. “I see—said the blind stallion as he picked up his hammer and saw.” The train sitting in the station continued sitting there. “So. That is the train. It’s an eighty-foot cobra who shall jezume all of us in her udder. And by jezume, I of course mean consume. I suppose that’s where I’m off to, then, to slay the giant snake and then milk it. You know, you can actually milk a snake. I once tried snake milk. I got sick and almost died. It’s not milk. It’s venom! It doesn’t matter if you steal and then wear your girlfriend’s sexy cow outfit with life-like udder and slits for her pegasus wings, venom kills!”

“Yeah, yeah, just don’t sexually harass any more ponies, dig?”

“I will dig holes in all of your beaches, steal any ‘beware of animal’ signs I find, and then bury these signs in those holes,” I hissed, and then walk backwards up to the train, glaring the guard down. I didn’t exactly know why, but I’d been told that teutsche tourists had a reputation in foreign nations for digging abnormally deep holes in random beaches and stealing ‘beware of animal’-type signs. These two things were related somehow, I was sure.

The train’s conductor, an earther with bags under his eyes so deep that he could probably pass himself off as some kind of marsupial, was standing at the edge of the train. He took my ticket before I entered the train, which struck me as odd, since that wasn’t how trains worked in the Reich. Then again, the mere fact that a back-ass-wards nation like Equestira even had trains that so much as vaguely approached the trains we had in the Reich was itself an astonishing feat.

He told me where on the train I was meant to sit, and I shrugged in acceptance. Ugh. Shrugging with my new arm didn’t feel right. C’s words—My flesh attached to you will kill you, given time—hung over my head like a cloud of lice hangs over that one kid who doesn’t freakin’ bathe. How long did I have? How many clowns could I fit inside this suitcase? And just how was I supposed to carry all these limes?

All were questions I didn’t suspect I’d ever get an answer to.

The seat rows were all numbered, like inmates in a nippönischen prison. While Nippön might’ve been a nice country nowadays where most everypony spoke Teutsch as their first language because the Nippöner wanted so desperately to be Teutsche, I’d heard that its prisons were basically giant rape parties. Yet another reason to be glad that the Reich didn’t have prisons, only humiliating public beatings that bordered on hilarious torture. Much more efficient.

I found my seat in short order. And although the train was essentially a wasteland, I got assigned to the row that had another pony in it. Yay me. Of course, I could have just sat anywhere, a weird part of me was compelled to follow all the little rules. As a certain mentor had once taught me, We must obey the little laws and rules so that we can break the big ones. That’s why I might murder you, but I’d never steal from you. That’d be immoral.

The other pony, a grey earther mare with a mane like charcoal, was asleep, her head lolled against the window. I sat down setting a bag under my chair and the other one by my hooves. As I glanced at the sleeping mare and heard her little snores, I wondered what life would be like if I had a more normal mentality. Which was to ask, if I got more hot and bothered by everypony being nude. Somehow, I had the distinct feeling that if the Reich and Equestria ever got into good contact, Equestria would become the Reich’s number one tourist destination, and all the Equestrians would complain about all the weird, scary ponies with funny accents who kept leering creepily at them, insisting that they all do everything “slower”.

There was some amusement in this line of thought, but then it got really creepy and warlike when Equestrians decided enough was enough and no longer allowed tourists from the Reich because they were too creepy, and we fought them over the right to leer at them. I shook thoughts of a Reich-Equestria War Over The Right To Be Perverted away, and instead concentrated on the road ahead. I was apparently on a timer before my new arm killed me, okay. Yet if that little rumor Felicitat had mentioned was true—and all fanciful rumors were true, because that was how the world worked—then the chance to once again be a unicorn with two eyes was there in the Crystal Empire as well.

So, I could hunt for Kitten Whisper’s son whilst I sought after becoming wholesome again. Because those heavenly weapons, damn, I just needed to kill someone with them. And then his words rang out in my mind. Hell of a thing, killing a pony. You take away all he’s got and all he’ll ever be. And let me tell you what, Jericho: Dying isn’t much of a living. Roughly translated, of course. I just let that thought simmer in my mind like a pot full of moldy guinea pigs on fire with cancer.

Somehow that made me wonder what it’d be like to be a color. Like, not the physical embodiment of a color, but to wake up one day and just be a color, no matter where it is, that color is you. Since I realized soon thereafter that I had no idea what I was thinking about, I let the thought just die horribly in a train wreck. Train of thought and all, eh?

Soon the train jostled and inched forwards. The jolt of it made the gray mare’s head bounce back and land, of course, on my shoulders. She made a cozy little smacking sound with her lips, but I really didn’t care to stop her. I was enjoying my thoughts as the train lurched northward.

Author's Note

Footnote: 30% to next level.

(Well, that was a chapter. Yeah, it was a bit slow, and I dare fear even a bit boring. I couldn’t figure out what else to do with it. It’s a stepping stone on the path to the Empire and the rest of the plot. And yes, as of now, Jericho is dressed like Clint Eastwood from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

(Hello, dear readers, the Grand Quasi One here for some post-chapter commentary. Now, a lot of you might wonder, just who is this Kitten Whispers fellow, and why does he have such a ridiculous name? Well, Dear Children O’ Mine, Kitten Whispers is, in fact, the name this fellow received after he managed to gather a few dozens of cats, and fed a grown stallion to their sharp, bloodthirsty fangs, enjoying the sounds of his horrified screams as the cute little fuzzballs licked his skin off with their rough tongues and devoured him piece by piece. Very small pieces. ’Cause cats have small mouths. Do not fuck with Kitten Whispers. He is a grade-A badass.)

(Salutations, you sexy fucks. This is the True Grand Quasi One. I’m just adding some random words to the Author’s Notes, because the rest of Team Jericho told that they would eat my dog’s first-born pups if I did not comply. So… there, I guess.

...Remember the jerboas.)

(And remember—we live for comments and feedback of all sorts. From us to you: our hearts are with love filled

Chapter 22 — Crystal

Chapter 22: Crystal

“You must take the ‘A’ train

To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem”

— Take the “A” Train, Duke Ellington

“Huh?”

The gray mare looked up at me with her light purple eyes like a pig trying to decide if “butcher” meant “murderer” or “my BFF whom I should oink at loudly”. Last night had held for me a good sleep. It was a good sleep because I did not dream. Even though she’d fallen asleep before me, I’d woken up before her. And that’s when our eyes met, her charcoal mane messy and hanging partly over my back like the world’s weirdest shower curtain. The mare blinked. She glanced at where she’d been resting her head the whole night, looked back up at me, looked back at my shoulder, looked at me, and flushed.

“Oh my goodness, I-I-I’m terribly sorry, sir!” she blurted out in a rather refined voice. Personally, I didn’t care if she was a pig-headed elitist at this point; I was just so glad she didn’t have a weird accent. She practically leapt off me and huddled herself against the window, shooting me a nervous grimace.

I tipped my hat to the lady. “And good morning yourself, ma’am. Fancy way to greet the stallion whose shoulder your head thought made a nice pillow.”

Rather than stammer on and babble like an idiot, as I’d expected, the mare took a deep, relaxing breath. She had to take another one before her grimace turned into a more practiced formal sort of smile that rich ponies wore when they shoved their faces so full of disgusting rich-pony food that they choked and died and it was great. My seat-companion ran her hooves through her mane and straightened it out.

The mare cleared her throat. “Um, hello. My name is Octavia.”

“Octavia, huh?” I replied. “Is that, per chance, the feminine form of Octavio?”

She shrugged.

“In any case, here.” I offered her a hoof. “I’m Jericho. Pleased to meet you.”

Octavia hesitated at my offered hoof. Nevertheless, she did take it. I shook her hoof harder than she shook mine. “Likewise,” she said, drawing her hoof back from mine. Octavia glanced out the window at the rolling green countryside.

“So, what brings you out on a train going north?” I prodded.

“Oh, just work,” she said. Her lack of words told me that she wasn’t exactly up for conversation. However, the voices in my head demanded entertainment. Voices in my head always made more sense than did ponies. Who else but the non-existent and totally metaphorical voices would tell me the dark secrets ponykind was not meant to know? Besides, she seemed grumpy. Jericho no likey grumpy ponies, because he was just a bucket of equicidal sunshine.

“What sort of work?”

She glanced around as if trying to find security. “I play an instrument.”

“Are you part of an orchestra?”

“No.”

“Solo?”

“At times.”

I tilted my head. “You’re playing an instrument up in the Crystal Empire?”

“Essentially so.”

“Have you any desire to say more on the topic?”

She shrugged.

I tilted my head the other way. Because if standard questions didn’t work, then the Jericho questions would begin. “Is left your favorite direction?”

“Sometimes.”

“What is your opinion of hats?”

She shrugged.

“Sometimes I don’t like to wear hats, but most of the time I do. They make me feel fancy.” I struck a pose. “Who is the fanciest pony? He is I, and I am he.”

Shrug.

“If I told you that everything you knew was wrong, what would you do?”

She glanced out the window. “Continue living a lie.”

I frowned, making a whimpering, puppy-dog noise. “Sei nicht so ein Miststück.”

Octavia cocked a brow. “Je ne sais quoi.”

“French!” I hissed. “One of my many one weaknesses. Right up there with doorways and words without vowels.”

“Fascinating,” she replied in an off-hoof manner.

I sighed. “You know, ma’am, it’s rather hard not to talk to someone you’re sitting next to. I mean, honestly, the last thing I want is to sit in silence for Lord-knows how many hours next to a lovely girl who’s my only source of conversation for miles. Trust me, the last thing we want is to refuse to make eye contact, every so often glancing at each other and hoping that the other is glancing back, only to find that the other one is also glancing at you, so you look away and pretend you weren’t looking, secretly wondering if they’re leering creepily at you—I’ve been there and I do not like it!”

That at least got her to look me in the eye.

“There, see?” I asked. “Let’s see… what kind of music do you like?”

“Classical.”

“Ah, my dear lady, your answers are so laconic that they plunge an icy dagger into my heart. Or maybe my kidney.” I tapped a hoof to my chin. “Either or, honestly. I don’t know where organs go. Or don’t go, really. I, for one, think classical music is rather lovely. Not in that pretentious, snobbish sort of way, but sometimes it’s rather fun to set a record with it on as your sip some wine and stare out a window, pretending you’re an evil dictator and this is the final hour of your bloody conquest.”

She arched a brow. “Are you suggesting that classical music sounds evil?”

“If by association, then yes,” I said. The look that sprang across her face like a jackrabbit in heat was one I knew rather well: the compulsion to retort. But I was faster than her. “But then again, by that logic, I could say that since all murderers breathe oxygen, and I breathe oxygen, I must too be a murderer.” I’m a murderer for other, far more logical reasons, I almost added, but held back at the last moment like a creepy farmer holding back the urge to see if he could train his pigs to rape on command. The answer, for the record, is ‘Unfortunately’.

“Well,” she said, “that’s certainly one way of looking at things.”

“I like to think that my way is always the road less traveled. Mostly because of all the ‘beware of animal’-type signs that I stole from foreign countries and hung up around my road, but still.”

Her expression flashed to something halfway between an amused smile and a confused sneer.

“Progress!” I chirped. “So, why are you going to the Crystal Empire to play?”

Octavia offered me a cautious look. “The crystal ponies seem to rather enjoy classical Equestrian music.”

“Any idea why?”

She shook her head and shrugged.

“Are you playing somewhere in particular? Where?” I smiled at her.

Octavia only sighed. “Does it matter? It’s not as if you’ll attend.”

Ooh, goldmine! Hey, who ordered the mare with emotional baggage? No one? Screw you, that’s all you’ll ever meet. I folded my arms. “Now, don’t say that. You never know where I’ll end up? Usually on the wrong end of the law, but sometimes I end up in fancy places. In fact, you tell me where you’re playing, and I guarantee I’ll be there. Doesn’t matter if it’s all sold out because you’re too awesome at whatever you do, I’ll beat up some elitist-looking pony and steal their ticket, assuming the place runs on tickets.”

I thought you said you didn’t steal.

Well, I lie. Not to myself, to her. Lying to her.

She wasn’t silent, she actually threw her head back and let out a mirthless laugh. “Right. As if I could sell out a crowd, even in the Crystal Empire”

“Well, then I’ll buy all the tickets or whatever myself until it’s technically a sellout.”

“You and what money?”

I stared at her blankly. Without taking my eyes off her, I reached into my bag, pulled out a small bag that looked empty, and poured out a small hill of gold coins onto my lap. Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull. I tried not to think that if I were nude like all other Equestrians, she’d be staring at somewhere much too close to home base for me, even if it was garnished with gold.

“Gee, you’re right,” I said with a sigh, ears drooping. “What’s a poor wanderer not even from anywhere around here supposed to do for money? I suppose I’ll just have to suck dicks behind a tavern for ten Bits just to work up the money for whatever thing you’re doing. And by Harry, I’ll suck harder and better than any mare before me ever has—all for you!”

“I—bu—where—all of this—” Octavia stammered, staring down at all the golden coins.

“Huh, this old stuff?” I asked. “Well, this is what a stallions gets after seeing the world, exploring ancient ruins, stealing the hoard of a dragon in two separate timelines, pilfering the coffers of evil nations, and occasionally ransoming freaky sex toys back to their evil mistresses.”

Her mane fell over her shoulders and over her eyes as she stared down. She had to straighten it and put it behind her head again. “This…”

“What? On you?” I replied coyly. “This is my Addiction Fund.”

“Addiction?” she asked, looking me in the eye.

“Yes,” I said, nodding as sagely as one of those bearded monkeys that always sit in hot springs, judging other animals. “You see, I have the most terrible addiction of all. Truly crippling.” I smiled, leaning towards her. “I like to wander.”

“Wander?”

“Oh, yes. It’s a terrible addiction. Once you start to wander, start to see all the world’s sights, and then watch as most of them try to brutally murder you, you realize that you can’t stop. Of course, this has led to many horrendous injuries.” I poked my eyepatch. “This was, like, last week. Or mayhap three weeks ago? Not sure. Time is fuzzy.” I pulled up my right sleeve and rolled the arm around. “And then there was the time I cut my a—my foreleg off because it was riddled with blood poisoning, so then I woke up this… or rather, woke up last morning… Can I say that? Does that phrasing make any sense?”

“Say what?”

“Yesterday I woke up with a new arm that was given to me by some evil abomination I freed whilst working for Duke Elkington—he hired me on as an assassin to help kill for him some monster in his closet.” I shrugged. “And with all of that, I don’t know if I can spare the money to attend the show of some friendly-looking mare who won’t even talk to me.”

“I…” She just watched me as I picked up my gold coins and put them back into the small bag. It still looked empty when the rather time-consuming task was over.

“So, I’ll tell you what,” I offered, and held out a hoof to her. “Hello, stranger whom I’ve never before met. What’s your name? And, would you care for some friendly conversation on a long train ride? Because, though I don’t know whom I’m saying this to, I’ve been in the mood for some live classical music performances. Do you know of any?”

She looked at my hoof as if it were some type of snake in the form of a swarm of bees and yet more bees. “You know, Mister… Jericho, was it? You are a strange pony, I’ll give you that.”

“I just like to make friends.” The fact that I often end up destroying their lives does not have anything to do with that. “So, Miss Octavia, what instrument do you play?”

Octavia looked at me, then took a deep breath, straightening out her mane. She was the very picture of a refined lady, hopefully without all of the implied inbreeding refined noble ladies were known for. “I play the cello, and have played it since I was a filly.”

“See?” I asked. “Now, was that so hard, just some conversation. And all it took was for me to throw piles of money around.”

She crossed her arms, sat back in her chair, and frowned. “I am not talking to you because of that. It’s just that…” The mare faltered. “You seemed so eager to talk with a nopony like me that I can’t help but admire the effort. And I respect effort.”

“That’s a paltry explanation,” I said calmly. It was the exact same tone that I’d use to tell a small child in the cancer ward that ‘I just filled all of your pillows with beeees’.

Octavia let out a long sigh. “Alright, fine. So that did have some effect. Money’s hard to come by these days. I mean, I’m not saying that I would do anything—” she winced slightly; if I hadn’t been paying so much attention to her, I might have missed it “—for coin, but one finds it rather hard to ignore somepony who’s flinging around more wealth than a prince would have in his bank… especially since my financial situation…” she winced again, biting her lip “…worsened.”

“Worsened?” I echoed. “What does that mean?”

She ran a hoof through her long, charcoal mane. Octavia suddenly looked very tired. “It’s a long story; I’m sure you—”

“I care,” I said simply, and she just stared at me. “Is it so hard to believe some random, likely insane stallion you meet on a train actually cares about your problems?” He doesn’t, but I’m bored, and your misery pleases me.

Untrue!

We call it “Schadenfreude”, remember?

She looked out the window. There were cows out there. They were very furry and I wanted to dress them up in frou-frou dresses. “A little hard, yes. I mean, it happened a few years ago, and the story is stale, and…” She looked at me and the honest smile I wore. Well, honest insofar as I knew what those looked like and how to equip one.

“I’m on a train, Miss Octavia,” I said. “I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and only the company of your lovely countenance and voice.” A bit close to hitting on her, no? It was a pity that I couldn’t elbow myself without looking weird. “I’ve got with me plenty of time and interest.”

She licked her lip. “You know, I think there’s a bar on the train a few cars up.” Then, seemingly as an afterthought: “I’ll pay for the drinks.”

I pulled out my pocket watch and saw that it was before eleven. I was pretty sure Equestria had a rule about not drinking before eleven. Or was it twelve? Hell if I remembered. Of course, this also assumed that my watch was correct, which I was pretty sure it wasn’t. The thing still needed to be adjusted for local time.

So we got out of our seats, wandered around, and found the diner car. Of course, there was also the bar there. Octavia got herself something called “ghraf”, and I settled for a gin and tonic. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, a gin and tonic was, but it sounded fancy. Octavia sipped hers at the bar, made a weird giggling noise, and offered me a sip. I hesitated, but at her insistence, I accepted.

Ghraf was this weird, strong, fizzling thing that tasted like apples but in all the worst ways possible. I had to giggle when I sipped it, or else I felt like I would sneeze. Octavia ordered a whole bottle of the stuff and paid upfront in Bits. Quite a few, too. Then she looked away. One sleight-of-hoof and a nod to the bartender later and her money was back in her bag, my money now in the register.

“My father used to love this stuff,” Octavia explained as she sat back in her seat in our lonesome train car. “Sometimes, I used to… shall we say, ‘pilfer’ bits of it when he and his friends weren’t looking. Mother, I think she knew, but was too amused by it to scold me.”

“She sounds like the kind of mother who just lets kids live and let live,” I added, settling back down in my seat. I took off my hat and set it halfway into my bag. Then it dawned on me that I had a horrific scar where my horn had once been, and—I touched at it. The scar was gone, but not gone. It was… it felt was if someone had glued a patch of something over the scar that made it feel like the rest of my head, but all wrong.

So I glanced down at my broken hindhoof. Sure enough, the broken hoof was still broken, but the damage had been masked by a hoof-like material put into there. If you looked at, you couldn’t tell. If you felt it, you couldn’t tell. If I felt it, I could feel just how wrong it was. By all means, I looked normal, but I didn’t feel normal.

Great, I though, C turned me into an art project.

“Yes,” Octavia almost sighed with an air of wistfulness. “Sometimes the better days are so far behind us, are they not?”

“Depends on the individual,” I replied. “My childhood was okay, really. I’m still living my best times.”

“Were we all so lucky,” she said, though not really to me. Octavia said it like she was saying it more for her own comfort than anything else.

I excused myself to use the restroom, bring my bags with me. The car’s washroom was pitiful, but I still managed to wash my face, brush my teeth, use the watercloset, and change into a different shirt and pants. I kept the poncho, though, but now I felt like I could actually present myself in polite society without being referred to as “that weirdo” any more than was warranted.

When I got back, she was staring out the window. “So, you were saying something about the troubles in your life.”

Octavia flashed the ground a pained little grimace. “I suppose that I was, yes.”

I made a gesture for her to continue. I didn’t care if it took the rest of the day, and hopefully it would, but I would learn this stranger’s story.

She sat back in her chair and took a sip of her ghraf. “Well… it was a few years ago at the Grand Galloping Gala.”

“The Grand Galloping Gala?” I asked, cocking a brow.

“Yes, that Grand Galloping Gala. Can you believe I actually got invited? It’s perhaps one of the single greatest social gatherings of the year, and I got a personal invitation to play my cello there.” She chuckled without any humor. Sometimes life only gives you two options, I thought: laugh or cry. “Then… something happened which was out of my control, but these six mares utterly ruined the whole event for everypony. You wouldn’t think that a happy-go-lucky pink pony who clearly had more than just a few screws loose could do so much damage. But, uh…” She took another light sip. “It would appear that you don’t need much to destroy a massive social event.”

“And how did that harm you?”

“How didn’t it?” she replied, looking up at the ceiling. “I mean, that pink pony marehandles me, ruined the music we were all playing, and yet somehow I get blamed? I didn’t get blamed per se; that’s just the, uh… the ghraf talking. But the ponies in charge didn’t want to put any real blame on a few of Princess Celestia’s… favorites, I want to say. So, dare you to suppose who took the fallout?”

“Uh-huh,” I hummed. I wondered when, if ever, this train would pass through a tunnel and present a very clear sexual metaphor.

“But that was the chance, you must understand. If I could do well at the Gala, I’d be noticed, my career would soar, I would be… be a lot better off than I am today, that’s certain. Not to mention that because of the whole event being ruined, I didn’t fully get paid, so a lot of the money I spent getting to Canterlot wouldn’t be reimbursed, which was a load of…” She glanced at me. “Which was pure and utter nonsense. I yelled, I threw a fit, but nothing. I even—”

|— ☩ —|

Octavia stands mortified outside Canterlot Castle, not sure if she should be panting with exhaustion, crying, or screaming. She wants to do all three, but those weren’t proper of such a prim and proper lady as herself. Trickles of rain fall on her. They feel like little bolts of electricity on her naked back.

Those bastards! she screams in her head, but she’d never say it, oh no. That isn’t what the well-to-do ponies want to see from their performers. Never mind that her life has just been shattered. Never mind that her one real true chance to impress the movers and shakers is dead and gone, and she’s just been informed that, for all intents and purposes, she’s fired.

She grips her cello case by the handle, dragging it down the street with her mouth. She tries not to think of just how much she’d been staking on the Grand Galloping Gala. Tries not to think that maybe the endless hours of trying to be the best there was at the cello were in vain. Tries not to think about how this damn cello case hurts her jaw when she drags it.

She doesn’t think all the way to the classy hotel she’s staying at. Of course, she’s staying on the fourth floor, and the elevators are out. She doesn’t think about that as she goes in and drags her cello, her pride and joy, her heart and soul, along with her. Sure, she’ll still play the cello till the day she dies. That’s just who she is, Octavia Melody. She loves her cello. But, she has to be real here: no matter how great the cello was, no matter how great she might be, it doesn’t mean anything if you can’t pay your bills and starve to death.

The best Octavia’s ever been able to hope for was that other ponies would share in her passion enough to want to hear her conduct her songs and play her music with her very soul. And for a while, that’s how it seemed to be going. She’d gotten somepony’s eye enough that she personally got a letter in the mail inviting her to perform at the Gala. She thinks that’s funny now; it was probably the very same pony whom she is ever so elegantly not cursing out, the one who basically fired her.

Octavia finds her room. She opens the door, drags her heart and soul in, and closes the door. She’s all alone. Of course she’s alone. Who else would be in here? She’s alone, as she always is, probably always will be. Octavia doesn’t bother drying herself; she stumbled over to the bed, falls down, and cries. She cries until her eyes are red and her nose runny. She cries until her lungs hurt. She cries because she doesn’t know what else to do, and she certainly won’t laugh it all off.

In the end, she just hurts all over. Her heart feels like it could lurch out, her eyes are sore and tired, and she’s wet from the rain and tears—she knows the difference because the rainwater is cold, the tears still hot.

When she finally has the energy to lift her head from the bed—how long’s it been? A hour? Two?—she can only think one thing.

I need a drink.

So she does. Octavia goes downstairs to the hotel bar; it’s miraculously still open at this hour, a brief window of good fortune in a storm of ruin. She’s always wanted to be the type of pony that everypony should know. But now that dream feels so dead. So for the first time in her life, Octavia gets drunk.

|— ☩ —|

Octavia was silent for a while after that, the only sounds coming from the railroad beneath her. The click-clack of the wheels upon the track and the occasional bump. She seemed to almost hang her head in shame.

Finally, I had to speak. “Your cello. Where is it?”

“In the overhead compartment,” she said. “There’s a lot more room up then then you’d think.”

I nodded. “And so that cello is your… your Herzblut.”

Octavia looked up at me, her glass of ghraf empty, the bottle still unopened. “What?”

“Herzblut,” I repeated. “Literally, ‘heartblood’ or ‘blood of the heart’. It is a word where I am from that means something like ‘heart and soul’, but even more personal, even deeper. It’s like you pour your heart so deeply into it that you tear it and bleed, so that the object becomes, in a sense, of a part of you as necessary as the blood that flows through your heart.”

There mare seemed as if to go into a little trance. “Herzblut,” she said. “Hairts-bloot.” And she even remembered to drop the R. Yay. “Yes. I suppose that would describe my cello and I quite nicely.” I said nothing more, letting her stew in her own thoughts like fish who died spawning, and now rots in a frothy mixture of water and fish seed.

“You know,” Octavia spoke calmly, “I’ve never actually told that little story to anypony before.” A single, mirthless laugh escaped her lips. “Nopony’s ever really asked… because nopony’s ever really cared. Funny how accurate the horoscope sometimes is.”

“Horoscope?” I asked. It was a concept I was vaguely familiar with. Just a load of malarkey and pseudo-witchcraft that not even the most depraved Spezialagent would bother investigating.

“No, it’s nothing,” she dismissed. “On occasion, I simply enjoy looking over the stranger items they have in the newspaper. That’s all. The one for me, my sign, mentioned that I would ‘soon meet a mysterious stranger’ who would ‘help you get over a great obstacle’.”

“And I helped you?”

Octavia flashed me a smile. “I would say so. Thank you, Mister Jericho, for listening.”

“I’m like a regular old Priester or the rapist, eh?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Like a the rapist, one of those ponies who listens to your problems and offers advice.”

The mare just stared at me. “I believe it is pronounced therapist.”

I sat back and blinked. “Huh. You know, that would explain so many things.”

Octavia looked at me. Looked some more. Then threw her head back and laughed.

|— ☩ —|

Sugar Hill, that train station was called. It was an anemic little place, more like a station built in a haste at the end of the known world than the massive station in Songnam. Under the sign that called the station “Sugar Hill”—which I could only see thanks to torchlit, being how deep in the night it was—there were smaller letters that read “Hwal Sucrevim”. I pondered at it, then figured it was either the work of a terribly dyslexic pony or another language entirely.

All about the little outdoor station, the few sleepy-looking ponies there were meandering about, grabbing bags and luggage, leaving the train, or just staring at stuff. Tourists, I thought sourly. They probably don’t even have the guts to steal any of the local streetsigns.

My attention turned to a little notice board on the station illuminated by a glowing crystal that reminded me a bit too much of the way that had led to the the lair of the Devil’s Backbone. The bulletin board noted “Don’t trust ponies with glowing eyes!” and that somepony had lost a cat with a scarred right forepaw, but other than that, nothing of note. Well, save for the fact that everything was in Equestrian and some other language. “Don’t trust ponies with glowing eyes” had just under it the words “Ñes ny ponaejic cwn osjiç telemos!”. I didn’t even try to pronounce it; the whole thing just looked scary and evil.

“It feels as if I arrived here much faster than I had expected,” I heard Octavia’s voice say from behind me.

“Hmm?” I hummed, turning around. I pause. Far, far behind Octavia, behind the train and the trees by the station, there appeared to be a tower. It stretched so tall that it almost dared God to use it as His tee in a game of Godly golf. God always cheated at golf, this much I knew. In fact, I could only see the damn thing because I could see the massive silhouette it made against the stars on this clear night. By far, it was the second tallest tower I’d ever seen.

Then I refocused on Octavia. she was carrying her cello case over her back with a strap alongside her bag. She looked sorrier than I ever did. “Oh, well,” I said, “I suppose that has something to do with that thing with the butterfly. That, and you fell asleep through most of the trip.”

She almost looked embarrassed, but she held her calm demeanor. “How could I have known that insects, trains, and strong alcohol made me sleepy?”

“Hey! I was the one who had to sit there, resisting the urge to draw lewd things all over your body,” I replied with feigned indignity. “Now I’ve gotta go find someone’s life to make slightly worse in order to make up for making yours a little better. It’s how this whole schtick works. Wait, no, I ruined enough lives in the past month alone to totally let me be kind to one lovely lady with a cello.”

Octavia rolled her light purple eyes. “L’Opéra.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s where I’m playing at tomorrow. A place called L’Opéra.”

“It’s a boring French name that literally means ‘the opera’,” I concluded.

“Well, it’s where I was invited to play. Apparently, some important ponies will be there.” She flashed me a smile that was downright girlish in its giddiness. “Do wish me luck!”

“Where is L’Opéra?” I asked. “I can’t assault rich ponies for their tickets if I don’t know where it is.”

“You know what?” Octavia replied. “I’m not going to tell you.” She angled her nose up slightly. “If you wish to watch me play, I’m sure a resourceful gentlecolt like yourself could find it most easily.”

“Ah, now that’s just mean and petty. And I thought I was petty when I stole all the nails from the farmer who refused to sell me that cow. The nails that were in his walls, that is.”

“Oh, it’s not exactly normal opera—” she winked “—more of a party-with-dinner-and-entertainment. The crystal ponies seem to just really like French.”

“This shall be their downfall,” I replied in dark tones, shifting my weight upon the concrete floor of the station.

Octavia walked off, as if she knew where she was going. Before she vanished into the station’s interior, she looked at me and asked, “Where are you staying?”

I shrugged. “Somewhere where they don’t want me, I’m sure.”

She hesitated as she looked at me. Octavia quickly told me when she’d be playing, then opened the station door and vanished inside.

“Well, that wasn’t as full of Schadenfreude as I’d hoped,” I said to a pony I didn’t know as she walked by. She looked at me, giving me a wide berth as she walked past. Looking around, I noticed that there was a brochure stand by the bulletin board. It was all alone, so lonely, so needing to be set on fire.

However, one of the brochures was apparently an official publication by the Crystal Empire. I recalled that Felicitat noted that “Crystal Empire” wasn’t exactly this place’s name, but I guessed she must have been wrong or something. The brochure contained a map, which appeared to depict a rather sizable city built along a circular grid, and a foreword.

“Hello, and welcome to the Crystal Empire!” the foreword read. “I am Princess Mi Amore Cadenza of the Crystal Empire.” I supposed she must have been that Princess the ponies in the bar had been talking about the other night. Wasn’t she the one honorarily promoted because of mastery of spells or somesuch? It was a troubling thought, that Equestria actually rewarded its magi so well, whereas a sensical society would lobster them to death for their evil. To lobster someone to death was like stoning, but with lobsters. Since you were often buried halfway in dirt, the lobsters both pelt you to death and pinched you all over in ways that weren’t lethal but were very annoying. The rest of the foreword was bland, tourist-y stuff without any real meaning but full of vague promises that could doubly apply to a whorehouse.

I slipped the brochure into a bag, pulling out the letter from Dean/Mayor Kitten Whispers in its stead. According to the photo, which felt almost dated, his son had a curly black mane that went down to the base of his head, red eyes, and was named Stronghold “Strong”. I did plan on finding him; a part of me just knew I’d encounter something to do with him before long.

So, I just stood there, reading over the vague details that Kitten Whispers had provided before slipping the letter back into my pack. I’ll admit, I wasn’t really sure where to go. Maybe this place had a tourism bureau where I could say “Tell me where your secrets are” in a dark voice.

Really, the only logical place that would be was inside the station where Octavia was. After I shrugged, I went in the station. The inside was lit with more of those glowing crystals that made my skin crawl. At this sleepy hour, everything seemed so dead, like birds caught inside the hive of beavers. I looked around for a—

“Hello, stranger!” came a high-pitched, feminine voice. I jerked my head to the left and… what the hell was I looking at?

“Your flesh is made of crystals,” I stated to the earther mare sitting behind a stall, a huge grin on her face. When I said it, her green eyes just lit up.

“Why, so it would seem—did you know that’s the first thing foreigners notice about us crystal ponies, that it seems as if we’re made of crystals?”

“Uh…”

She almost bounced in place. “It’s an effect of the love from the Crystal Heart, which stands at the Crystal Castle—if you hit me with a pickaxe, I assure you, I’ll bleed, not make you rich.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Has that ever happened?”

The mare sighed, looking away. She blew a lock of her red mane out of her eyes. “Let’s not talk about what happened to Êsmiraj.” Then she perked up and hopped over the little wooden booth. “Here,” she offered, holding out an arm. “Touch me. Feel me.”

“Um…” I did as she asked. Despite the freaky look of her, she felt like fur and flesh alright. “You realize there’s probably a better way to phrase that, right?”

“What?” she asked in her high-pitched voice.

“Because the way you phrased it just sounded… off. In a decidedly sexual way.”

She shrugged. “Equestrian’s my second language; I’m not so good at all the intricacies.”

I glanced at the rest of the station. No Octavia. “Second language?”

“Mm-hmm! Mijôra—as we call it, the dialect of the capital, the Crystal City.” She smiled, then gave me a puzzled frown. “We’re not exactly sure how we learned it, just that when the empire awoke, we all had a basic understanding. I think one theory was that some Equestrian actually awoke the empire, but when that happened, the empire sort of… ate her, and so we gained a bit of the language.”

“The empire awoke?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“Just a saying, really.” She smiled. “But while you’re here—business or pleasure?”

“I find business to be pleasurable.”

The mare frowned. “I… that’s… that wasn’t on the list of choices!”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know what to do now! Do I give the spiel about the business opportunities in the Crystal City, or do I go on about all the fun stuff we have?!”

“Describe to me the business as though you were sultry harlot, and describe the pleasure stuff in a stiff, artificial, machine-like tone.”

“I wasn’t trained for that!” she exclaimed, collapsing onto the floor and hyperventilating.

“And I wasn’t trained to deal with ponies with monkeyhands for penises!” I shouted back. She only rolled on the ground and panted. “Great,” I sighed. “You broke her.” I poked her twice, then just walked away. She was somepony else’s basket case.

My journey took me through the station and out the front doors on the other side of the small building. There was a small village-type place here, a little hamlet kept alight via lampposts and the fires inside them. All of the signs here were in Equestrians, and they all offered things that were labeled “Equestrian”, such as “Homestyle Equestrian Kitchen”, a restaurant.

I checked the map on the brochure, and apparently this place was “Little Equestria”, and there was a wide berth between it and the Crystal City proper. Though it didn’t say any more, I could imagine why it was called Little Equestria, and just what kind of ponies lived here. Mayhap also this was a ghetto of some description, and I was apt to get mugged, which would let me mug them back for fun. Putting the brochure away, I noted that this place felt too nice to be impoverished.

Wandering the streets of Little Equestria, I came across a place that seemed to be alive. It was an inn whose name I didn’t concern myself with. As I stood outside its door, I had sudden flashbacks to my first day in Equestria and that tavern, back when all my limbs were my own and I still had two eyes and a horn. Good times.

A weird feeling went up my spine, and I spun around to see if there were blue eyes watching me. There were none. I shrugged the feeling off, went inside the tavern, somehow didn’t get thrown out, and bought a room for the night.

|— ☩ —|

I had no idea what a churro was until that point. But, apparently, they were like long, fried doughnuts for poor ponies that nopony liked, and the Crystal Empire loved them. So said the street vendor this morning when I’d bought breakfast, which I only did because I remembered that I hadn’t eaten in what was probably a month, and that was supposed to kill ponies. The churros were served with a side of café au lait, which worked well with the long, prism-like strips, I supposed.

From here in Little Equestria, which was thoroughly bustling with life at this early hour, I could see that massive tower rising above everything, almost seeming to rise above the snowcapped mountains in the distance.

The giant tower, which seemed to be made of a clearish-blue crystal, was apparently the Crystal Castle—Credhchato, in Mijôra, as one pony helpfully offered. Apparently, Mijôra had an orthography almost like French, just with far fewer stupid spelling choices or silent letters. If you pronounced the written crystal language as if it were French, said one mare, you’d be close enough that few ponies would bother you and your silly accent.

Somepony bumped into me as she walked by. “Oh, sorry.”

I jerked my head to her. “Apology not accepted!” I shouted. “The scars you left will never heal! You did this to me! You did this to me!” I went on. I leapt at her as if trying to pounce, and she ran off screaming. With a casual expression, I turned the other direction and trotted off.

Still licking bits of churro from my teeth, I decided that if I wanted to start looking anywhere, I should start looking in the Crystal City. The fastest way to the the city was the big road, and the fastest way to the big road was through a dark alley that would contain an evil talking dog. Sadly, there was no evil talking dog whose life goal was to tear my genitals off, but there was something else.

A mare was lurking in the shadows, wearing dark robes. As I passed by a little bastion in the alley, she stepped out. “Hyel to thee—”

Of course, for a mugger, she had no tact. I just as quickly pinned her against the stone wall as she had appeared. “Stand and deliver! You won’t mug me today, I’m mugging you!” I chuckled. “You know, I’ve always wanted to mug a mugger, simply as a form of poetic justice.”

Her hoof fell back, revealing her crystal features. “Wait, no, I’m no thief!”

“What,” I said flatly.

“I can see you are no nova of the ocean of the cleverness, but I am a priestess—we steal not, we merely guilt ponies into donations!”

“Oh.” I unpinned her. She clutched at her throat where at I’d been pinning her. “And half of your last sentence made no sense.” She was an earther, I noted. “Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione! I don’t know much Latein, but I memorized a few phrases: that one meant ‘I’m not interested in your dopey religious cult.’ And I don’t suppose your dopey religious cult is super evil and thus me attacking you was a good thing, was it?”

“No!” she hissed. “It’s not a ‘dopey religious cult’, it is the last bastion of the faithful adherents to the old Goddess of the north. All we seek is to hold strong to the old beliefs, even spread the word of the last Goddess.”

“A deity? Tell me of it all!” I exclaimed.

“Of her,” she corrected in a nervous voice. “Chêngrêla, once the patron goddess of Côrint, the Crystal City. Once she was the first amongst equals, but now with all other cities gone, she is the last, she is the Chêngina, the above-mother—Impératrice, really. Mêlenatra, the High Priestess, is the last of the old matriarchs that ruled the faithful in days of yore.”

“What about Princess Cadance?” I asked. “Is she somepony of note, or just some slut with a bad case of headlice?”

“She is what she is,” the mare replied.

“That answers just sucks and now I hate you for it,” I said. “Does the High Priestess generally know where shit is?”

“O-one would suppose.”

“And is she the boss-bitch of magic and all sorts of crystal lore?”

“I should think th-that she knows more than anypony.”

“Then I guess I should have a chat with her.”

“I don’t think she’ll speak personally to just anypony, she’s a very busy and important lady.”

“And I once sang the alphabet song backwards,” I replied. “I think we all know who’s the more important of us two now.”

“Um…”

“That’s a very good response. But now I tire of this line of discussion! Tell me why the crystal ponies I’ve seen so far were naked, and if you all get hot around socks!”

“I—”

“Of course!” I snapped. “You’re a priestess, likely sworn an oath to a life of celibacy and a general ‘stop having fun, guys’ attitude.”

“N-no, we swear no such oaths.”

“Tell me!” I demanded, grabbing her and pressing her against the wall. Again.

She made a scared whinnying noise.

“Dammitall!” I swore. “This method of questioning which is totally unrealistic and not at all representative of how real people speak is failing me. Tabletop roleplaying games, you have failed me yet again.” I let the priestess fall to the ground. Well, I sort of tossed her onto the ground, but who was counting? “That line of dialog bores me. Now you shall tell me how to get an audience with this High Priestess Marshmallow Fluffy Genitals, or whatever her name was.”

“Mêlenatra,” she offered weakly from the ground.

“This too,” I replied darkly.

The priestess grunted as a bird flew over the dark alley. The two events were unrelated, sure, but I thought was bird was interesting enough to pay attention to. “Mançthwl…”

“Tell me of this thing!” I demanded, and she flinched, curling up into a tiny pony ball. “No, don’t be a ball,” I said. “I can only kick you for so long until I get bored and wander off.” She stayed in her ball, shivering.

I leered at the priestess for a solid ten minutes. Every so often she would peek up and see me staring, glaring down down at her, and I would ask her exceedingly personal questions, like “How does gynecology work in the Crystal Empire?” and “Do you think a gynecologist would bother looking at my penis? I sometimes like to pretend that it’s not a penis but instead some kind of fanged dreadlord, and I wanted to express this to a gynecologist.” Of course, she would then exclaim a sound like “Eep!” and curl back into her ball. Eventually, I got bored and wandered off.

Quickly, I found my way onto the large road that lead into the unwalled city proper. The road seemed to just be in the middle of nowhere in terms of development. It was just a train station, Little Equestria, a really long road through little patches of evergreens and tall grass, and then the big city. At least the road was populated well.

Upon reaching the city proper, two things became clear to me. One: you could instantly tell the natives from the non-natives. Two: all the buildings here looked to be either made of colorful stone carved from a mountain that didn’t exist, or made of crystalline materials that were far too opaque to really be normal crystals. Clearly, this place both looked magical and must have had a very easy time segregating undesirable ethnic minorities like myself. Really, though, if it weren’t for the dopey religious cult, this place would almost seem a child’s fantasy kingdom at first glance. I knew there was even more to this place’s dark underbelly, there had to be, but I’d yet to find any evidence of such.

The Crystal City was sizable, not as big as the cities of the Fatherland, but certainly on par with Songnam and its great metropolitan area. Around the center of the Crystal Castle was a fairgrounds, and when I arrived near towards the center heart of the city, some sort of holiday was in full swing. Lots of crystal stallions engaged in diverse physical competitions with other stallions, just as archery, jousting, and something that was inside some sort of colosseum. I saw a few stallions doing speed math, or something like it that, which made my skin crawl. The only mares around here were either walking about or swooning at the stallions. Go them.

It took nearly forever to get through the fairgrounds and to the castle. Oh, and the castle and its tower were standing on four dubious-looking stilts. As I looked more closely, I could see intricate structural patterns in the crystals which held the stilts together, and I vaguely recognized them as being some rather strong geometric patterns. Ponies weren’t allowed near the base of the castle, though, since it was dangerous or something.

I was about to give up searching when I saw a mare in dark robes with two strong-looking guard stallions flanking her. They were wearing a silver-like armor that didn’t look like it covered nearly enough of their bodies to really be anything but ceremonial. She, on the other hoof, looked important and mayhap knew where stuff was. I judged her to be in her early-to-mid forties.

Logically, I had to stop and demand things of her. “Hey, do you know where I can find, uh… where I can find Mêlenatra? I have business with her.”

The stallions looked between themselves, but the mare gave me a puzzled look. All around the place, ponies yelled and screamed and enjoyed fairgames and fun stuff. It was all so lively and energetic, but she was so calm.

“Ñar, fair Equestrian,” she said.

“I’m not an Equestrian, I’m a Teutscher,” I said, almost snapping the words. “There’s a difference; I come from much farther away, across the seas and from a great Reich to the east.”

“Sênatris?” one of the stallions said in a nervous tone with an air of ‘should I murder this guy for you?’

She shook her head at the stallion. “Teutscher, then. I am afraid that there is no practical…” The mare trailed off as she leaned her head to the side. “Is that a sword?”

My eye fell upon my sword. I’d been wearing the blade rather openly, not hiding it like usual. No priestess was going to bother me for a donation to their dopey religious cult when I had it out like this, that was for sure. “It is,” I replied.

“Are you any good with it or fighting in general?”

“Maybe,” I said, narrowing my eye. “I wouldn’t be alive today, at least, if I both didn’t know how to use it and possessed rational moral compunctions.”

Her eyes lit up. “Why, if you wish to meet the High Priestess, then you would do well to understand that she has a certain… higher regard for those gifted in the art of the fight.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Pardon?”

The mare gestured her head in the direction of a not-so-distant building that looked like an amphitheater of the completely closed-off, circular kind with stone walls. “Mançthwl is in swing; it has been eons since last ’twas held, and now we look anew amongst the best and brightest, crystal or otherwise, to know of us. It is well known amongst us of the well-to-do here that Mêlenatra has been looking forward to personally acquainting herself with he who is judged and proven to be the greatest physical combatant there is.”

“Ah, so you’re saying that she is a fangirl for gladiators, right?”

She looked hesitantly off to the side, biting her tongue. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose. Although, I am unclear as to what ‘fangirl’ means. All you need do is enter the Ampfidhiyatsiç, step into the ring, and defeat any who dare challenge your reign. Of course, you could always enter at the end, which is nigh, I dare think, and defeat mano-a-mano the grand champion.”

“This seems somehow rigged in favor of those who show up towards the end, for they’d be more rested and would be facing tired opponents,” I said.

“You might think, but you’d be wrong. In theory, any can enter at any time. In practice, none ever enter but the first round.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Oh, just tradition, some fear, and perhaps because of certain… time constraints.”

“Pardon?”

The grin that suddenly found itself upon her face was almost malevolent. No, wait, it totally was. I could see it in the way her eyes ran over me, and I felt somewhat molested. Mayhap, by some cosmic chance and evil, she was distantly related to the Cherrypillar. “You know, no real foreigners have dared to want to enter our games here. Were you to… say, go into the Ampfidhiyatsiç at the end as my champion, challenge and defeat the then-reigning champion, I would be most happy to assist you in finding whomsoever you needed.” She winked. “Only after getting to know you thereafter, of course.” Her face grew sour. “Just so long as that bitch Ywłamõ doesn’t win, and a foreign champions would make ever the worldly Sênatrismic, yes it would.”

“Ah, so, you wish to help me undermine a rival of yours, so you’re willing to be rather petty to that end?”

“I would stoop very low to buck her in the teeth, yes. Does this make me a bad mare? Besides, you’re the only foreigners I’ve ever seen, save for Prince Shining Armor, who looks like he could kick the ass, as it were.

I tipped my hat to her. “Ma’am, I believe we have an agreement.”

|— ☩ —|

“Strip,” the armored stallion said.

“No,” I replied flatly. “I’ll take off my weapons and bags, though.”

In the dark underroom beneath of the Ampfidhiyatsiç, Sênatris and her two stallions watched me. She sat on a box, her legs crossed, a sly little smile on her face as she said, “Oh, be not modest—Equestrians are nude, as are we.” There came that little Cherrypillar smirk again. “Besides, I just can’t help but wonder what you’re hiding from me under all of that clothing.”

“Battle scars, an arm that I had donated to me by an immortal abomination, and a circumcised penis, really,” I replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Look,” the shorter of the two crystal stallions said to me in a perfectly reasonable voice. “The fact is, you can’t go with all that on.”

I slipped my bags and duster off, making sure all my little bags, weapons, and knickknacks were off my body. Seriously, with all the stuff attached to my body, you’d think I was a thoroughly licked lollipop that had rolled around in the lost and found of The Damned And Terminally Equicidal. Beneath it all was a red T-shirt that made to look like the logo of a popular drink in the Reich. The shirt read ‘Gehorche Kthulhu’. There were also my jeans.

Sênatris made an impatient twirling gesture with a hoof. “Hurry up, please. Off with the shirt and trousers.”

My eye, cold and steely, met hers. Her almost predatory look, like a shark who’s just learnt how to hunt zebra housewives suffering from domestic abuse, never vanished. With a sigh, I buckled, removing my shirts and pants.

She cocked a brow. “Sleek, efficient, hardened… oh yes, I do know how to pick them, do I not? You do not work out, do you? No, you stay fit through hard labor, honest work, and I dare think fighting. Just, what’s with the yet further clothing you’re wearing? Were you planning a trip to the mountains?”

“Need I take off the underwear?” I asked. “I suppose I could, but my culture would say not to do so in such a public place, only for bathing and sexual intercourse. I told you, I’m no Equestrian.”

“You have nothing beneath your underwear, do you?” she asked with an almost girlish frown unbefitting of the forty-something-year-old mare I pinned her for.

“Only a codpiece to protect myself from genital trauma.”

“Remove that,” said the stallion, “and I don’t see why you couldn’t wear it.” He leaned in close and whispered, “And don’t mind her behavior. I think she just gets a kick out of making stallions really uncomfortable because she hardly kent her father.”

Ah, so like Cherry Berry, but without the rape. Understood. Also, ‘kent’. Assuming it’s the same as the Teutsch verb ‘kennen’, then ‘kent’ means ‘knew’. I stepped behind a crate—Sênatris uttered a sad little groan—and a moment later I stepped out and tossed my codpiece into the pile of clothes. The mare squinted, looking at my right arm.

“Schantih,” she said slowly. The way she’d said the sch was the exact same absurdly weird way in which the Blue-Eyed Mare had said the opening to the word schecht, like the sh-sound but from the back of the mouth. Even with its weird sound, I knew she must have been reading the peace-word on my arm.

Suddenly, I found myself worrying about the upcoming fight. Why now, of all times, I had that feeling was beyond me. Just that until this very moment, I’d sort of taken this fight for nothing, but now I was nervous. The catlike gleam in Sênatris’ eyes didn’t help, neither. Really, now that I was really thinking, the letter C had written me also was really weird and mayhap unnerving, with its mention of a “Dark Lady” and all. At the time, I’d figured it was just some weird… no, I actually hadn’t thought about it. I just hadn’t.

When I stopped to take check of my surroundings, Sênatris was already sauntering up to me. “He can’t wear those undergarments,” she said in an annoyed tone. “I do not believe that they are allowed in the rules. You can but wear the arena’s sanctioned armor.”

“You really think they’d care?” he asked, and she gave him a look that shut him up faster than a virgin at a rapist convention. He sighed, shook his head, then walked off into a side room. I could hear him rummaging.

“The arena has certain raiments that you must wear,” she explained to me with a shrug. “I am sure you understand.”

The stallion came back out,dragging something in his teeth. “Here,” he said and tossed it to me. “Should be the standard.”

It was light cloth for the most part. Really, it resembled a slutty nurse uniform with a cutoff skirt that had been designed as if it were armor. Heck, it even had a horsehair helmet. If I wore it, I’d A) Feel pretty, and B) have sufficient space to hide my genitals provided that I didn’t bend over seductively.

With reluctance, I put the armor all on. That done, there was nothing stopping me from sliding off the last vestiges of my original outfit. It was a little tight, clearly not made for me, but it fit just enough that I didn’t want to complain like a little bitch. The last wearer of this armor better not have had crabs. As I looked down, I noticed that over the vague breastplate of the armor was a symbol: two crossed red roses.

“Do you like my sygwł?” Sênatris asked with a little jostle of her hips.

“Excuse me?”

She pointed to the crossed roses. “That. My sygwł. It’s the symbol of my house.”

“You mean, you’re a noblepony?”

“Yes. Hence my title, Sênatris.”

“Wait. I thought that was your name.”

“No. That’s my title.” She smiled. “Now, go out there, bear the sygwłvic of my house—” her voice suddenly went flat “and make sure to humiliate the champion of that Ywłamõmim bitch. He’ll be the big, scary one. You’ll kenn him.” And then the dry, flat voice was gone, replaced by a more bubbly tone. “I’ll be rooting for you, Teutscher.” She brought her lips to the lower side of my cheek and gave me a quick peck, muttering words in her own language.

“For luck,” she said simply at the end. Of course, then she slapped me on the ass and pushed me forwards. “Now don’t keep a lady waiting. Or else.”

Suddenly, I regret everything.

The crystal stallion who’d spoken to me earlier only rolled his eyes, gesturing for me to follow.

|— ☩ —|

I didn’t understand the loud, magically amplified mare whose voice rang out across the little coliseum-type place. Her language was foreign to me. But from her excited tone, and the roar of the crowd, it wasn’t hard to imagine what she was saying.

“What’s this? A new challenger appears! Well, folks, are we all game to watch more stallions brutally fight for no real reason other than honor?” And that was enough to get the crowd roaring.

Behind me closed the metal gate. The walls around the little arena were too tall to ever climb, the floor a flat, well-pressed, dry dirt. “Eh, good luck with that,” the flat, bored voice of the stallion said.

There was only one other pony in the arena with him. Even from a distance, I could tell that he was a giant of pure muscle, rage, and probably penis size issues. The announcer mare went on her spiel as I looked at my metaphorical hand of playing cards. I was probably going to lose my other arm to this guy, let’s be honest. And yet this was still the only way to get an audience with the High Priestess, who may or may not be able to help me.

Great job planning ahead, Jericho.

“You’re not helping,” I said to myself through gritted teeth.

Who said I was trying to help?

So. I had gone on the word of a creepy noblemare, agreed to gladiatorial combat for her, and now this. Because this was what I got for trusting strangers. Really, though, what else was I going to do? Of course this day had to go here. It wasn’t like I’d ever try any of the sensible things or try to use my head to solve a problem for once, oh no. That wasn’t my style, baby. What’s that? Be clever, you say? Haha, oh Timmy! Why would I do that when I could just stab someone thirty-seven times in the chest?

Because Murder. Solves. Everything.

Still, at least the giant stallion pretty much sparkled in the sunlight due to his crystal complexion, so it was hard to take him seriously. A part of me wanted to stop the fight, bend the stallion over, and spit-shine him until I could see my own reflection in his face.

He walked in a rather calm manner to the center of the arena, standing there with a face like an elderly stallion dying of constipation—his attempt to look angry, I presumed. I could see there were two little painted lines in the dirt, each separated by about two yards. He stood behind one of the lines. Logically, this meant to me that I was to stand behind the other line, so onwards I sauntered.

“You represent House Erysa?” he asked in a mild voice when I got to the line.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m just here because I really had no plans for the morning, and the only vague idea I had ended up with some weird lady telling me I had to do this to meet this one mare who I thought might know how to assist me in my quest.”

He cocked a brow. “Be that the case, I wish you good tiding this fight, for I am of House Ywłamõ.”

“So despite your woeful countenance, you are at least polite,” I commented, arching a brow back at him, the crowd around us cheering and jeering. “Ah, Equestria—you are nothing if not surprising. Like the icebox of a serial killer.”

The crowd gave a roar. The stallion smiled. “It is the time of the show.”

Without a further word, he charged for me. But I was prepared. Kontaktkampf was rather clear on how to fight enemies who looked bigger and stronger than you. In essence, size didn’t matter so much as did being able to counterattack and use their strength, weight, and size against them. Heart pounding, I felt I was ready when he got to me. Stances swapped, I allowed myself a few inches, and thrust my right arm straight into his—

Nothing happened. No, not that I had no effect on him, but the arm didn’t touch him. It just stopped. Just… stopped. For a second, the entire limb felt like it was half-asleep and would suddenly awake with the feeling of pins-and-needles. In that second, I had enough time to think, Oh, what the—? before he bodyslammed me.

I tried to catch myself, and we rolled on the dirt like two lovers trying to murder each other due to a divorce gone horribly, horribly right. With the desperation of a housecat trying to eat a piggy bank full of bees, I tried to get him off me. By some miracle, the roll ended briefly with me clawing my way on top of him.

Logically, I had to slug him in the face. The thrust hoof stopped just before his face. Mere centimeters, it felt like. Maybe less. The arm was long enough; it was still mostly drawn back. But it just refused to move. He looked up at me with a vague hint of confusion.

I smiled, forcing a chuckle. “I swear, this kind of thing had never happened to me before. I’m sorry, but—”

“No, no, I hear it happens to a lot of guys,” he replied. “They’re just pussies.”

“Hey! No need to degrade mares by comparing them to me!”

His look was flat. “Oh no, that wasn’t a slant against mares. I’m saying that even mares have more balls than you.”

“Oh God,” I said with a vague snicker, “if you’d seen my first girlfriend, you would totally know just how true that is. Well, not literally since, uh, I should sort of know being I was… and she… did often that thing which males and females are literally designed to do with each other that for some reason I suddenly feel too prudish to explain, which is weird because I’m the kind of guy who will willingly ask strangers in strange lands about their habits concerning gynecological maintenance.”

He just blinked at me.

“You know—” I gasped as a knee rammed me in my gut with so much force that it both knocked the wind out of me and kicked me off him.

“You know,” he said, still as flat as the standup comedy routine of a stallion who believes himself to be at a group the rapy… therapy?… session for pedophiles, “I am Ywłamõ’s champion, and you the enemy of her sworn enemy. So, here’s what’s what. When I said that mares had more balls than you—” he reached down and grabbed something precious faster than a guy that big should have been able to grab “—I wasn’t exaggerating.”

I tried to claw at him, but C’s arm refused to land any blows on him. Sure, it’d move in every direction, but just so long as it didn’t end up hitting him. Mister Leftie had no such moral compunctions. Quick as an insect, he jerked forwards and, before I was even clear on just what the hell was going on, grabbed me by the testicles, squeezing hard.

Pain was immediate and beyond unbearable: a burning, swelling agony like being drowned in liquid lead. “Do you see what I mean?” he asked.

Then he jerked my testicles forwards and down. Enormous, rusty, saw teeth sank into my gut, the taste of salt and blood in my mouth. I was sure he’d rip them off; he’d already turned them into jelly, and now he was going to just rip them straight off! There were only held on my by just a thin flap of skin. They shouldn’t have been that far away from the rest of my body—they were just going to rip off with a sound like sharply pulling apart velcro, only fleshier! I was going to—I tried to scream, but he just yanked so hard that he actually dragged my whole body, the gurgling shriek dying in my throat as—

And then he let go, just smiling at me as he kicked me onto my stomach, the dirt rubbing into my chest and stomach. I could feel my balls swelling to what felt like the size of teapots sitting on a stove just before they whistled that the tea was ready; if I’d been wearing pants, the heat would have burned a hole straight through them.

With every ounce of strength left in me, I rolled onto my sides. I felt that if I continued to lay on my front, my balls would swell so much that they’d just pop under the weight of my body. A new torrent of fire erupted in my guts as I vomited a half-digested load of churros partially onto the ground, partially across my armor. I could feel the pain eating me alive as I whimpered and cowered in the dirt and vomit. Mud and vomit, for the vomit was turning the dry turn into wet mud.

The crowd roared, and something loud thumped into the arena somewhere. I could see it, since the stallion was walking towards it: a large, red chest that looked oddly flat and elongated. Sort of like a tall, fat footlocker. I wonder what secrets it held, or even why it was there, though I had the vague feeling that it was going to hold healing medicines that he’d drink right in front of me solely for torment me.

I blinked, my eye staying closed for longer than they should have. When they reopened, there was a mare standing before me, her eyes blue, her black jacket looking slightly scuffed. She looked at me with what I hoped was sympathy, not pity. I tried to speak, but all that came out was a throaty, wet gurgle that nevertheless felt high-pitched.

She looked down at me. It was all she seemed willing to do. A part of me felt that what I’d taken for sympathy was actually a cold, almost disgusted look, like she wanted nothing to do with me. Like she would just as soon step on and break my neck with a calm indifference, and go on with her life.

Then a slight, almost motherly smile graced a corner of her mouth, as if to say “Oh, you silly colt, what are you doing down there?” She held out a hoof to me, utterly silent.

I swallowed, unsure if I could even move. The taste of salt and blood was still in my mouth, and my spittle drained down into the sea of liquid lead that was my stomach. My groin still burned, still swelled.

But somehow I managed to reach my right forehoof out. Before I thought that maybe I should use my left arm, the Blue-Eyed Lady had grabbed my right and was helping to haul me onto my hoov—

A huge hammer crashed down on my arm, hitting in the center with the heavy crack. Bones were very alive; they didn’t sound like dead wood when they break. So when you heard that crack, you knew just what the hell had happened.

The arm bent impossibly as the blow forced me onto the ground, back into the mud-vomit. I could see the stallion standing above me with a sledgehammer-type thing in his maw, and attached to his left arm was sort sort of arm-mounted blade that somehow reminded me of the world’s worst guardrailing. The Blue-Eyed Mare was gone; there was only him. He saw me looked, smiled through the hammer, and then jumped down, holding his left arm forwards.

His weight and power forced the blade to dig deep into my arm lengthwise, gouged the bone, no doubt severing an artery. With a far-too-practised move, he leapt up, forcibly tearing the blade out in the most vicious, goring way possible.

Somehow, the only thing I could do was sigh and think, God, just think how much my life would suck if I masturbated with my right hoof.

The crowd roared as the stallion looked at me, setting his sledgehammer aside. His left arm soaked in my blood, he spoke in a calm voice. “I don’t know if you understand it, foreigner, but here during the final challenge round, there is no penalty for slaying your opponent. And I made sure to make a fun sport of…” His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “Gnamatre!” he shouted as I stood straight back up.

I stared back at him with a placid expression, the huge crowd gasping, some even screaming. I held my twisted, smashed, broken, gouged, arm up. It cracked like and popped a stretching back as it twisted and writhed and twisted back into shape with erratic jerk, impossible motions, a blackish-red void of stars beneath the flesh, just like C’s arm.

Then the blood of mine that soaked his seemed as if to boil. In a swarm of tiny droplets they all rolled down his arm as he screamed and flailed back. The droplets rolled over the dirt, mixing with the now-moving blood spilt onto the ground until they looked liked a swarm of wet fire ants. They marched up my left arm, slithered across my body, under my arm, and hitched onto my right arm. The blood poured into the dark, starry abyss that was the gash in my arm.

When all the blood was back in my body, the ground and enemy combatant clean of blood, the wounds sizzled as they fused into normal-looking flesh and fur. One place had no wound but still sizzled, the smell of burning flesh making me hungry. There, on the edge of the shoulder, was a red-hot number that quickly cooled into the black mutilation like the words around the arm: “608.”

“Just—just what by all the gods are you?!” the stallion squealed.

My testicles still burned, the lead sloshing around in my gut, but none of it seemed to matter at that moment. So I smiled, revealing far too many teeth; I’d been thinking about my big friend right here while my arm was doing that thing, and I knew just what I wanted to say.

“Why,” I said in a calm, almost amicable tone, “I’m the stallion who’s going to break your fucking neck.” And I walked slowly towards him.

“No! Stay away from me, you freak!” he screamed, swinging his blade-arm sideways at me.

It wasn’t a good idea. I simply jerked my arm up, partially impaling myself into the blade. Using the weight of his own blow against him, I twisted, thrusting my other hoof into his throat. He gurgled as I threw him to the ground. Rending my arm free of his blade, I stepped forwards, and stomped on his neck for all I was good for.

He didn’t exactly die from that, but I’d broken his neck regardless. Maybe he’d drown from blood. Mayhap he’d suffocate. Who knew? Either way, there was no chance he was going to survive. In effect, I’d killed him.

“Welcome to the real world,” I told him as he made little choking, dying sounds.

Spread out from my arm was that nebulous mass, like a rope catching lost blood. It waved and undulated before finally coiling back into my arm; it healed silently this time, oddly enough. I felt a new burn, and when I looked at the side of my arm, a new black mutilation was there, and it read “Convict—XIV.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, tearing cloth strips from the stallion’s armor. I used them to clean myself of vomit, then threw the dirty strips onto him.

My eye roved the stadium/arena/colosseum/what it was. Where once they’d been shocked, now they cheered my victory, chanting, “Sygwłvôm Erysamim! Sygwłvôm Erysamim!” And on they went.

Gates on either side of the arena opened up, and a few ponies trickles out, including what I hoped was a team of paramedics. Because I really needed to put my balls on ice. And put some real clothes on. Take a shower. Brush my teeth again. The works, really.

The paramedics checked the stallion, shrugged, seemed to pronounce him dead, then asked me if I was okay. The two crystal bucks seemed to hesitate when they asked. I was betting that seeing a stallion’s destroyed arm heal itself like mine had done wasn’t exactly your everyday spectacle.

I asked them for some ice to put my balls in, and if there was somewhere I could clean myself. Then I thought about it, and I asked them for the location of L’Opéra.

Author's Note

Footnote: 50% to next level.

Quest perk added: Zur Rechten — Well. That was… something… So, C’s arm will both eventually murder you (probably horrifically) and heal itself. Huh. Well, in any case your right foreleg/arm is now blesséd with horrifying healing properties. Do you know what’d be good use of this? Cutting off your right arm, dropping the limb off a moving train, and watch as the blood tries in vain to catch back up to you.

(And thus Octavia’s story continues my smear campaign against the Mane Six. Oh, and as for the language the crystal ponies are speaking? I actually designed for them an entire language that is fully-functional, if a bit Spartan and lacking in a great many words.)

( Oh, and do you know what's awesome? This bit of fanart by Myriad of Failure. The Fiddler, he cometh)

(TheLordSiffer: Greetings, fandom! Notice how often Twilight is considered an academic and a scientist in fandom depictions? I don’t understand that. Anybody willing to fill me in? Honestly, I’ve seen it everywhere, but the episode of Feeling Pinkie Keen blatantly disproves any and all scientific merit Twilight might have, after all, first she denies the possibility of a renowned phenomenon, and then later goes on to accept it blindly. That’s right, in a world of magic, Twilight Sparkle first adamantly refuses the existence of the Pinkie Sense, then accepts it without question, as opposed to doing the scientifically correct thing and, say, indexing every response and making a statistics of its accuracy. It’s called the inductive method I believe, Twilight, it means you find observable proof and then make a hypothesis. Srsly.)

Chapter 23 — Ice

Chapter 23: Ice

“It is the fool who puts faith in false saviors.”

Frost.

The cold wind nipped at me like a playful lover who’s suddenly turned to cannibalism. Snow swept by at an oblique, almost forty-five degree angle as I stared ahead at the narrow stone bridge, mayhap wide enough for three ponies shoulder-to-shoulder. It had been built straight over a steep gorge, one side ending here, the other side running straight into the ancient stone of the mountain before me, where a thick-looking set of double wooden doors stood.

“Are you not cold, Sedhoas?” the crystal stallion behind me asked. I turned my head to look at him and all the clothes he was bundled up in. Past him and down the mountain road, I could make out the Crystal City, Côrint, and the megalithic crystal tower at its heart. The shadows of one of the many evergreen-like trees that ruled this mountain fell upon him as he looked up at me.

I looked at my leather duster, hat, and standard attire therebeneath. “No, not so much,” I chuckled. “Trust me, where I’m from, you learn to deal with the murderous cold. Especially after der langen Nacht des Herzenstrostes. When there’s so much ash, smoke, and dark magic in the air that it blocks out the sky for three whole years, you, like me, learn to deal with the cold rather well.”

“If you say, Sedhoas,” he replied, addressing me by what I had assumed was their version of mister. For all I knew, though, it could have been the word to describe a sniveling, slimy set of diseased female genitals leaking a strange off-white ooze. On another note, I’d learned that dh made a sound like the th in the Equestrian ‘the’, whereas a crystal th went like the th in ‘thin’. It was probably just me, but that kind of thing was neat.

“But we are here,” he concluded.

“Hmm,” I hummed, looking out across the bridge and the gorge it spanned, at the white stone and the icy river running far below. “Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to kill a bunch of ponies, skin them, and then turn their skin into a giant blanket that I could attach to myself and use to slow my fall from a great height.” I turned to him. “But first, I need to find out how long it takes for a pony to—”

“Nope,” he said, and turned around, proceeding down the icy path down the mountain.

“Dammit,” I spat. “They’re learning.” The door at the other end of the narrow, gray-brick bridge became again the center of my attention. It had only been hours since I killed that giant stallion in that arena, and no sooner had I cleaned myself off and put my testicles on ice than crystal guards in black armor came and found me, telling me that I was wanted somewhere.

And so here was that somewhere. This high up was apparently above the snowline, and I think I saw some kind of carnivorous deer eating what looked like a cat-like walrus down in the gorge below, but here I was nevertheless. Somehow, I ended up wondering if it was possible to stick rubber bands up a mare’s nipples in case I needed to defend myself against a mare with six giant, overinflated teats like a dog with terrible teat tumors. Because I’d seen such teat tumors before, and they bounced in a horrifically horrible, horribly hypnotic way.

So as the wind battered me, I ended up wondering if my nipples had holes in them like a mare’s did. The only thing that stopped me there from taking my shirt off and poking at my nipples with a syringe was the distant cry of some kind of animal that didn’t sound like it’d make a good charades partner. That, and a three-eyed raven landing on the bridge’s stone railing.

“Oh, no,” I groaned. “You’re a bout of unnecessary symbolism, aren’t you?”

The raven just looked at me. Bits of snow hit it, making the bird look to be almost a giant pile of salt and pepper. It watched me as I crossed the narrow bridge and listened to the howl of the wind and the sound of a distant waterfall. I knocked on the wooden doors, and when I got no answer, I tried for the handles. They opened, the raven flew off, and I stepped into the mountain.

Closing the door behind me, I looked out at the foyer, brightly lit by more of those glowing crystals that left weird blotchy spots in my eyes if I looked at them for too long. Carved from the rock itself by masterful hooves, this place looked both ancient and new. It was semi-circular with a dome roof, the white stone of the walls absolutely covered with paintings of ponies engaged in countless deeds.

The centerpiece of the room, before the foyer gave way to a large stone staircase lined by green plants, was a statue of a mare in robes. Her eyes were blue glowing crystals that seemed to glare at me as she held a mighty staff in one hoof. I cocked a brow as I noticed her snake-like tail coming out from her robes and coiling around her leg.

I trotted past the statue and up the stairs, noticing a weird scent of lavender in the air. The room beyond the top of the stairs made me pause. In this circular room with numerous door scattered about there was a very circular little lake, its edges made of some kind of tan tiling: at center of the little lake was a tiny island upon which stood a white tree with golden leaves. Above the tree was a hole in the cave’s ceiling where sunlight poured in from. Steam rising off the water must have kept this place free from snow, judging by how warm the room was, but that hole had to a be a titanic structural flaw. I could just imagine a pile of leopards getting in through that hole and murdering everyone in here in a hilariously unseen fashion that just made me want to become a leopard breeder solely to cause it.

Around the rest of the rotunda, it looked partly like city. The bits of rose beds by stairs leading up to a balcony-like areas surrounded the rotunda reminded me of little gardens before second-story apartments, and the paneless windows gave this place an abandoned feel, like some ancient horror was about to jump out of the shadows, denounce me for “violating its resting place”, and then tickling me until I pissed myself to death. Because there wasn’t much worse it could do it me after I nearly had my balls ripped out.

But above all of that, the thing that really held my attention was the white mare with the raven-black mane, who was standing over in a part of the room that looked to be some sort of statue. She was dressed as what looked to me to be some sort of worker. The mare was swinging a pickaxe at the statue as she sang in a decidedly cheery, bubbly voice:

“I’ve been working on the railroad

All the pointless day.

I’ve been working on the railroad

While my life gets pissed away.”

“Ma’am?” I asked, walking up to her.

She shrieked, nearly leapt ten feet into the air, and fell to the ground in a position that reminded me of shrimp. I missed shrimp; I could so go for some fried shrimp, sauteed in soy sauce, even if soy products were proven to lower sperm count. What with the testicular beating I got, odds were that I was sterile anyhow.

The mare jumped up, shoving me away with her forehooves. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! There weren’t supposed to be any…” She trailing off, looking me up and down. “Equestrian. You’re an Equestrian.”

I glanced at the mostly ruined pile of rocks that had once been most of a statue. “No, Teutscher. I’m a Teutscher. We’re much cooler than Equestrians.”

She rubbed sweat and bits of chalky stone from her cheek. “Chêngrêlangõ,” she muttered. “You’re that guy, ñar? The Sedhoas who defeated the Lord Marshal in the arena—” her mouth twisted into a smile “—and he who is the the proven greatest champion there is?!”

As she looked at with gleams in her eyes, I heard a flapping sound. The three-eyed raven flew in through the hole in the ceiling, circled the tree, then dove towards me. I shouted something inaudible as I rolled out of my the way, but the mare just stood there, holding out an arm. The bird swooped down and landed on her arm, perching itself comfortably. She muttered something to it in Mijôra, the crystal language, then cocked a brow at me.

“Is something the matter? Do you not like birds?”

I pretended to brush dust off myself. Truth be told, this place was so clean that dust was probably listed on the local ‘endangered species’ list. “Er, it’s fine. Just… I was pretty sure that the bird was trying to peck my eyes out in order to feed to its seven-testicled hellspawn.”

“Aw, he can’t have children, now can he, Yyn?” she asked the bird, nuzzling it. The bird only stared ahead with its horrible, unblinking eyes, as if it knew just how monstrous it was and was tormented by the fact that it couldn’t scream and beg for death.

“Are you referring to me?” I asked in a defensive voice. “I’m sure that having your balls strangled doesn’t permanently murder any children-to-be down there!”

She exchanged looks with the bird. “No, I was referring to Yynwiç here. He’s sterile. You can see his three eyes, yes?”

I glanced to the tree at the lakecenter. “I was pretty sure it was just some weird symbolism.”

“No, he’s was born terribly mutated due to the things that… that King Sombra did. Yynwim loterij—um, I mean, Yyn’s parents just abandoned him, ejaculated him straight from the nest, so I took him in and raised him as if he were my own.”

“Ejected him from the nest,” I offered.

She looked around. “Yes, this is what I said.”

“No, you…” I shook my head. “Nevermind—what was that about a King Sombra?”

“Wç, Dêleth Sombra? I’d rather not talk of him, none really would.” She flashed me a smile, her crystalline complexion seemingly reflecting light from herself and into my eyes. I felt as though I’d need sunglasses just to be around her, but we were technically indoors, and only douchebags and blind ponies wore sunglasses indoors. And don’t even get me started on the sick depravity that is the blind douchebag.

I shifted my weight to another side. “O…kay, then. And so… You’re the High Priestess, aren’t you?”

She gave me a faint curtsy and nodded. The curtsy was off, like she didn’t really know what one was but had the vague idea down. “Ñar, she am I. Ly Vwsokimidh, polan? Atch, cham zô ngihilmiç atmetmiç Metmiç.”

“Yeah, I don’t understand your language,” I said flatly. “And though I understand that speaking loudly and slowly is the universal cross-language, it still won’t help me understand your crazy crystal funnytalk any better. And for that matter, you don’t look much like how I’d pictured you. For starters, I was pretty sure that you were going to be a crotchety old hag, not—”

“A dashing young dame?” she asked with a flutter of the lashes.

Not the words I’d use. Ever. “Yes, that.”

“Well, when the last Goddess calls upon thee, and the old Priestess is dead and rotten in the ground, age doesn’t matter so much as wit and an unshakable faith. But, you wouldn’t know of such faiths. Equestrians have no gods, am I incorrect?”

“Couldn’t say, I’m no Equestrian. But, on the other hoof, I can make a mean soufflé.”

“I like soufflés.”

“So do I.”

The raven made a raven noise. That bastard wasn’t going to be getting any of my soufflés, no sirree.

“So,” I said. “Do you have a name.”

“Kwl,” she said with a shrug.

“Cool? What about it is cool?”

“I… nevermind. Mijôravi joke.”

“Right. Well. I’m Jericho.” I held out a hoof.

The High Priestess extended a hoof, only to poke my offered hoof. “And I am called Snechta.”

“Snesh-tah,” I muttered. “Got it.”

She smiled. “I believe, in mythological connotations, it would equate to the myth of that pale mare and those terrible inbred, deformed short ponies. What was it? Ah, yes—Snow White. That is my name, Snechta AKA Snow White. At your service, Sedhoas.”

“Hmm,” I hummed. “Like Schneewittchen, as she’s called in my land.”

Snechta smiled. Her raven flew off and hit a wall spectacularly. It slid down, fluttered, then got back up. It was back in the air within moments, no real worse for wear. “Poor baby. That third eye is without use, and his vision is overall poor, but I still love him. He was a gift from Chêngrêla, I am sure.” She stepped around me and walked, leaving her pickaxe and the mostly broken statue behind. “Follow, Sedhoas.”

And I did. She led me up a set of stairs, through a door, down a corridor, and into a wide, airy room. It looked like a giant bathhouse built out of a natural hot spring, complete with steam, slightly bubbling water, and a towel rack off to the side. “I’ve been working all day to destroy those statues. Nopony’s here to help me, and it’s tiring work.”

I looked around the baths. Suffice it to say that, like every room here, it was brightly lit by those same crystals that were probably killing me from radiation. Oh, I could just feel the tumors now! “Why even were you trying to destroy them?”

“Well, because since all gods but Chêngrêla are dead now, I figured it fitting to destroy all effigies of the dead gods, leaving only the ones to the still-living Goddess intact.” She winked at me. “And I believe that some hard sweat does a pony good, don’t you?”

“You know,” I said in a flat tone, “I came here looking for you. They said that you’d only have time for me if I won—”

“Wait. So you put on what was certainly the best Mançthwl performance in history, winning against the reigning Lord Marshal, greatest warrior in the land, all for me!” She actually blushed at that, putting a hoof to her cheek.

I shrugged in a noncommittal sort of way. “Well, if you phrased it as ‘I murdered a guy I didn’t know for a girl I’d never met’, it’d sound far less romantic. Almost atrocious, really.” I paused. “And I find it rather telling that your expression isn’t changing at all right now.”

“Why, I don’t think you really understand just how flattering and romantic that is! You didn’t even know the mare whom you champion for, I hear, before you came to find me.”

“Those nice stallions in the black armor came to bring me to you, first of all. And second of all, of course I didn’t know the mare; I just met her off the street when she propositioned me. Do you expect me to just know some random mare off the street?”

She bounced once. “Well, if you knew her then, there would have probably been some serious negative political ramifications.”

I just looked at her. “I get the feeling that you and are I actually having two different conversation centered around some significant point I’m not getting.”

Snechta gave me an odd look, then walked off into another room, me following her. “You know,” she said, pointing around in the room that reminded me of a dressing room, “this is where I found her.”

“Found whom?”

“The old High Priestess,” she sighed. “She was just a rotten skeleton, nigh a millennium old. When Côrint returned and after Cadence, Shining Armor, and that dragon saved us, I wandered up the mountain with Yyn. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I knew that this mountain temple was not caught in the lock that kept Côrint frozen in time.” Snechta gestured to a corner. “She was there; I suspect she hung herself, but the rope had long since rotten away before I ever got here. A thousand years is a long time.”

“I don’t understand. Frozen in time? Saved you?”

The mare looked at me like a radish looks at hamburger: forlornédly. “A millenium ago, a dark stallion, the dreaded King Sombra, once the leader of the military caste, overthrew our government and made himself King of the North, around the same time as that whole Nightmare Moon debacle further to the south. One way or the other, Côrint was banished from existence, trapped in a time loop for a thousands years before we were permitted to return.” She gave me sad eyes. “Every crystal pony you see is over a thousand years old. Even the foals, who had been stuck in their mother’s wombs for an eon. But we don’t seem so old, for we did not age nor did we feel nor did we have anything in that loop. One day, it was a thousand years ago. The next day, it’s been a thousand years, the old king is dead, and long live the Equestrian usurper who sits upon the false king’s throne as if the throne had always been there.”

“What?”

Snechta spun to face me, her eyes pleading. “You said you did this all for me, right?”

“I think you’re taking something out of c—”

“You want me for something, and you’ve proven yourself the greatest warrior in the land with what you did this day.”

“And I hear that you have a great healing spell that can restore me to how I was before I lost my eye.”

Snechta paused at that. “I… I think it’s possible. If there’s anypony who knows healing magic, it would be I. Only I could wield the Gift.”

“The Gift?”

“Yes, the Gift.”

I just looked at her. “You know, you might as well call it ‘the walrus tusk’ for all the significance it has right now, and nothing would change on my end. Seriously, just a fancy name means nothing.”

“It was a gift from Chêngrêla, her presence, the relic she bestowed to bless our once-mighty empire.”

I still just looked at her. “You know, in my language, the word gift, das Gift, means ‘poison’. So from my point of view, you’re just making it sound worse.”

“I… I beg your pardon?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied, shaking my head. “But you say there is a way to heal grievous, old wounds?”

Snechta gave a hesitant nod, and then she gave me a devilish smile. “Yes, though it’d be a bit tricky to activate and manipulate; however, I believe I know just the perfect place to find exactly what I need for the ritual.”

I shifted my weight, cocking a brow. “I can tell that this won’t be free on my part. What would you have me do?”

“You’ve done this sort of deal before, haven’t you?”

“Sold my soul and abandoned my morals because sometimes magic was just easier than being a good pony?” I asked. “Yes. Yes, I have.”

She giggled. “So, you want my help? I want you to find something for me, something I want most desperately and that just so happens to have the ritual that you need in it.” Snechta leaned in close, her lips going to my ear. Well, she tried to. Since I was so much taller than her, the attempt failed. I had to lean down for her. “I want you to find me a very, very unique book.”

I frowned. It took every ounce of my willpower not to reprimand her for saying “very unique”, and then giving her a lecture as to why something couldn’t be “very unique”. Really, how can something be “very one of a kind”? It just made no sense. And in that moment, a part of me came to dislike Snechta.

|— ☩ —|

The Crystal Castle was very weird inside. All the surfaces looked reflective, but weren’t. It was seriously freaking me out. The frequent purple carpets and flags on the wall, plus the occasional potted plant, helped keep me sane…ish. As for how I got into this situation, well, apparently Snechta had a friend in the watch. And Snechta wasn’t allowed in the castle because, in Snechta’s own words, Princess Cadance so ridiculously claimed that Snechta was “propagating a dangerous religious cult”. Now all I had to do was find the Imperial Archives, which were separate from the public library outside, somehow.

As I walked the tall halls—nopony really stopped me once I was in, possibly because I was wearing my suit—I came to wonder just why it was we attributed value to gold and gems. Why wasn’t money measured in useful things, like fancy hats? I would totally support an economy based entirely off fancy hats. But sadly, for most of the known world, all currency was measured in Mark, the Reich’s currency, which wasn’t measured in gold but in Mark themselves, because economists were the craziest of all ponies.

I made sure to add “Fancy Hat Economics” to the list of Reasons Why I Shouldn’t Be King.

Following the very nicely placed signs, I eventually came across the large doors that supposedly led into the library. Trying not to draw too much attention to myself, but mostly because I liked feeling like a superspy, I quietly opened the door and stepped in.

“…are all gone,” a stallion was saying from within the room. His voice made my heart stop.

“Do you… did you hear somepony open the door?” a mare asked, and her voice made my heart explode and die horribly.

I looked out at what was once a huge library. Once, because all of the shelves were bare, more bleak and empty than Cards’ sex life. I nearly galloped forwards to the edge of the railing, since I had entered on what seemed to be the second floor of the library.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said, and I looked over the railing and saw just who I thought it was.

“Hey, Duke Elkington!” I called out, waving vigorously at him.

The Duke, who’d been standing in the center of the first floor and seemingly been engrossed with an empty desk as he ran a hoof through his black mane, turned his head. His amber eyes focused on me as he squinted, and then they lost a pound of their luster. “Oh sweet Celestia, no…” I saw him mouth, too quiet for me to hear.

And I sprinted across the library, found the stairs, promptly fell down them and probably sprained my knee, and darted to where the Duke stood with a blank look on his face. I hug-tackled him to the ground. His face remained blank

“Hey, Ellie! I didn’t die even though I’m pretty sure you were counting on me to die and—”

“You,” the mare said. I looked up.

I gasped, and then got up and hug-tackled her tiny body to the ground. “Felicitat! It’s been only a few hours from my point-of-view, but two weeks or so from yours! How are you?”

Felicitat merely muttered something that wasn’t as cute as the squeak I’d been expecting. Cards would have given me a horrified squeak.

Getting off of Felicitat, I looked between the two ponies. “Boy, Elkington, I haven’t seen you since you tied to me to the bed, grabbed my penis, and showed me a whole new meaning of love that I never wanted to know.”

His jaw dropped. Felicitat groaned, then said, “The worst thing about him is that I can never tell if he’s lying. It all sounds honest to me, at least compared to how I can usually tell.”

“I-I never—” Elkington stammered.

“I know, at least I hope I know, but I can’t tell the difference from when he’s lying and stating the truth.”

“Sometimes I insert cabbages into my nose because it’s the only thing that lets me feel anything anymore,” I said darkly.

“Yeah,” Felicitat said, standing up on wobbly legs. “If it were anypony else, I could just tell he was lying from just… the touch, you know? Not with him.”

Elkington brushed imaginary dirt from himself. “Well, Special Agent Faust, I’d say it was good to see you again, but I don’t like to lie unless I really have to.”

“Aw, you really do care,” I chirped. “And, hey, have you seen my lack of an eye and horn?”

The Duke hesitated. “Yes.”

“The Devil’s Backbone did this to me,” I said in happy tones. “And because of that, I lost my left arm/foreleg/whatever.” I waggled said arm at him. “I got a new one from an unholy abomination that lived inside the cross that the Backbone wanted.” He didn’t reply, just exchanged glances with Felicitat. “So, what are you two doing here? And I see you found Felicitat fairly well, huh?”

Elkington’s eyes wandered around the empty, bookless library. “We were looking for a book, but it seems that said book has been removed—extradited, even. And yes, I found Felicitat most well. You did a good thing, somehow, by sending her to me.”

Felicitat chimed in an agreeable hum. “These last few weeks have actually been rather… cool. My empathic powers are totally useful for what Lord Elkington does, dealing with other ponies, intrigue, negotiations, diplomacy.” She smiled. “We came here to try to convince Princess Cadance to lend us a certain few objects from this ancient library while we waited to convince her to let her ponies volunteer to join the Caroleans because he doesn’t have enough influence up here in the north and so—”

“Felicitat,” Elkington said in a firm voice, and her ears flattened.

“Oh, right, sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He patted her on the head, and her ears perked slightly. “What she was trying to say was that my abilities to protect Equestria don’t have much weight up here in the North. The Crystal Empire—or whatever they’re calling it now—Scoltland, Gwent, The Pale, and so forth. I was hoping that Cadance would allow me to assist her in holding back the tide of strange happenings this far north. But she isn’t here right now, even though I scheduled this meeting a week in advance. Apparently, there was a really dark element to some local funfair that Cadance finds herself extremely upset over, and her trying to put an end to it is breeding some heavy dissent amongst the locals. So, I went here to try to find a book to read while I waited for her to return.”

“Ah,” I said, “so you’re up to no good as usual? Keen.”

“I wasn’t up to—” He shook his head. “What are you doing here, even?”

“Eh, I’m working with a local crazy pony High Priestess who wants a book in exchange for fixing the face that I broke when I helped solve your problem. So, basically, I’m also up to no good.” I slid an arm over his shoulders. He tried to pull away, but I held him tight. “But, hey, at least I’m not a rapist.” My expression grew dark. “It’s pretty much the only atrocity I’ve never committed.”

“I feel threatened,” Elkington said in a borderline hostile tone.

“Then thank your heathen Princess that I’m here you keep you safe with my lack of burliness but surplus of killer instincts. I’m like one of those guys whom you pay to protect you because otherwise they’ll beat you to death, except I work for free, but I might still beat you to death, because I’m an equal-opportunity psycho.” I ran my hoof down and poked his belly. “Touch.”

He jerked an arm and freed himself from me before I could lick his cheek—which was I moving to do. Licking was the first step to a non-sexist working environment. And also to cannibalism. “Don’t do that!” he snapped.

I made a really horrible slurping, slapping sound by putting my tongue partly to the roof of my mouth and back of my top front teeth, opening my mouth, tightening my cheeks, and sucking in air. Elkington didn’t even try to hide his disgust for the noise. I smiled thereafter and said, “Okay, Lord Nippelheimr. So, Felicitat.”

The mare blinked. “Huh?”

“Where are all the books that once were here? If you speak true, I’ll buy you a smoothie.”

“What kind?”

“Are we negotiating?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Strawberry-banana,” I offered in a firm, business-like tone.

“I don’t like strawberry-banana.”

I visibly started at that. With wide eyes, I found myself staring at Felicitat. Then, in a dark, throaty voice, I growled, “You’re dead to me.”

Felicitat shrank back, her ears drooping.

Elkington rolled his eyes, patted her on the shoulder, and cooed, “There-there.” Then he looked at me. “It would appear that Princess Celestia very recently demanded that Cadence turn the Imperial Archives here in the Crystal City over to the Royal Archives in Canterlot.”

“So she’s like a werewolf,” I said, “but with books.”

“What?”

“Well, I was originally going to say ‘So, she’s like a vampire, but with dicks’, but that’s my line in reference to myself, if only because it’s an awesome icebreaker at parties. Seriously. There exists no one who is quite as skilled as I am with breaking the ice.” I nodded, leaning up against empty bookshelf. “Oh, is our youthful party laden with far too much high-school-caused sexual tension? Why, let me just go up the second hottest mare at the party, pat her on the shoulder, and give her my condolences that her father died hilariously of prostate syphilis. Then just walk away.”

Elkington sighed. “You know, Faust, you’re not funny. You’re not. You think you are, but you’re not. You’re just cruel and unstable.”

“Hey! I am a pony, not a Höllenhund: ponies don’t belong in stables.”

The Duke said nothing for the longest time, only stared at me. “I can safely presume you should be causing more massacres somewhere else, so why don’t you get to it?”

“Wait. An appealing offer, but wait. So if all these books are in Canterlot, does that mean I have to go to the city of Canterlot in order to get at this special crystal book?” I asked.

He hesitated, looking at Felicitat and flashing her a little smile. Elkington adjusted the collar of his suit as he glanced about the vastly empty, lonely halls of what had once likely been a great library. It had probably mostly been really freaky porn, but some stuff wasn’t.

“I suppose it is.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, rubbing my chin.

“Oh, Fiddler play thee if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.” Elkington shook his head, his stance shifting. What, was he preparing to try to fight me? It was so precious! “There’s some sort of party in Canterlot Castle in the next day or so: a significant number of the aristocracy is going to be present. The Princesses will be there, too. So help me Soleil, if you do anything that so much as upsets Princess Celestia… I. Will. End. You.”

My expression twisted into an almost serrated smile. “Say, will they need music there?”

“They already have Sapphire Shores scheduled to play.”

“Well, perhaps in exchange for a promise that I won’t single-hoofedly bring the revolution and kill many ponies, you could do me a small favor—dot, dot, dot, dramatic conclusion.”

|— ☩ —|

As a rule, I didn’t listen much to classical music. I was only one classical ballad away from being a supervillain as it was. Give me smooth jazz or rock ’n’ roll or heavy metal any day. Too bad that Schwermetall didn’t seem to exist in this godforsaken country. Though I did have a few jazz music sheets in my bags somewhere.

When the gray mare took the stage, the large building almost went silent. She readied her cello, looking out at the mostly crystal pony audience. The mare swallowed, easily visible from my place at the very front, alone at my table. Looking around, she seemed to hesitant. Then she looked down to the front row.

I smiled and gave her a curt wave.

Octavia paused, blinking hard. Then she smiled, and she played her cello.

|— ☩ —|

“I can’t believe you actually showed up,” Octavia enthused with a smile as I met her behind L’Opéra. She was leaving it when I caught up with her and offered to carry her cello for her. “Can’t say I have many friends who’d do that, and I don’t even really know you.”

“No, you really don’t,” I said idly, walking alongside her through the dark but rather packed streets of Côrint. Neither of us said a word as we went through the streets. The fair had died down, likely something that Cadance did, as Elkington implied, but I could smell the sugary scents in the air mixed with the vaguely sweet-sour scent of berries. An idea of vanilla permeated the streets, not strong enough to make you gag, but strong enough to make you think pleasant thoughts.

“What are your plans now?” I asked as we nearly got to her hotel. “Do you still play here for another few days?”

“Honestly, I can’t say. The contract was for the day, and they have the choice of renewing the contract for further days.” She ran a hoof through her charcoal mane. “I rather enjoyed that, so I hope they seek to renew it.”

“Well, I think you shouldn’t seek to renew it,” I offered casually.

“What?”

“Well, I think there’s a much better opportunity out there.”

“I don’t follow what you’re trying to say.”

“Miss Octavia, tell me: what is it that you want above all other things?

She looked at me, stopping dead in her tracks.

When she didn’t speak, just kept giving me that puzzled look, I said casually, “Tomorrow night and the night after it holds a rather large event in Canterlot Castle. And mayhap I know a guy, and that guy scheduled a little gray mare with purple eyes who plays the cello to show up at this prestigious event before most of Equestria’s wealthy, well-to-do aristocrats.”

“I… I… What?”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry if I’m intruding in your life and your plans, but Duke Elkington and I are on… friend-foe terms, and on a friendly term I got him to use his influence to schedule you, Miss Octavia Melody, for this fancy party.” Octavia just stared at me, her expression unreadable. “I understand you’ve no reason to believe me, so here—”and I pulled out and gave her an envelope; it was sealed with the coat-of-arms of House Elkington, the swastika. “I had hoped that you’d enjoy this little gift. I’ve ruined and destroyed so many lives over the course of my life that sometimes going out of your way to help a stranger like you is the only thing that lets me sleep at night.”

And so long as I didn’t dream, I would keep sleeping well at night.

Drama queen!

Octavia was slow as she grabbed the letter. Even slower as she opened it, treating it as if it were a holy object. Or a snake. A holy snake, mayhap. One of those snakes that you milk, but instead of venom, you get actual milk, only it’s filled with little hairs. Slower yet did she read the enclosed letter.

“I… I… my Celestia… this is absolutely genuine!” Octavia said under her breath

I set her cello case down. “Yes, it is.”

“B-b-but why?”

“Because.” I turned around, shrugging. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“Wait, you’ll be there?”

“In a way. I declined an official invitation, exchanging it for what I just gave you.” I looked up at the moon. “I would much rather crash the party by sneaking in myself. Maybe cause some trouble. You know, generally be an all around bastard. Sometimes it’s just far more fun to be bad.” I waved over my shoulder at her, not looking. “Take care of yourself, okay, Miss Octavia?”

“I will, Jericho. I will. Oh, and one more thing!”

“Yeah?” I asked, hearing her running up to me. I turned around to see her right there.

With tears in her eyes, she kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you, Jericho. Thank you for everything!”

I smiled at her, then walked off without another word.

Author's Note

Footnote: level up.

New Perk Added: Champion of Côrint — You are the greatest warrior in the Crystal Empire and ponies know it! Whenever dealing with crystal ponies, or indeed any member of the Cult of Chêngrêla, you gain significant bonuses to all speech-related stats and access to (very, very) unique dialog! Also, because this perk incidentally increases your sex appeal amongst crystal ponies, expect to be raped by at least ten times more mares than usual when you’re dealing with crystal ponies. It’d be your own fault, too. If you didn’t want to get raped, you wouldn't have dressed like a slut (IE, dressed at all)

(This is The True Grand Quasi One, Jojo of House Salatcia, here. Many apologies for the short chapter. Worry not, Crushric shall be dealt with. So in the meantime: Who here likes Jazz? Oh, what’s that? None of you? O-oh. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, of course you all have choices. Haha—shut up. You don’t, actually. W-what do you think this is? A democracy? Hm? No. You’re getting Jazz. So deal with it. <3 dillpicklesaresatanridethegyarados.)

(Hey, guys, Siffer, your Lord and Master, here. Quick question, wonder why Crushric is responding to comments slower? Well, when asked if he or I should assuage your fears about Cards’ death, he said:

Crushric of Orléans: I have too much authority

Siffer: .. You do?

Crushric of Orléans: I am God here

Crushric of Orléans: What I say is the law)

(Onwards to Canterlot!)

Chapter 24 — Canterlot

Chapter 24: Canterlot

“And, above all, never, ever enter my private office.”

Very.

That was my rough approximation of just how far away the city of Canterlot was from Côrint. I took the train, mind you—all four of them, due to all the times I had to switch a train to continue on my journey. By the time I got to Canterlot, it had been at least nineteen hours since I left the Crystal City.

My ass was sore from sitting when I got here to Canterlot. And at least one train conductor had been hotglued to a seat to prevent him from telling me that I couldn’t walk around when I wanted to walk around. The fact that he wasn’t really a train conductor but just some single father traveling with his little filly who was annoyed by me galloping up and down the train car singing psychedelic songs from fifty years ago, however, never once really occurred to me until just now.

It dawned on me because now, at about Very Dark o’clock as I got off the train, I could hear his filly screaming for help with getting her father unglued from the chair I’d torn from the floor glued to the ceiling. With a blank face, I quickly trotted onto the station platform of Canterlot Grand Station and then made my way off the platform before I could be arrested. It was all fun and games until the child got hurt. Then it was comedy. Ah, Schadenfreude—the purest joy.

Speaking of being arrested, I couldn’t help but notice all the guards here. Despite the hour, and regardless of how much this train station was almost like a POW camp… Okay, well, that would be exaggerating, but the fact was that there seemed to be more security here than was necessary.

Or maybe the air was just messing with me. Canterlot was built partially into the side of the mountain. Not at the ground level, either. Hundreds of feet up the mountain, to be less precise. Mister Welch had once told me that Canterlot was a beautiful city, made more beautiful by the fact that it always looked about ready to fall off a mountain and kill thousands. I hadn’t exactly seen it yet, being that it was night by the time the train got here, just that all the distant lights looked pretty.

“It’s these bloody lowborn, I say,” some green-coated mare remarked. She was standing by two stuffed-looking suitcases off to one side of the massive station’s central zone, its floors a nice, short carpeting rather than the marble of Songnam’s station.

Her conversation partner was a stallion with glasses, rubbing his eyes as a colt and filly peeked out from behind his legs at the mare. “Honey, would you just quit—”

“Well, you tell me it’s untrue,” she huffed.

“I wasn’t argu—”

“Exactly!” She stamped a hoof. “Because you know I’m right.” She gestured to the station around her. “If it weren’t for all these lowborn in Canterlot, none of this would be happening! Ugh, it’s bad enough that Duke Elkington is so nice to them and those weird Neighponease and zebras and other rabble, but I will not stand for it here, in our glorious capital! Those sniveling lowlifes are the reason the economy is in such shambles as it is, I tell you.”

“Excuse me,” I interjected, stepping up to the mare.

“Oh, what now?” she groaned, turning her head to me. “More bad news? Who the bloody hell are you, even?”

“Just a concerned citizen, ma’am,” I replied, giving a slight pull of my hat’s brim as a cursory sign of respect.

“Citizen,” she spat. “What are you, some upstart from the Folkdom of Manehattan?”

“Now, I don’t pretend to be a wise stallion when it comes to all things economics, but I find it highly unlikely that whatever economic woes you’re in has anything to do with the commonfolk—you know, the people who actually do all the real work in any nation.”

“Just what are you saying?” she demanded.

The stallion sighed. “Now, honey, you shouldn’t get angry at—”

“Shut your mouth, Chandelier! If I wanted your opinion, I would have asked.”

“In a ludicrously passive-aggressive manner,” he muttered. The kids behind me exchanged nervous looks between themselves before looking up to me.

“Look,” I said, trying to steer the argument back on course. “All I’m saying is, your theories are despicably wrong, and you could really do for a lightening up.”

“Ugh,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “First I had some lowborn buck misplace my luggage, make me wander for hours, and annoy me—and now I’m receiving lessons in tolerance from a… from a bladeslinger! By Princess Celestia, just what in Fiddler’s Green has my life come to now?”

The stallion gave me a look that just begged ‘Help me’. Or maybe ‘Please kill my dog and feed it to my foals’. It was hard to tell. “Oh, come on, honey,” he said in a sweet, soothing voice.

“Shut it, you!” she snapped. “Oh, mother was right—I shouldn’t have gotten married.”

I tipped my hat. “Well, I can see you’ve got things covered over here, you hate-filled crone.”

She gasped. “Crone?!”

“It’s been fine chatting with you, ma’am,” I said, walking away. “And you, sir, are a very patient stallion.”

He mouthed a thanks as he threw an arm up and rolled his eyes. Were he a Konfessionist like me, no-doubt he’d’ve said “God, don’t I know it!”

As I left them, I could hear the crone of a mare bickering and yelling at the stallion who’d had the misfortune of marrying her. But I suppose that’s what you got in an isolated country on an isolated continent filled with princes, princesses, magic, and Juggernog: fantastic class- and racism!

Because, really, when the guy who just killed a bunch of kids only a few days ago—in terms of hours he actually experienced—is flaunting his moral superiority over you, you’re probably doing something really wrong with your life.

Finding my way out of the station was a trip. But I did find it, and exited out into the cool air of the night. Priority one was finding somewhere to spend the night. Priority two was trying not to commit any mass murders while waiting for the party. The last priority was that I get to this party.

Of course, I figured, looking around the clean, wide streets of Canterlot, it’d be a much smarter idea to just sneak into the castle now, when there weren’t a plethora of guarded ponies there. But where was the fun in making things easy for myself? It was time to get to an inn and plan my evilly heroic stealing of books for some deranged cultist.

|— ☩ —|

Were I anypony else, I might have died just there. Of shame. But, well, I was myself. It was a lovely early evening, just as the party proper started. The aristoponies were arriving, and the musical guests were getting ready to prepare.

As for me?

Well, I was naked save for a codpiece and a speedo, drowning in glitter, face painted like a cheap whore, covered in feathers, and stumbling towards the Guards’ Quarters of Canterlot Castle.

“Oh, Celestia,” I moan in a voice that was just barely holding back sobs, “I’m sorry I’m late. Oh, Celestia, I’m so sorry!” I hobbled forwards as I rubbed my face, getting makeup and glitter all over my face. The two guards to the barracks just stared at me. “It was my daughter, and then I had to go get a rape-examination, and all those beeees.”

Both white of coat and wearing paltry excuse for iron armor, the guards just exchanged baffled glances. Behind them, the wooden walls of the barracks stood, and further behind it were the white walls of Canterlot Castle.

“I’ll-I’ll be right back out, okay guys? I j-just need to get my armor on, and I’ll be right back. I’m not shirking duty, I swear!”

“I…” one the guards tried, but just stared at me as I stumbled past him.

In a moment, I was inside, the door shut behind me. My heart raced faster than a shrew being chased by a flock of owls. Only they weren’t owls—they were potatoes with teeth! I sighed, rubbing my face and getting glitter in my mouth. Spitting the glitter out, I reflected on just how stupidly well that plan had worked. Mind you, the plan was essentially “Sneak in by baffling the guards so hard they don’t stop you”, but ’twas the kind of plan that toppled empires.

Thanks to well-labeled signs, I quickly found the locker rooms, where there were showers. A quick, shameful shower later and all the gunk and glitter and whorish paint was gone. Going into my bags—never leave home without them—I pulled out a mirror, some more makeup, and an outfit.

I painted a cheshire grin onto my face with black and white makeup, extending from my lips to my cheekbones. It looked really freaky to me, mostly because I as such a terrible artists that everything I drew ended up looking like either some eldritch horror or a rape threat. There was a reason why I had a court order not to draw.

That look was completed by tiny, specially designed sacks over my ears to make them look like cat ears and not pony ears, with the colors and everything of a black kitty. “Meow,” I said to myself. After putting on my suit and hitching my bags up, I went back out into the halls of the barracks.

These were the back halls of Canterlot Castle, where all the servants and other such folk moved about, doing their work in places that the proper highborn bastards wouldn’t see. A part of me was sad that I wouldn’t get to see the richer insides of this fabled castle, but from what I saw from the outside—its white walls and glistening, purposeless spires and towers—it was far less impressive than the massive masonry of the castle in Zentrum, die Zitadelle, the Citadel. Even Canterlot City, what very little I could see of it from where I’d been, didn’t strike me as being nearly as menacing or powerful as Zentrum.

Somehow, I ended up exploring and stumbling my way into an area that appeared to be a small studio. It was like a ghost town, but there were mirrors and little stations for ponies to put on makeup, racks full of fluffy, outlandish clothing, and a few doors off to the side. The general disorder of this room suggested it had been used recently; its performers must have been out already, playing and doing whatever for their patrons.

This place made me uncomfortable. Last time I’d been in a dressing room places, I’d had a dead leg, and then I’d been grabbed, dragged into a room, and almost raped by the Cherrypillar.

I heard the clank of armor, and two stallions speaking. Figuring they were guards, I ducked into one of the dressing rooms to hide, waiting for them to—oh, wait. Hello to thee, cliché. Totally should have seen this coming.

The grayish-gold earther mare sitting at the room’s vanity turned to me, wearing only a single fake eyelash, her cobalt-blue mane done up in pigtails. “Buh—wha’?”

A very twisted part of me instantly recognized her. I had her to thank for the lovely song I sang during the Songnam Slaughter. “Sapphire Shores?”

She managed to look embarrassed. “Uh, hello to you too, sugah. Yes, yes, I know I’m running behind schedule—you don’t need to come and bother me as I’m getting ready for my performance! First my carriage mysteriously caught fire, then my chauffeur caught fire somehow, and then the firefighters caught fire trying to put it out, and I’m an utter mess right now.”

“So, how long long will it take you to get ready?” I found myself asking.

“I don’t know, sugah. I’d hope Duke Elkington might have helped me out, but he’s off messing around with the North.” She frowned, ears drooping. “And I’d been so hoping he’d be here.”

“Ah, well, I’m a friend of Elkington’s.”

Her ears perked. “You are?”

He savagely raped me as I was tied to a bed and I still can’t shit without crying now, I almost told her. Really. I wanted to. Instead, what I said was, “Just yesterday, he helped me sign on some mare for a musical performance here, because I asked nicely. Only downside is that now I owe him a favor. Knowing him, he’ll have me assassinate some evil monsters again. One that his Caroleans can’t deal with.”

“Huh.” That was all she gave me.

“I would so presume in a cold day in June.”

“Riiight. Well, sugah, if you don’t mind leaving me to my own, I’ll be out on stage in just… ten minutes or so, and I’ll have my smooth jazz song covers all ready to sing.”

“Did you say ‘smooth jazz’?” I asked, a dangerous gleam in my eye

Sapphire Shores glanced at her reflection in the mirror. “Yes, it’s the musical theme—those darn aristocrats are finally letting somepony play ‘commonfolk music’, and I aim to teach ’em that jazz is awe… Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” I asked in a dark voice. The more I thought about it, the more that smile grew, displacing the already freaky-looking cheshire grin painted across my face. It wasn’t a very thought-out idea, but it was going to be fun and would let me get into the party proper.

“Like that. It’s freaking me out, sugah.”

“Oh, about that, Miss Sapphire Shores…” I lurched forwards, and in about a minute, Sapphire Shores was bound and gagged in the dressing room’s small closet. Hopefully, somepony would find her before she starved to death. Although finding out in a week that Sapphire Shores starved to death in a closet would totally make my day.

Taped to her vanity mirror was a little scrap of paper telling me how to get to where Shores had been supposed to go from here. Directions, that is. I took the note down, stepped outside of the room, and followed the directions to get to where I wanted to be, trying the whole while to hide the nigh murderous smile that was fighting to control my face.

My trip ended with me coming out onto the back of a stage. Fumbling through the curtains, I came out onto the stage meant to be seen by ponies. Before me stretched a titanic ballroom. It was filled with ponies in suits and gowns, standing up and talking, sitting at tables and talking, and doing other annoying things that made me very glad that local aristocrats were all executed on principle when the Reich liberated a nation. Their land and wealth made the Reich good friends when we redistributed it to the local poor.

What drew my eye most, though, was the dame wearing the red dress, sitting all alone at a table and looking lonely. She wasn’t looking at me since she was rubbing her eyes, but I recognized her. Selena.

A gray mare on the stage gasped. I turned to her just as she stammered, “Jericho!?” She was standing on her hind legs, stabilized by holding herself with her instrument, a cello.

“Hey there, Octavia,” I chirped, stepping up to the stage’s microphone. She wasn’t the only musician on the stage; there was a buck with what looked like a saxophone and another on a piano, to name the closest ones.

I tapped on the microphone, and instantly the loud room went quiet as everypony looked to me. A part of me wondered why Equestrian microphones, which shouldn’t’ve had any similarity with the ones we had in the Reich, looked so much like those we had in the Reich.

“Ladies and gentlecolts of the jury,” I said, voice ringing out across the whole giant room. “First of all, not guilty. Second of all, Sapphire Shores shall not be here tonight—her carriage and chauffeur caught on so much fire that she is now one with the fire gods and seeks to forever destroy winter. In the meantime, as we await our inevitable demise at the hooves of a pop-singing, vengeful goddess of fire, I have been so sorrily informed that your regularly scheduled jazz will, in fact, be sung by yours truly.”

They said nothing, just watched. Smiling, I pulled out several sheets of jazz music. Mister Welch had loved him some music, writing the lyrics and notes to various songs. I suppose I never could bear to part with any parts of him I still had. In any case, I handed the sheets out.

“Can you play this?” I asked.

Octavia read the music sheet. “I… I think I can. Anything for you, friend.” She smiled at me, and I tipped my hat to her.

“Um, I don’t think—” the piano-played tried.

“Hey!” Octavia snapped. “Jericho’s a good pony. If he wants our help, it’s the least we can do, Besides, without Sapphire Shores, there’s nothing really to play.” She flashed me another smile as the pianist grumbled an acceptance.

“Thankee, Miss Octavia,” I chirped, stepping up to the microphone. I had a good many songs, because Mister Welch had loved his music. Oh, Mister Welch, you crazy, free-thinking changeling bastard who taught me my perfected Equestrian. This was for you, buddy, wherever in the afterlife you were.

“And a one, and a two, and a three, four, five!” And the smooth jazz began.

“Say your prayers, little one.

To forget ain’t fun

So include everyone.

I tuck you in, wie ich bin,

Keep you free from sin

Till der Sandmann, he comes—”

|— ☩ —|

“Go on and wring my neck,

Like when a towel wets.

A little discipline

For my pet genius.

My head is like horseshoes

Go on, dig your hooves in.

I cannot stop living.

I’m thirty-something—”

|— ☩ —|

“Mother…

Tell your children to stay far away.

Tell your children not to speak my tongue

What I mean,

What I say,

Mother—”

And on for an hour more.

|— ☩ —|

The thunderous applause was slowing down. In truth, I didn’t know how much of it was a polite applause that you were supposed to do, how much was honest enjoyment. Mine wasn’t the most trained singing voice, but it wasn’t godawful. Or so I thought. Octavia, though, had played her cello with ludicrous skill, especially considering that the cello wasn’t a traditional jazz instrument.

I was sweating. I could see sweat glistening off Octavia, too. “I think they hated it. What you you say? It’s national ironic applause day, most likely.”

Octavia chuckled. “Oh, that’s the most logical answer. Clearly, it had nothing to do with just some phenomenal music, great lyrics, and a good singer.”

“I like how everything but me got words like ‘phenomenal’ and ‘great’, but all I got was ‘good’.”

She gave me an almost conspiratorial little smirk. “Well, it was only so good. I think it’s because everything was just so impressive.”

“Like yours truly?”

“Jericho, you flatter me,” she chuckled, waving a hoof at me. “It’ll get you nowhere, you know.”

I shrugged, glancing back out to the ballroom. Ponies were still applauding, but many were now wandering around and getting back to socializing. “Flattery might get me nowhere, but it sure doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No, no it doesn’t.”

Adjusting my masque, I said, “Alright, Octavia, always great seeing you, but I must go out into the crowd because the doors to the outside are on the far side of ballroom.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?” she asked.

Taking up my sheets of music and putting them in my bag, I hummed an “Mm-hm” to her.

“Might I ask why?”

“Yes—I’m up to no good, truth be told. Because ‘lies be told, I’m about to go into labor’ only works the one time.”

“I… okay.” She looked to the stage curtains. “Will you be back at all?”

“Can’t say.” I shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve to go commit some evils for the good of everypony. Or at least myself.” I stepped down off the stage, nearly tumbling into some buck wearing a fancy hat. With great care, I reached forwards and touched his hat, pushing it so that it sat slightly off-center. “There. Now you’re a rebel without a cause. Mares love that sort of thing, which means you might get raped by one now. See? I’ve made you rape-bait; this should hopefully distract them from me,” I said to him.

“Um, uh—farewell, Jericho!” Octavia called out, but I was too busy ducking and weaving through the crowd to respond to her.

Manys of the ponies offered me little words, compliments on my performance, questions regarding which noble house I belonged to—“Haus Faust,” I told those who asked—and all manner of stupid things that only inbred highborns cared for. Although a few complimented me on my makeup, that cheshire grin on my face.

With my newfound popularity, I was sure that I could probably wander around outside without attracting too much attention to any guards. Just one of the performers out for a breath of air. Nevermind that the Royal Archives were located in a separate building from the castle but still on castle grounds, which I could most easily get to by going outside. Yes, I knew that the idea of being more well-known helping me remain incognito made no sense. I was just trying to retroactively make some tactical reason for having smooth jazz fun.

Then I came across her table. Well, tripped on some mare’s dress and fell down, rolling into the little area round the table. It was isolated from the rest of the ballroom, despite practically being in its very center, like ponies just wanted to avoid it.

When I stood up, our eyes met. Her blue eyes were nice, but the mare herself looked bored, almost sad. Even with the bunny-ears headband she wore. There was a barely opened bottle of sangria on her table, plus four empty wineglasses.

“J-Jericho?” she asked, raising her head.

“Well, last I checked,” I replied. “Although I’ve been wrong before.”

Selena smiled bright and wide. “Well, aren’t you just a sweet surprise. It’s good to see you again.” Her horn glew blue, and the chair opposite her scooted back. “Hey, why not sit down? You’ve got to be tired from all these bothersome nobles. And look! I finally found a bottle of sangria.”

“I can see that,” I chuckled.

“So come on, sit down. I want to know what brings you to here of all places.”

I hesitated as I looked at her earnest little smile. “Ah, what the hay,” I muttered, taking her offered seat. “So, I didn’t figure you for a noblepony.”

“Nor did I of you.”

I adjusted my hat. “That’s because I’m not.”

“Good, because neither am I.” She flashed me a smirk, pouring herself a glass of sangria. She seemed to give it a second’s thought, then poured me a glass. I thanked her as I took the glace, taking note that the musicians were now playing a good background music.“So, what brings you to this most unlikely of places?”

“Well,” I said, “my first task for any place is to bring sexy back, as was the goal of my dear friend, Mister Welch.” She cocked a brow. “But being that I myself lack it, I suppose goal number two is to combat the sexiless evils. But in this case? I admit, I’m just up to no good.”

“No good?” she asked, and took a sip of her wine.

Glancing to the stage, I couldn’t help but notice all the little looks I got from a good few of the ponies here. One white stallion with a blond mane flashed me a dirty look, his gaze softening as he looked to Selena.

“Well, yes. I’m here because I’m a no-good, dirty thinking, spunky bad boy.” I made an overly dramatic face, saying in a scratchy voice, “In a world of evil and more evil things, only one stallion can save the world and teach it how to dance—Jericho, the Reckoning of the Seven Demon Space Whales From Outer Space! Coming to musical theaters this August.” I coughed. “Ow, that voice hurts.”

Selena chuckled, shaking her head. “Ah, it’s so good to talk to somepony who isn’t stuck-up and self-obsessed here. It’s rather like a cool drink of water on a hot day, really.”

“I prefer iced tea to water.”

She gave me an oblong, playfully ‘are you serious?’ look. “Then you’re like a cool glass of tea on a hot day. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic, ma’am. Now I can die a happy stallion.” I took a shot of the sangria. “Of course, the only way to die would be fighting to the death against evil for that one cause worth fighting for—love.”

Selena leaned back, giving me a strange look. “For love, hmm? Of what? Or of whom?”

“Of nopony in particular, I assure you,” I said, adjusting the brim of my hat. “I fight because I like people to stay alive. Because I’m more than happy to do the bad things that need be done so that the innocent needn’t sully themselves with evil. Because I like sitting back after a hard day’s work to see that everyone’s still happy, that children can sleep easy at night—” I raised my glass to her “—that the pretty girls get together with the nice guys.”

“How romantic,” she said in a teasing tone. Selena brushed some of her luxurious hair out of her eyes and smiled almost nervously.

I leaned forwards. “You know, where I’m from, we have a saying. ‘You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.’ Me? I’m pretty sure I should be somewhere in ‘villain’ territory, and the only thing keeping me in the heroic camp is pure, unadulterated denial.”

“A curious saying,” she commented, nodding. “And where were you from again, Jericho?”

I shrugged. “At this point, God only knows.”

The words seemed to hit her like a brick filled with yummy worms to the face. I could tell she managed to hide it well, but there was no looking a look of surprise when it came. “Did you just reference a deity?” she asked. “Like, that vague one you can find reference to in some of the really old history books?”

“Yes, that I did.”

“Weird.” She pursed her lips to the side. “I wasn’t aware said deity was anything more than a historical footnote anymore. It’s a terribly ancient cult. Although I’ve heard that in a few isolated parts of Equestria, some old faiths survive. Like, I know for a fact that the old religion of the crystal ponies is alive, though unwell, in the Crystal City up north. But the one you mentioned? To be frank, it’s the very last one I’d ever expect to ever hear mention of.”

I smiled. “In the free cities of Märakech, they call Him Rhalgað, the Father of Fire, who is locked in an eternal fight against the darkness. In old Neighpon, they called Him the ‘Third God’. The First God created the world, then left to watch over it as the sun. The Second God, Dägon, become the warden of the world, its protector, its patron. They said the Third God would come in the end of days; He would sink Nippön to the bottom of the sea, exterminating its ponies, and end the world in a symphony of frost and fire. They said that His representative on this world was Vikuta.

“To the far east, in the steppes and mountains of the continent of Tochara, they say He is the most powerful, the very first face of the Many-Faced God of Death, for all gods are simply a different face of their God of Death, and they say my countryfolk are the chosen of the Death God.

“But from the land I’m from? We’re content to usually just refer to Him simply as Gott, which is our word for God.”

Selena cocked a brow. “Fascinating. I had no idea that old cult managed to spread and survive elsewhere so well.” Well, technically speaking, it’s the world’s single largest religion, but whatever. “So, you’re a worldly sort, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’ve been around the world and have had most things try to kill me.” I shrugged. “If that’s your idea of worldly, then worldly am I.”

The mare glanced around, then drank half her wine glass in a single swing. “So then tell me, Mister Jericho, what’s such a worldly sort as yourself doing in such a place as this?”

“Well, I could tell thee, Miss Selena.” I tilted my head. “But that would be telling.” I finished my glass of wine and stood up. I walked around the table, heading for the door on the far side of the ballroom.

Some stallions did things to mares that they left behind. Many were known for leaving behind a trail of broken hearts and tears. Me? I left behind a trail of baffled, confused mares. I felt that this made me far more unique.

So, like a pile of snakes hotglued to a very hungry mongoose, I slithered my way through the nobles. Thoughts of how I’d find Snechta’s mystical book raced through my mind alongside images of me with my left eye and horn back. In that image, I was standing on a hill, holding my heavenly weapons, my duster fluttering in the wind.

Ah, and here were the double doors that lead in the outside gardens. And to think, all of this could have been avoided if there’d been a legal way for me to borrow this book. But no, there apparently wasn’t a way to do that. That would be easy. And the Universe couldn’t get off unless I was having a hard time. Still, I had a door to—

“Not so fast,” a mare’s voice said amicably as the lady in the red dress stepped in front of the door. The first thing I noticed was that the dress was cut to show off parts of her nice legs. She’s got legs and she knows how to use them, I thought idly. The other thing I noticed that was Selena was standing between me and my door, and I had no how she’d gotten here before me. “You slipped away last time, but not this time.”

“Miss Selena,” I said calmly, “I really need to get through that door. Why not just go back to doing what you were doing and forget about me and my boring tale?”

“Please,” she scoffed. “Anything is better than sitting there, being ignored by these aristocrats. You’re doing something interesting—the first really noteworthy thing I’ve seen all week from one of the few genuinely interesting ponies I can think of. If you expect me to just sit by and watch fun happen while I eventually get drunk off sangria, you’ve got another thing coming.”

I shifted my weight, giving her a skeptical look. “Oh, I doubt you’d have any real lingering interest in what I’m up to.”

She cocked a brow. “Hmm, call me harsh, but I think you’re lying.”

“Why, Miss Selena, I am offended. Everything I say is the honest truth.”

“Even the lies?”

I smiled. “Especially the lies.”

She tilted her head forwards, giving me a weird little smirk. “So tell me a lie, then.”

“As the lady wishes,” I said. “It’s a dark, nefarious goal that might just knock your socks off.”

Selena tilted her head to look down at herself. “Why, I’m not wearing any socks.”

“For the moment, at least. You might need to wear them for what I’ve got to say.”

“Mister Jericho, are you telling me that you’d like to see me in socks?”

I shrugged. “I’m not saying I’d be opposed to the idea.” I get the feeling that what I just said was the Equestrian equivalent to ‘I’d like you see you in nothing but stockings and a thong’.

Selena flashed me a wicked little smirk. “Why, you dog, you, Mister Jericho. I don’t think I believe what I’m hearing. Very improper.”

“Such a shame, Miss Selena.” I glanced over my shoulder. There were a few ponies glancing back my way, including that same white buck with the blond mane. Weirdo. “I’m a very improper stallion. Dirty thoughts, dirty mouth, dirty fighting, dirty dancing—all the height of improperness.”

The mare gave me a single chuckle. “Why, what kind of girl do you take me for?”

I shrugged, giving her a flat expression. “One who’s refusing to let me pass and go on my way.”

“Well, if I just let you go, that’d be irresponsible of me, wouldn’t it?” she said. “Do at least tell me what dark, nefarious thing you’re up to. How else am I supposed to know if it’s so bad that I need to put some socks on just so you can rip them off?”

I hesitated, then nodded. It was a dumb idea, sure, but… no, I had no real justification. “You know what, ma’am?”

“What?”

Instead of saying it, I reached forwards and grabbed her hoof with a smile. She shot me a hesitant look as I maneuvered around her and opened the door, holding onto her hoof. It was a heavy door. One that, combined with the noise of the party, would likely be able to block out even screams from the partygoers inside. Hopefully, she wouldn’t scream, but it never hurt to be cautious. I tugged on her, and she followed me outside in what were definitely the massive castle gardens, with bushes and trees and everything. High above, the moon leered down creepily at us.

“Do you promise not to tell?” I asked, closing the door.

Her eyes almost seemed to sparkle. “How can I promise if I don’t know what it is?”

“Because you’re willing to trust me, a total stranger with a penchant for danger and getting into trouble with the authorities.”

She seemed to consider that for a moment. “Alright, you win. I’ll bite. What dark, nefarious deed are you here to perform?”

“In short, Selena, I’m here because I’ve been tasked with stealing something precious from Princess Celestia.”

“What?” she asked slowly, looking at me like a piggy looks at a butcher. Selena took a step backwards, eyes narrowing. She’d better not scream. If she screamed…

“It was something she stole, something that somepony needs more than her. It doesn’t belong to her.”

The suspicious look didn’t vanish. God help her if she screamed! “That sounds more shady and crooked than nefarious.”

I flashed her a cool smile, maintaining my calm, friendly disposition. Rubbing my shoulder, I felt for the knife just ready to come out of my suit. “Only without context. What do you know of the Crystal City, Côrint? Or of Mançthwl, a big festival there?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Just as well,” I said. “See, due to a very whacky misunderstanding, I ended up in a gladiatorial competition, wherein I won due to such-and-such. That made me the Champion of Côrint, its so-called best warrior. Long story short, this means that I have to return to the empire a very precious book that Celestia stole from them.” I shrugged. “I’m just doing my duty as a concerned citizen and returning it. That fact that this also benefits me considerably is merely a joyous coincidence. Because I’m just nice like that.”

The look vanished, replaced by a little giggle. Thank God she hadn’t screamed… “Why, that might be enough for a single sock, Mister Bad Boy Jericho. For a fun sort as you, it’s all I’ll spare.”

“I wouldn’t dream of asking more of you.” Releasing her hoof, I stepped away from the mare, but she grabbed me by the arm. Her grip was stronger that I would have expected.

“Hold up, wait.” She gave me a look like a puppy covered in spikes. “Let me help.”

“Such improper actions from such a proper lady?”

“You seem to be doing something far more fun than literally anything else right now, and if it’s fun, I’ll jump on it. Besides, somepony has to make sure you don’t get in trouble. Much trouble, at least. And who better than me, hmm?”

“Didn’t you just call me a fun sort?” I asked. “Does that mean you plan to jump on me?”

Selena blinked. “I, uh, um… I didn’t mean to imply that, uh—well, that is—”

“Because I tend to reserve piggyback rides only for friends and foals.”

She rubbed her arm. Then, in a swift motion, she pulled out a bottle of sangria from under her dress. Just as quickly she took a deep swig of the wine before vanishing it back under her dress. Several deep breaths later and she said, “Well, who said anything about riding your back?”

I took several steps backwards, staring at her. “Did you just say… suggest…?”

Selena looked up and to the side as she shrugged, humming a “Hmm-hmmh?” My gaze remained on her. She looked at me, our eyes met, and she quickly darted them away. “It, uh, it sounded

much more clever in my head. Outside, it sounds sort of…”

“Well—” The doors to the ball creaked open, killing my thoughts as I grabbed Selena and darted into the bushes with her.

“Hey, what the?” she protested, but I shooshed her, pointing to the two armored stallions who were stepping out into the night. Selena narrowed her eyes as she peered through the bushes. “House guards,” she said. “Not royal.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

The two stallions looked at each other, shrugged, then turned to their left and wandered off. To me, the way they looked around suggest they were looking for something in particular.

“See the capes they’re wearing? First of all, Canterlot Royal Guards don’t wear capes. Second, those capes bear the insignia of a noble house, not the royal house.” She frowned. “Odd that they’re out here. Noble guards tend to stay out of these event, since the royal guards have it all covered. Also, why are we hiding here? We’re not doing anything wrong just by standing outside.”

I stepped out of the bushes, and she followed. Helping brush her red dress of little leaves, I said, “Well, because now that we’re in criminal league, we must play the part.”

“Playing the part,” she replied flatly. “Like how you’re dressed as a cat with an eyepatch?”

“Yes, because I’m Bootsy the One-Eyed Cat. If I took the eyepatch off, I’d just be Bootsy. And nopony—nopony—likes Bootsy.” Also, you’d get to see my eyeless eyesocket with the lid sown shut, which is a major turnoff. I poked the rabbit ear headband she wore. “And you’re my friendly friend, Doña Cutebunny.”

“Riiight.”

“Leeeft,” I said, and she giggled.

“Okay, that was odd. Never have I heard that response before.”

I looked around the gardens. “Yeah, I’m known for those kinds of responses. Snarky, weird thoughts are what go on in my head, and so snarky, weird things come out of my mouth.”

“And dirty,” she added.

I gave her a look, trying to figure out—oh, that’s what she meant. “Yes, those two. Snarky, weird, dirty thoughts and things. Now then, the biggest flaw in my plan is that I have no idea where anything in this castle is, so if I want to find the Royal Archives, I—”

“I know where they are.”

“Well,” I said, “that would be helpful. Do you know anything about how well guarded it is?”

Selena gave me a flat look. “It’s a library.”

“Yes, and I’m a pony. That doesn’t mean that I know everything about every other pony simply because I myself was born and raised as one. I mean, some ponies are stallions who get their gentials chopped off, and I most certainly don’t know anything about being them. Although, I know a thing or two about being a mare—please don’t ask me why.”

She ran a hoof through her mane, straightening it out. “In… any case, the Royal Archives are over yonder.” Selena pointed in the vague direction that those two house guards hadn’t gone. “A good portion of the castle grounds are outside, so we can get there without having to dart into any interiors.”

“Great!” I chirped. “See? I love it when a plan that I made up and then pretended to have been following this whole time comes together.”

Selena smiled, rolling her eyes. “Just try not to cause too much collateral damage, okay?”

“How do you know about my track record?” I asked darkly.

“You have a history of stealing books from archives?”

“Surprise plot twist! No, I have never stolen a book from an archive.” I took a step back from her. “Another surprise twist. We’ve got to steal this book within three hours or else something terrible will happen. And the prom’s tomorrow!”

She just looked at me.

“I’m… I’m raising the stakes here to create instant drama.”

Selena chuckled, shaking her head. “The real twist is that I was the cat the whole time.”

I reached forwards, pilfered her bunny ears, then put them on. Wasting no time, I removed my little cat ears and put them over her ears. “What. A. Twist!”

The mare fought herself to keep from laughing, but it was mostly in vain. “I don’t know what I’m even doing anymore. But I think I’ve laughed more tonight than I have for the past month, so I must be doing something right.”

Putting a hoof on her shoulder, I laughed and said, “Stick with me, Fräulein, because getting into life-threatening danger due to completely avoidable circumstances and laughing thereabout are two of my favorite things.”

|— ☩ —|

“Halt,” I whispered, pressing up against a stone wall. Selena did the same. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since leaving the ballroom, but this damn castle just seemed so much bigger than I would have thought. Still, for all the stonework and masonry, there were enough little trees, grass, and bushes to make it unoppressive.

“What is it?” she whispered.

I pointed down the way we’d came. “Those house guards are coming this way, and now there’s four of them.”

“Four?”

“Yes, four. One less than five and the square root of sixteen.” I paused to think. Yes, my math was accurate. For a second there, I wasn’t sure if four was less than five. I didn’t pay much attention in school.

“What are we going to do about them?”

I shot her an oblong look. “Well, we’re not going to kill them, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“No, no, no! I wasn’t—”

“Because killing guards who are just doing their thing is wrong.” Said the Butcher of Songnam.

Selena took a breath, grimacing at me. “Look, I swear I wasn’t suggesting that, so—”

“Shh!” I hissed, gesturing to the little brick-laden path whence we’d came. The troupe of troops walked slowly down the path, not looking over to the wall and trees where Selena and I stood.

“Yeah, so now the Captain-at-Arms has requested all house guards in the area to immediately suit up and report to him,” one of the guards was saying.

“All because some singer broad got found tied up in a closet?” another asked.

Oh. Well. That certainly wasn’t something coming back to bite me on the penis, nope.

“Sapphire Shores?” I heard Selena whisper, barely audible.

“Ayuh,” a third, who was bigger and taller than the other three and had a face liked a slapped ass, remarked. “About half of the bucks here now are Prince Blueblood’s own. He seems to be freaking out more about this than everypony else.”

“Huh. Wonder why.”

“Dunno,” the big one said. “I only been workin’ for Blueblood since this mud season, if it do say.”

“Yeah—I don’t know what that is, cap.”

Then the big one said, “Mud season means ‘spring’, if it do say. Just some argot. Look, back on topic, Blueblood asked us to be on the lookout for a lady in red who disappeared out here.” I got chill bumps on the back of my neck when he said that. My eye swiveled to Selena. “I think milord has his eye on her.”

I watched as they went around a corner. “Selena,” I said.

“Um, yes?”

“The universe is an arbitrary harlot who enjoys stacking the deck against me.”

“I can see that.”

So. Great. Not only were the number of guards mayhap doubled or more, I didn’t know, but some horny noblepony was after Selena. And because I’d taken her as my partner-in-crime, that put me in the especial sights of a great number of guards. Yay. I didn’t know how, but this night could only get better from here on in. Right? Right? Oh, by the Prophet’s holy virginity, this was just the beginning, wasn’t it?

“Are you okay?” Selena asked. “You have a weird look on your face.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw myself sitting a table, dressed like a knight/serial killer. “Okay,” I told the Spielmeister, “if we’re going into this dungeon, can you make them all harder so we can gain more experience and better loot?” This in turn transformed the whimpy little shrimp-ponies into a bear-eating sharks that knew the tongues of ponykind.

“Who, me?” I replied back in the real world. “Of course. We just ramped up the difficulty but it means we’ll get better loot and level up faster. So, yeah, I’m all fit and well.”

“Uh-huh,” she droned. “Fit as a butcher’s dog.”

“I don’t know what that means, so I will ignore it,” I said. “So, where is the library from here?”

Selena gestured her head off to the side. Past a gazebo, some trees, and a little creek, I could see a large, white building that was topped by one of those spire-towers. In the dark distance, I could make out figures, ponies in armor milling about.

“God,” I groaned, “how is anypony supposed to actually get into the archives? Does Princess Celestia not care for freedom of information?”

The mare glanced at me. “Well, usually, it’s not exactly illegal to walk around Canterlot. It’s just that, A, it’s closed for the week; and B, we’re approaching from the Canterlot Castle side, where it’s generally considered trespassing to just mozy around for no good reason. And by ‘no good’, I mean the kind of nefarious stuff we’re doing. I wouldn’t think that Celestia would take too kindly to a couple of ponies nabbing off with one of her books, however harmless their intent.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Still, there’s a lot of guards running around.”

“Hmm, from what I hear, they’re all coat, no knickers.”

All I did was stare at her. “You keep using phrases I don’t know the meaning of.”

Selena shrank back, grimacing. “You don’t? I, uh, sorry. I-I just hear things and pick them and use them without really knowing what they mean or who understands them.” She took a deep breath. “So, are we going to actually sneak in there, or are we just going to stand here like idiots?” She blinked. “As the princess said to the gardener.”

I looked at her. It took me a second to understand that her last line was basically a less juvenile version of ‘that’s what she said’. So I laughed, trying to keep quiet so that guards wouldn’t hear. “My, and here I thought you were a right proper dame.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Mister Jericho.”

“Oh, don’t I know it,” I said with a gleam in the eye. “Don’t I know it.”

|— ☩ —|

Selena smiled at me, pushing the long rubber cord into my hooves. “See? I told you a gardener’s shed would be a great place to go.”

“I never disagreed,” I said, looking at the great length of gardening hose. This led to me peering back into the shed, at all the little tools, the few dirty rags and bags of feed. A gleam sparked in my eye as I looked through the bushes by the shed and spotted a troupe of four guards, the single largest collection of guards this side of the Royal Canterlot Archives. “If I could lure them off, I might be able to beat them down, tie them up, gag them, and store them in the shed. But only if I can catch them by surprise. If they see me coming, I’m a dead stallion.” I took a breath. “Okay, Selena, you stay here and—”

She hit me with her flanks. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“But…?” I trailed off as she touched a hoof to my lips.

The mare closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, Selena looked like a bimbo—for lack of a better term. Eyes slightly confused, a lips curled into a nervous little O. “Oh, dear. I think I’m lost. You there, guards…” She flashed me a smile, the airheaded look gone.

“I…”

“Stay here, I prithee, and watch me work.”

“Prithee?”

“That? It’s an old but useful word, short for ‘I pray thee’,” she said. “It means ‘please’, but it’s far more forceful, like requesting something which cannot be denied. I prithee come here.” She leaned towards me and winked. “That means that you’d better come as I command you to.” Selena giggled. “Or else!”

Well, that’s not at all mildly rapey. “Uh-huh. And have you ever done anything like this before, what you’re about to do?”

“Have you?”

“Right.” I watched her put on that same empty look and sauntered away from the shed and around the hedge. From where I stood, I noticed she’d hitched up her dress to show more leg, a fact drawn suspicion to by the exaggerated way she swayed her hips. She looked like a parody of the dumb noble girl—so far gone that one couldn’t rightly tell that she was faking it.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said in an almost spaced-out tone. Selena put a hoof to her lips and looked around. “Um, hello?”

“Miss,” one of the guards said, the troupe stopping. “These grounds are off limits, you’ll—”

“Can you help me?” she asked, still looking around.

“Miss, you’ll have to—”

“I don’t know where I am,” Selena suddenly whined with a pout. “I was looking for the little filly’s room, but then there was this nasty, icky frog from the gardens that tried landing on me, and now I don’t know where the party is anymore!”

He pointed off in my general directions. “It’s over there, miss, now would you—”

“I don’t know where ‘over there’ is.” Her pout deepened. “Can you help me? Please?” She smiled like a beggar girl hoping to earn enough money for a loaf of bread. “I’ll be your best friend.”

“Miss, we can’t help you with that,” the stallion replied, but then the one to his left tapped him on the shoulder.

“Oh, lighten up, mate,” the other said. “She’s just a little lost. What kind of guards would we be if we didn’t help ’er out, yeah?”

In just a moment, the whole troupe had turned against the first, and he acquiesced. The idiot actually led his three cohorts plus Selena down my way. I grabbed four of the rags from the shed and lay in wait for the guards to come this way. This would teach them never to do a good deed ever again!

“For their mouths,” I called out just as they were passing me, throwing two of the rags to Selena.

“What in the?” the lead guard said just before I clocked him in the throat. Guard armor here had absolutely zero protection for the neck, face, or any of the lower body. He went down clutching his throat and choking. I went to slug the other one, but my arm froze up right before his face. Oh, yeah, the right arm has a thing.

“Shit!” he hissed, but that was all he really did. I didn’t give him a chance to do much else before I knocked him to the ground.

With a start, I looked up to see the other two guards. They had rags shoved so far into their mouths that I was surprised they weren’t choking to death. Selena was smiling up at me, the two stallions on their backs and pinned to the ground by the rags in theirs mouth. Because if they moved, I figured, just as they must have, they would choke and suffocate.

Good girl, I thought. In just a few minutes, they were all safely bound and gagged inside the locked shed. Selena made sure I didn’t hurt them, which was fine by me.

“That was so exciting!” Selena whispered. “I’d never done something like that before!”

“Could have fooled me,” I said, sneaking my way through the trees and bushes, going towards the archives. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“Well, if stallions are still stupid enough to fall for it, it’s their own fault.”

I laughed. “Amen thereto.”

She chuckled as she went back to approaching the archives. “Hey, now that I think about it, this red dress is probably holding me back,” she went on. “I feel a bit odd wearing it and doing this.”

“You could cover it up,” I suggested, crawling into the gazebo. I could practically taste forbidden literature. Also, mothballs.

“What do you mean?”

Sitting up, my back against the solid wall of the gazebo, I pulled out my black poncho. “Wear this, and you’ll look marginally like a bladeslinger.”

Selena just looked at me. Unlike me, she wasn’t stalking about, mostly because she probably knew that we’d taken out all the guards in the area, and thus had no need to feel cool by stealthing about. “How did you fit that in that bag? Looks a bit much to fit in there comfortably.”

“Well, it’s like I said: I’m surprisingly adept at getting—”

“Bigs things to fit into tight spaces,” Selena finished with me. “Yes, I recall.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Uh… Nothing, forget I said anything.” She shook her head as she put my poncho on. “Hey, do you have a knife?”

I produced it from under my suit and offered it to her. “Yeah. You want a weapon to complete the bladeslinger look?”

“No—” and she cut off a huge chunk of her lower dress. “This dang thing’s just a bit too frou-frou for me.” Selena sliced at bits of fabric, then tossed the cut bits unceremoniously to the ground.

“But your dress!”

Selena cocked a brow. She stood there above me, black poncho swung mostly over her back, bits of her torn dress swaying idly in the wild breeze. The look at once showed off more of her gorgeous legs and made her look like she wouldn’t hesitate to use those legs to break my throat. “What about it? I’ll just get another one. One more conductive to mobility, hopefully.”

I sat back, a dumb little smile on my lips, a borderline vacant look in my eye. “Yea verily, and so ye shall.”

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Some ponies hardly see anything. Me? I can see more in one fleeting glance than most stallions see in a lifetime.” I took a breath. “I’m just committing this image I see before me to memory.”

The mare shot me a look I couldn’t read, and that idea sat in my gut about as well as a liter of gin sat inside a small filly. Which was to say, it ended up on one of her parents. But in this case, nothing came out, and Selena said, “That’s rather flattering, in it’s own way.”

I continued looking up at her, staring into her blue eyes. Now that I thought about it, her eyes reminded me some a certain spectral mare I’d seen in my head before, had been seeing since I was dying in that swamp. And she had called me The Fool…

“You know,” I said, “you’re a lot more cohesive tonight then you were last we met.”

She shrugged it off like a lioness shrugs off her cubs because screw children. “Alcohol is a real great cure-all. Plus, I actually managed to sleep well last night, something I’d not done when last we met. In any case, we should get going,” she went on. “It may be the biggest library in the world, and it may be lightly guarded, but… oh, what was that phrasing about not pressing one’s luck?”

“It’s not the biggest in the world,” I scoffed, standing up. Get out of my head, Blue-Eyed Lady. Creeping out of the gazebo, I snuck to the bushes and trees around the path leading to the archives.

Behind me, Selena scoffed back. “As if there’s any bigger. From what I understand, it’s bigger, more robust than the mythical library of Marexandria.”

“I don’t quite know of that name, Marexandria,” I replied, staring up at the archives. “What I do know is that, even though it looks big from here, it’s nothing compared to the great library of Zentrum.”

“Tsen-troohm?” she asked. “What’s that?”

I gave her a look. “Far across der Zitternden See—the Shivering Sea, as they call it—in the great city of Zentrum, there stands a megalithic library, one which is the greatest bastion of information in the East: die Reichsbibliothek, the Reich’s Library. Even when Zentrum burnt to the ground nearly a hundred years ago, it—alongside the Citadel—stood proud and unblemished.”

“How do you…?” She let the question hang there.

“Well, I’ve been there. Like I said, I’m a worldly sort. Ich bin ein welterfahrener Mann, Fräulein. And I’m versed in a few languages, fluent especially in Equestrian and auf Teutsch, the language of the Reich. Both are very useful. Equestrian for Equestria. Teutsch because it’s the de facto language for all trade and diplomacy in the East. And, as the Teutsche like to say, it is the language wherewith to speak to God.”

Selena just looked at me as we sneaked up to the wall of the archives. High above, the moon seemed almost to be skeptical of me. Well, screw the moon and the so-called Equestrian goddess thereof! “Is… Zentrum the capital of that horrible empire, the Legion of the North that destroyed Neighpon, that horror story that mothers tell bad foals about to get them to go to bed?”

I smiled toothily at her.

“I bet they stole most of those books,” she remarked, looking up at the building. “With everything I’ve heard about those savages, I can scarce imagine otherwise.”

“So, how are we going to sneak into the archives?” I asked.

She hummed the universal sound for “I dunno”, shrugging for effect.

Flapping sounds. I looked up to see an small green bird—a Marolina parakeet?— flying around. It didn’t do much, then, as if answering my question, it flew towards the building, produced a spectacular dwunk as it hit, and then fell dead near my hooves.

“Huh,” I said in a toneless voice, looking down at it. “Well, that happened. How helpful.” It had crashed into a window just above us. One fairly close to the ground, but not impossible to reach with two ponies. By some miracle, it was a normal, household window, not even barred or anything. Selena and I exchanged glances.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“That two is greater than one but that one is the only number that neither prime nor unprime—” I gasped for breath “—therefore one truly is the loneliest number?”

“Yes, but besides that,” she replied.

I pressed up against the wall beneath the window. “Would you mind going up there and opening the window?”

“Not at all, Jericho,” she said, stepping up to me. As I helped her onto my, she said, “Hey, it looks like I was wrong. It was your back I’d be on.”

There was nothing to say to that. I just helped her higher, holding her up to get the window.

Selena worked with her magic, sticking out the tip of her tongue as she worked beneath the moon. Something clicked, and she asked, “You’re not looking up my dress, are you?”

I wasn’t, but it didn’t stop me from wondering why that would be a problem. Weren’t Equestrians always naked? Pushing her up and through the opened window, I kept thinking. I mean, maybe you’re just not supposed to look. It only becomes sexualized if you draw sexual attention thereto, but is otherwise innocuous? It’s not like those parts would always be in sight from every angle on a mare anyhow.

“You were!” she hissed in a tone that wasn’t exactly hostile.

“Huh?” I looked up to she that she was in the library, her head sticking out of the window, arms crossed over the window sill beneath her.

“You looked up my dress.” She stuck her nose up, closing her eyes. “How ungentlecoltly.” Selena opened and eye and peeked down at me, probably to make sure I was paying attention.

Staring up at her with a flat expression, I considered saying something cute. Something like Can you blame me? or Have you ever met the buck who didn’t want to see under your dress? or even It looked at me and now I feel so violated that I’m pressing charges against you for it. I watched as she brought out her bottle of sangria with a smile and took another swing. So, instead of defending myself against false allegations, I just continued doing what I was doing.

After what felt like ever, she looked down and frowned. “Um, are you well?”

“Do you wish to help me up, Selena?” I replied.

She pursed her lips to the side. “Well, I just don’t know if I can stand to be around so immoral a stallion as he who peeks up a lady’s dress.” Selena flashed me a little smile. “But I might be able to put this grievance aside for a little something…”

I shifted my weight in the grass, looking over my shoulder to see if any guards were coming. There were none. And that dead parakeet was starting to rot, I was sure. “If you’re asking me to get naked and dance in provocative ways before you as you sit back and nod like some kind of rich business executive,” I deadpanned, “then the answer is, not without a few more drinks. And the codpiece stays on.”

Selena put a hoof to her mouth and chuckled.

“I’m just a desperado underneath the window who most certainly didn’t look up your shortly cut dress,” I went on. “All I can offer is my word on this deal.”

“Fine,” she said, holding out her hooves for me, “but a deal’s a deal. Don’t forget that.” Grunting, she helped pull me through the window.

“I won’t.” Standing up and looking around the hall we were in, I thought, Technically, I just promised to prostitute myself to her. Huh. The halls were of rather upbeat-looking masonry, and stretched onto either side, slow curving as if in a large rotunda. “Because when you make a girl a promise, it’s in everypony’s best interest to keep it. But not if she has a penis. We stallions are just the expendable, unlikeable gender whom you can feel free to lie to, because we’re not really people nor do we have feelings.”

“Say what now?”

Turning slowly towards, I said in a dark, throaty voice, “Only the utter facts of my sad, gender-oppressed life.”

Selena glanced around. “O…kay.”

“Right, then.” I tapped a hoof on the reddish-orange carpet beneath me. “Do you know where Celestia might be keeping books that she recently stole from way up north?”

She put a hoof to her chin and hummed a “Hmmm… I think I might have an idea—the very bottom level of the Royal Canterlot Archives, storage.”

|— ☩ —|

That was exactly where it was, in a whole area cordoned off for recent acquisitions from the north. The book matched the description Snechta had given me to a T. And the little drawing she had of the book helped. It was called Calêrhos, and its ancient cover depicted a doorway.

Getting here had been a bit time-consuming, but nothing hard. Selena and I had wandered through several huge rooms filled with row upon row of titanic bookshelves, kept well-lit by various hanging paper lanterns that couldn’t have been up to code.

In the very center of this place had been a sort of garden surrounded by more bookshelves, near to where the large front desk and its comfy-looking chair were. The little garden was filled with plants and other nature-y stuff that was, like all nature, simply unnatural. And it’d been in there that we’d found the stairwell to that lead us to this place.

Everything was going so smoothly. I had what I’d come for, we hadn’t been seen, and we knew a clean way out of this dark, oppressive basement.

When I realized all of that, I knew for a fact that I was probably going to bed tonight with exactly one and half less testicles than I currently had.

|— ☩ —|

“What in the hoof?” the unicorn mare exclaimed.

It couldn’t have been more obvious if she had exclaimed “I am Balroth the Defiler, Testicle Destroyer—feast your eyes upon me and despair, ye testes!”

Selena and I exchanged glances. At the end of the very short, vaulted hallway was this mare. She must have entered through one of the side doorways, since the one nearest her was wide open. Half of the hallways was behind Selena and me, and behind this mare was the stairway leading up. Her eyes were a dick-shriveling shade of green, her coat a light shade thereof, with a mane the tone of dried piss from a mare who failed to be able to pee into a cup on command. Because, honestly, how the hell was a mare supposed to be able to pee into a cup? Sometimes there were benefits to having a penis. However, now was likely not one of those times.

“And who might you be?” I asked, like a lamb trying to figure out how to wear a wolf’s skin.

“I’m the Librarian,” she spat back at me.

“Ooh,” Selena cooed. “That’s Jade Singer, Royal Archivist, Librarian, and writer of two massive best-sellers.”

And in that moment, as I watched the murderous way Jade Singer wore her little glasses, I understood everything about Equestria. Or at least how they trained librarians. Every week, the Royal Board of Shadowy Figures came by each library in Equestria. There, they say hello politely to everyone—and then they brutally make librarians watch as they sacrifice a clown bloodily before their very eyes! I mean, if it’s any consolation, the clown didn’t actually die, since he was just an actor, so you can be content in the knowledge that the clowns gets to go home to his family. But the message was clear, and you couldn’t go back to your family. Being a librarian was serious, murderous business.

But in some places, like Canterlot, the Royal Board of Shadowy Figures has enough money to bribe the authorities, so that clown doesn’t go home to his wife and kids. And today must have been Clown-Killing Day—dot dot dot, dramatic conclusion.

“Is that one of my books?” Jade Singer, the great slayer of all that is scrotal, demanded.

I looked down at the book. “No—I mean, yes. I mean! Or am I? I don’t know. I could be completely innocent.” Nudging Selena, I said, “Okay, we need to run. We’re cornered here, but if we get a running start, we can find a way out.”

“Are you sure about this, Jericho?” she went, her blue eyes unmarred by the terror she should be logically facing.

“Look!” I snapped. “Run back the way we came and find another way out of here!” I adjusted the brim of my hat, centering my bunny ears. This was serious business. “I’ll distract her for you. Now go!” I gave Selena a forceful shove, and with that Selena went galloping down the hall. Soon she was out of sight.

Turning to face Jade Singer, I snorted like a bull. “Hail to thee, Ballwrecker the Severed Tentacles of the Rape God. I meet thy challenge and refuse to bow thereto, foul knave!”

“What?” Jade singer asked, tilting her head just like the monster she was, doubtlessly preparing the countless rows of porcupine-like spines that lined her vaginal canal like one-way mirrors lined an interrogation room.

A door behind me opened, and an earther mare came backing out of the room, carrying a satchel full of books, which contrasted hardily with the sheathed sword at her side. “Okay, Miss Jade librarian mare, I got the rare books here you wanted and… not-Readynoble?”

My heart utterly collapsed into my stomach. There, it was eaten away by acids and dissolved into a bloody paste. But that didn’t stop it from pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to dig a hole in me straight to Teutschland. This mare knew me. This peach-coated mare with hair as color of champagne knew me. And she had this honest-to-God smile on her face, her eyes star-spangled.

With a sound like a very, very tiny filly screaming at the top of her itty-bitty, literally bite-sized mouth, I shrunk back from the mare, towards Jade Singer, the lesser of two evils. God, what had I done to deserve this?

You killed a bunch of kids that one time.

Okay, but besides that!

Exactly. I’d done nothing to deserve this. Nothing!

Finally, two words tumbled out of my mouth. Two words which I’d thought often off, and dreamed never to have to come across again. Two words that just came out. It couldn’t be helped.

“Cherry Berry.”

Her face somehow get even brighter. “You remembered my name!” Cherry Berry bounced on the tips of her hooves. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! I never thought I’d ever see you again, mon cher, but here you are, which must mean you and I are bound by destiny, by fate, by—”

“By Oz, as C called it,” I whimpered.

“Yeah-yeah-yeah, all that stuff!” She squee’d. “Oh, this is so exciting!”

“Assistant,” Jade Singer hissed. “You know this charlatan?”

“Know him?” She laughed. “He’s my total soulmate!”

I turned my head to Jade Singer, shaking my head and frantically shouted, “Help! Help! By the Machine Spirit, help me!” Her horn sparkled, and them my mouth felt… wrong. Very, very wrong. I tried to ask, but nothing came out. It felt exactly as if my lips had been stitched together. Suddenly, I knew that Equestrians must be the most horrific torturers. You have no mouth and must scream, but hell if they care.

“This is a library,” Jade said. “No yelling.”

“So.” Cherry Berry clasped her hooves together. “I think I get what our problem was, uh…” She smiled, brushing bits of hair out of her eyes and looking away. “I, uh, never actually caught your name.”

“I think it was ‘Jericho’,” Jade Singer offered.

“Aw, that’s a beautiful name for a beautiful stallion,” she purred, rubbing the side of my face as I backed uselessly into a wall that had decided that it wasn’t going to move anymore for me.

“Stay back, thou witch! I bite!”

“I mean,” she went on, “Miss Jade Singer, look at him! He’s so hot he could start a match, right?”

“Um,” the librarian droned, giving her an odd look. “You do know that this buck stole one of our books, right? And that, as my personal assistant and guard, it’s sort of your job to arrest and confine such criminals.”

Cherry saluted Jade. “Gotcha, boss!”

But by then, I was already darting away, running for the stairs, because shit had suddenly gotten way too real for my tastes. I had a head start on Cherry Berry the Rapinator, and my legs were longer than hers. Guess who was winning this race? Exactly. I was!

“No running in the library!” Jade Singer barked, and I saw a flash of magical light.

Suddenly, my hooves felt like lead. I even look down to make sure they hadn’t been replaced with lead blocks, because lead poisoning wasn’t cool, kids. Which was why I stayed away from pencils. Not only did my hooves feel like lead, they moved just like they were lead. What had once been an gallop was now slower than an old granny without a hip.

“No, ya don’t!” Cherry giggled as my left leg exploded in a ferocious, burning pain the likes of which I’d known only once before. I grunted, collapsing to the ground and rolling. The mare was on me in seconds, pinning me. I tried to fight, tried to raise my hooves against her, trying to hurt her, even just hold her back, but it didn’t work. It just didn’t work. “You know, you really should invest in something to prevent yourself getting deadlegged, huh?” Then I felt the restraints come down, binding my limbs. If I hadn’t been able to move before, now even statues would be worried about how lethargic I seemed.

Because even though I could seemingly cut through armies, tear apart demons, deal with losing my horn and eye, and face angry ex-girlfriends, the thing that really defeated me was some old crone and a rapist mare.

In that moment, I learned a new smell. The scent of a cooked goose.

|— ☩ —|

“And so while we don’t actually have any cells, I do have my own little private guard bunk here,” Cherryberry was saying. She gestured to a bed off to the side. “I basically live here part of the week, so that I’m always ready in case there’s a problem at the archives, kinda like how doctors live and sleep at the hospital sometimes.”

Narrowing my eyes at the room’s desk, I swear to God that I saw a long rope coiled under it. The same rope I’d once used to bind the Cherrypillar up with. Upon the table was most all of my gear, though she only removed my shirt in terms of clothing. I tried to speak, but nothing would come out but muffled little nothings. If I pulled on my arm, I could feel it chained to the radiator behind me. Its twin limb was likewise bound. And even if that wasn’t the case, for some reason, the mare had dead legged my other leg. Probably just because she knew I couldn’t walk without the other leg period. So, the best I could do was smile and constantly growl “Nyaaaar” as I dragged myself around on two useless limbs.

Cherry Berry sat down in her spinny chair and looked at me with bedroom eyes. I.E, eyes that just said one word again and again in a single, monotonous, endless tone. “Rape.”

“Did I ever mention that you just sorta smell real good, Jericho? Jericho. Jericho. Feels so weird on the tongue, but I guess that makes sense, since you did say you weren’t from here,” she said, and I grunted back at her though my magical gag. She let out a longing sigh as she stared at me. “You know, you have a really nice voice. Like, you should totally work community service hours with me on the weekends, reading story books to the foals. It’s a fun, rewarding little thing to do,” she casually, if a bit dreamily, went on. “Your voice is perfect for reading stories to little foals with. I could just listen to anything you say and touch myself the whole while.”

“Those are two things that should not go together!” I wanted to scream. For that matter, I couldn’t imagine her reading story books to little foals without her accidentally raping one or two of them. Or their parents. God, what kind of irresponsible parent lets the Cherrypillar read their kids a story!?

With all the ease of a snake, Cherry Berry left the seat and slithered towards me. She knelt before me, wearing an expression like a mother hamster looking down at her babies. For the record, hamsters are known to eat their young. I tried to struggle, but if she was good at one thing, it was restraining stallions.

Leaning towards me, she reached out a hoof. I twisted my head away from her until I could feel my neck ready to snap. As I found out, the pony neck wasn’t designed to be able to break itself. My shut eyes were closed as tight as I could close them as I felt her caress my face.

“When I look at you,” she said in a sweet, almost maidenly voice, “I think, ‘Gosh, what did I do to deserve such a stallion.’ But I’d like to think that was self-apparent, no?” Her hoof slid down my chest, tracing a solid line down my center like a surgeon marking where she’s going to cut her patient open to repair his alcohol-poisoned liver.

When her hoof reached its destination, I jerked, eye involuntarily opening. I saw her frowning face as she spoke, “Are you… are you wearing a codpiece? By Celestia, why?” She chuckled. “I mean, it’s not like you’re fighting or anything—it’s just little ol’ me, after all.”

If not for the fact that I hadn’t had anything to really eat or drink for this whole day, I felt as if I might have pissed myself then and there out of pure spite for her hoof.

“In any case, listen up,” she said. “So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the night we first met, and I mean a lot. I-I-I heard that if you really think about something, you can better remember it.” Her face lost all expression as she said, “Which is why I can remember every. Single. Detail. Of that night.” She perked back up little a fizzy soda you drank and were now vomiting back up. “And I think I realized where I went wrong that night.”

You clearly lie!

She leaned in closer, her one hoof pressing harder against my groin. For a moment, I was sure she would decide this was the wrong angle to go at it, and would instead try going through my pants, which was a far better way to literally squeeze a testicle until it died. Because my balls hadn’t suffered enough in the past forty-eight hours.

But nevertheless, I stared straight into her eyes the whole while. She blinked; I never once did. Well, I didn’t blink until my eyes got all blurry from not blinking, and I had to blink to in order to see again. But other than that…

“You’re the romantic type, aren’t you?” she asked, and I just stared back at her. “You are! I knew it! See, you’re the kind of stallion who doesn’t want to just rush into things.” Cherry Berry leaned in closer. God, I could smell her, which only confused me because she smelt vaguely of lavender, not like the cherries I’d been expecting—that was just weird! “You like the right mood, lights, outfits, incense, rose petals, music… everything…”

She glanced over her shoulder. “See, I know Miss Jade Singer wouldn’t approve of us, but that crotchety old hag doesn’t come around here much, so we should be safe if I tell her I’m trying to question you and somesuch. I mean, I rather like my new job, but…” She trailed off. “So, I’m gonna run to the store, pick up those things you like, and when next you see me, I’ll have my socks on and the mood will be just right. Just you wait!”

I never flinched as Cherry Berry brought her face up to mine and dragged her tongue from my chin to my mouth. Just. Breathe.

“Because I promise you,” she cooed in a voice no doubt meant to be seductive, but only made my penis shrink back in terror so far into my body that it entered negative space and became a de facto hole, “you’re gonna enjoy this.”

Cherry Berry winked at me as she stood up. She turned to leave. Just as she left the room, she bent forwards and flicked her tail in just such a way that I was supposed to get a teaser of what to expect. I saw the act out of the corner of my eye and nothing more because I was too busying staring staunchly ahead.

The mare left, closing the door behind her. I heard her lock the door behind her.

Breathing a sigh of… something, it wasn’t relief, I tried to take stock of my assets. Huh. Well, that was easy. I have none. So I jerked and thrashed, looking for a part of the wall or chains or anything that was weak.

There were none.

If this were a book or something, there would be exactly two places where someone would come through that door and save me. One of them was right now, just after the bad gal left. Gritting my teeth, I prayed to God and even to that angel I was supposed to have that that somepony would come.

Do I even have to say it?

So I sat back and just growled, gutterly rolling R’s from the back of my throat like some kind of… wounded… wolf… Huh. Now there was a thought. When a wolf was caught in a trap, they were said to chew off their own limbs to escape. With a single test of my restraints, a thought came to mind.

The way I was restrained, one arm was shackled to the radiator, the other was tied awkwardly around my back in such a way that doubtlessly would have been easy to untie if I could get a hoof to it. But the only hoof I could get to it was chained up. Of course, if I rolled around on my back enough, I could probably also untie it. E-eventually.

Deep breaths, I told myself. Deep breaths. I opened my mouth to—hey, look, my mouth opened. “Hello?” I asked, tasting sweet air on my tongue. “Yeah! Screw you, magic! Der Maschinengeist is with me today!” So. One. Last. Breath.

I opened my mouth as wide as I could, twisted my neck, and bit down as hard as I could on my chained arm. The pain was instant, the blood lagging behind by microseconds. I bit down again and again, ripping out chunks of flesh from my arm. Because, after all, at the rate I was going, if I lost another arm, I’d probably just get a new one. Maybe a metal arm! Anything was better than letting Cherry Berry have her fill of me.

Trying not to scream and holding back tears of pain, I again sank teeth into hot, bloody flesh. They tore through the flesh and muscle, leaving a coppery taste in my mouth, not unlike what happens when you gnaw too much on a cold sore. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to stop, but I wasn’t stopping—if I stopped now, I’d bleed to death. But if I kept up, I might just be able to free myself and stop the bleeding.

Gnaw. Chew. Bite. Rend. Now, spit the blood out.

Chunks of stringy reds bits of me stuck to my teeth as I bit, the phantoms of their nerves screaming that they were still there, still a part of my mortal coil. And there, fleeting strips of off-white, red-soaked bones, covered in tendons and ligaments and cartilage. Digging the teeth of my jaw into it, I scrapped and bit out flesh and innards. Cartilage was oddly chewy, like rubber.

The joint was the only place it was even plausible to bite off. Bones would take too long to chew through, so I had to rip the joint out. As a distant feeling of blackness crept upon me, I momentarily paused to flex the joint. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see your own tendons and ligaments and muscles in action this close, this revealed. There was something hypnotic in the push and pull of how they all worked together to create the perfect structure a pony needed to support himself with, to move himself with.

And with a single, bloody bite, I destroyed that perfect structure that evolution had spent millions of years perfecting. I spat the bit of tendon into my lap, which had already become a gory chunk-of-me stew, the chef’s daily special!

Something hard that I was biting on suddenly jumped forwards and hit my uvula. I gagged, but the hard something hit the back of my throat, and in my panic, I swallowed it. It was too big and too hard to be anything but one of the minor bones near the fetlock-wrist.

With a sound like a very angry kitty, I choked and gargled as the bone stopped in my throat, refusing to move. It was in my throat, my consumed flesh, and I couldn’t breathe! Great! Do you know what it was going to say on my death certificate? “Cause of Death: Captured by rapists, asphyxiation due to autocannibalism.” Wheezing and coughing and choking and gagging, I tried to clutch my throat with my chained arms to no avail.

As I choked, my arm seized up in spasms, like a freshly drowned corpse. Gagging, I watched the flesh twisted and undulated and spasmed until I heard a very deep “Hmm?”

Before my very eye, it slid out of the rend in my flesh. It was a singular, angular eyeball with a deep red iris. The shape and size of it reminded me of the eye-like brand on Duke Elkington’s neck. It stared at me with a look of mild annoyance as I choked. Then, of all possible things, the eye rolled.

I felt something that I’d never felt before: the feeling of a bone in my throat clawing its way up my throat. As I thrashed, it felt as if it’d grown spidery legs, which it used to dig into the lining of my gullet and drag itself up and up and up.

The bone finally came out of my gullet, and I felt it punch my uvula like a boxer as it crawled out of my mouth. I shook and shivered in horror like a filly when a spider lands on her. The only thing that stopped me from screaming was the fact that the scream in my throat was far too high pitched for my vocal chords to manage.

When the spidery bone landed on the ground, I watched it turn to me and let out a high-pitched hiss, as if to say, “Don’t you be doin’ that no more, boy!”

It felt suddenly as if my arm really itched all over. Like, if I didn’t claw at it, the flesh would set afire. That’s when I realized something that I’d known in the back of my mind but refused to really remember until that moment, the fact that had probably given me the courage to try what I’d been doing.

I’ve been chewing on my right arm.

The points that itched condensed and burned white hot under my flesh. I got to see why, though, as the points split upon, and suddenly tens of angular, red eyes opened along my arm, eyes which the biology of my arm had not even hinted of. They all turned and spun to stare me down as blood began dripping in reverse, defying gravity and jumping up to the whole in my arm. Somehow, I couldn’t help but think that Cherry Berry would still find a way to find this sexy.

Flesh dribbled up, even pushing their way out of my mouth from the spaces between my teeth. The bloody tear reassembled itself bit by gory bit as the black-red nebula poured out of the eyeballs. I sat back and sighed. I’m going to get a lecture, aren’t I? The nebula formed in the shape of a monstrous dog’s two-dimensional head, covered in those eyes which had once been in my arm.

Though I expected it to, I never heard a voice, nothing to that sort. So I had to speak to it. “Please,” I said weakly, “don’t heal yet. I need to gnaw you off in order to escape. Please! Please, for the love of the Mare Laurentia, of the Holy Machine Spirit, and of God Himself—don’t heal!”

The nebulous mass just slowly evaporated back into my flesh. When it was over, there was a new brand where I’d been biting. “Seal I,” it read.

Huh. I have the strangest urge now to club baby seals to death.

I sat back and tried to comprehend and come to terms with everything. In my mind’s eye, the vision of a smiling Cherry Berry. The image in my mind’s eye shifted back many years, to the only other mare I could think of to compare her to.

It was just as the Dark Crusade had been won against literally every odd, and half the Reich had been leveled and burnt to ashes. I had no interest in returning to a destroyed, ruined home. So I took a job with an expedition far to the southeast, to the Land of Nod, ponykind’s ancient fatherland, still covered in ice. It was an ambitious thing, as nopony in living memory had even been near Nod, and certainly no Teutscher had ever been that far east.

Of course, the ship had hit an iceberg before we got there. The survivors, somehow including myself, made it to an iceberg. It had been there that I’d gotten to meet that mare.

We were freezing to death in that night, literally dying, all twenty out of an original crew of sixty. I’d lit a fire, because that was something I could actually do. So we huddled by the fire that night for warm, having only it and our cold, dying selves amidst the arctic air.

Jean lu Cont, a rather hardy bastard, died first.

That was when she came out of the water, the old witch with black hair over her eyes and a white dress. Her mouth opened far too wide for a pony, her teeth like an angler fish. We all watched, frozen both literally and metaphorically, as she dragged his body down the snowy isle of ice and into the water.

Then Maria went. I never knew her last name. The old mare came out, sank her teeth into her frozen corpse, and lugged her away. But before she’d left, I knew she’d looked at me and smiled warmly.

By night’s end, I’d watched her drag them all to the icy depths, seen her smile at me eighteen more times, each smile getting hungrier and hungrier. It was funny, really, how I heard that Equestrians feared the night. Childish, even. For in the Reich, we feared the ice, we feared the snow. We feared winter. Because it was the cold of winter that killed; it was merely the moon who watched.

As the solar corona peaked over the curve of the Earth, the mare had stood before me, her long, matted black mane dripping. And she’d said to me in brutally accented Teutsch, her voice like a million needles clawing a chalkboard, “You’re the one I hate—that’s why I can’t let you die, son of Roland. Unlucky you that you didn’t freeze before the Voice in the Dark learnt you were here… and he needs your blood alive.”

And that was who Cherry Berry was. Her mane was like rich champagne, her coat like a peach, but she was still that black-maned witch of the ice.

So I sat back and looked at my arm. It wouldn’t work, but maybe since I’d begged, it would give me just enough time, yeah?

Because when you were in a situation like mine, where everyone and everything conspired to keep you alive when any normal pony should have died, when everything was just stacked against you like that, and when you were hoofcuffed to a radiator about to be raped by a cute-yet-utterly-deranged mare, there was only one word to say as you consumed thine own flesh in order to escape it all.

One word with one syllable that expressed everything I needed to express…

Can you guess what it is?

Author's Note

Footnote: 50% to next level.

(Well, that was a light-hearted, family-friendly chapter that suddenly took a turn for the Cherriest.)

(Greetings, readers. Siffer here. There’s always been one thing that bugs me about Winter Wrap Up. According to the show, the whole damn thing is supposed to be done the “Earth pony way”, and yet, they need the assistance of pegasi to deal with a large part of it. And while this is completely and utterly not the “earth pony way”, even worse is the fact that, while Applejack says “no magic”, apparently this doesn’t apply to those very same pegasi, who obviously wouldn’t be able to fly with those paltry small wings of theirs. I just find myself deeply, deeply hateful when Applejack supports the organized repression of an entire one-third (ideally) of the citizens of Equestria, namely the fact that apparently unicorns can’t use their fuckin’ horns. Honestly, bullshit. It’s like telling humans they can’t use their fingers. It’s deeply retarded, socially and efficiency-wise regressive, and comes off as racist. Thanks, Applejack.)

Chapter 25 — Cherriest

Chapter 25: Cherriest

“We’re… gonna… run!”

“Strengths.”

It the largest single-syllable word in the entire Equestrian language. Plus, it just so happened to express what I needed, summing up what I felt I had to have in order to bite my own hoof off. Great strengths.

This time, the limb didn’t heal as I sank my fangs thereinto.

|— ☩ —|

“Calêrhos,” Snechta had said just before I’d gone find her the book I now had. “That’s what it called. It is spelt cah-ah-el-hwêy-rho-atch-oh-so.”

“I don’t know what most of those letter are,” I’d replied.

The High Priestess rolled her eyes. In moment later, she’d written it down for me. “I might be able to heal any damages to your flesh, but only with this book. Calêrhos means ‘Doorway’, for that is what it is.” Snechta ran a hoof through her mane. “The knowledge in the book is the only way to bring Cae Cêlyx back from the slumber the dread King Somber put it in. But Cae Cêlyx is a great gift which we can use to restore all that we lost.”

I stepped back, giving her and her fanatic beliefs some distance. Was it a longshot? Probably. But it was also my only shot. “And where might I find this book which holds the cure to all my woes?”

Snechta smiled. “The Imperial Archives way up in Tah-Dolborath: the Crystal Castle.”

|— ☩ —|

I coughed and spat out blood onto the floor as I watched the hoofcuff slip off to the ground. The useless nub that had once been my forehoof was on the ground, looking a bit like the world’s saddest cupcake. If there’s one saving grace to this, I thought as I dragged my bloody self towards the desk on a lonely good limb, my legs deadlegged and so nigh useless, it’s that I’m not bleeding as much as I should be.

That, of course, was likely the fault of the arm itself. The arm that I, for the honest love of the Mare Laurentia, could feeling grabbing my arm socket, as if it were a sentient tree digging its root into me to prevent a gale blowing it over. I didn’t want to look at my shoulder because I knew that if I did, I’d see those roots under my skin, like bulbous snakes wearing party hats.

“Go away,” I hissed in a quiet, dying voice. My words were addressed to the raging inferno that was my new forestump. More specifically, to the fact that I could still feel my forehoof as if I hadn’t just chewn it off. “You do not exist. Not for the moment.”

Leaking blood, I tripped and stumbled up to the desk. Behind me, I could see the blood and bits of flesh and bone slowly crawling after me like hungry, limbless zombies. Honestly, I wanted to get all of my gear before the shredded bits of limb caught up to me, solely because I found the idea of facing my arm to be funny.

I reached out from the ground, grabbing at Cherry’s desk. apparently, I pulled a drawer, and pulled so hard that it exploded out from its little socket. Out spilled almost a dozen pear-shaped bottle labeled “For Sports Injuries”, as well as several bottles of Juggernog. No, I had no idea how in God’s name Cherry fit so many bottles in there. And when I tried to figure it out, I heard Cherry’s voice in my head say, “I was trying to figure out just what kind of sound I’d make when my soulmate’s you-know-what destroys my little downstairs hidey-hole.” A most unsettling thought.

Grabbing the nearest bottle, I fumbled with my teeth, hoof, and bloody forestump trying to get it to my lips. The cork was the hardest part.

Finally, I drank greedily from the bottle, the pink liquid sloshing down my throat. Then I paused. Shit. I haven’t had anything to eat all day. In short, without food in my stomach for the healing tonic to work with, I would half to pray that I had enough food in my intestines. Except that yesterday was spent on a train, where I didn’t eat because I forgot. So, shit. Well, no, shit would imply stuff had to have been going through my intestines, which was a good thing. In fact, this was more like no shit.

Gritting my teeth, I braced for the feeling of my body eating away at itself, trying to heal the deadlegged muscles of my leg. Instead of my underflesh burning I expected, the armroots clawing at my shoulder pulsed. I could feel the roots get hot—no, I could feel them burning so hot that I almost broke out in dance, like a child that has to piss really bad.

A sudden idea gripped me as to what was going on. In a moment, I scrambled for more healing potions, mehr Tränke der Genesung, as the teutches part of me moaned. I downed three more bottles before I felt as if I’d throw up, which would have made for a pretty mix of sulfuric stomach acids, bile, and pink. Had there been a canvas here, I just might have thrown up just to enjoy the resulting award for Modern Art.

The roots let out a sound like a cross between bursting a huge penis zit and frying an omelet, and then the burning sensation in my arm was gone, my dead legged limbs feeling fine, if a tad sore. So, I sat there and watched as my wrist reassembled itself with an almost dainty touch.

“Huh,” I said, standing up. “Why do I feel as if I experienced a new perk of C’s arm, but one that is sure to do me no good?” I poked at my right shoulder. The roots were gone, but it just felt… unclean. Almost as unclean as my chin and lips did, since they still had the stain of Cherry Berry’s tongue. But if I had to commend the creepy rapistette for something, it’s that she knew the proper ins and outs of dental hygiene. Her tongue had been very red, no sign of plaque or anything; her breath smelt of cherries, though, so she lost points on the creativity. Although, since she smelt vaguely of lavender, maybe she was just trying to mix her scents up—to better help mask the scent of horny rapist.

“Well, this is the being alive song,” I singsonged, gathering up my things. “It is the song you sing when you successfully chew a limb off and live to kill that rapist mare—whoooooa, yeah! I got my shirt, and I got my duster. So come on, girl, I shall make you… uh… fluster. Muster up your sex appeal, so long as you’re not named Cherry Berry.” I paused. “Whose name kind of rhymes with that possible nickname which I once heard, Jerry. Oh, the mare who once called me that is dead, yeah!”

Then came my knife. It was hiding gracefully in its little sheath, the weapon that had ended so many lives, had seen so much use. I reached for it, and when I did, I quickly confused myself. It had been no more thought-needing that anything else, but when I reached for it, I reached for it with phantom limbs. It was more like I vaguely swatted at the knife, nothing more.

Stopping, I stared at my hoof. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt like I had limbs I didn’t have. What were they? Were they… were they fingers? Yes. Yes, that was it. It felt as if I had a set of five really long, slender, yet beefy appendages at the end of my hoof, like that of a monkey, only more centered around a palm. What’s more, I swore that I could feel the digits trying to flex, using muscles that I didn’t have to tug at bones I’d never possessed. How I felt something that wasn’t there wasn’t something I understood, but I figured it had something to do with C’s fingers.

Lefty was fine, though. Such a good boy.

Still, I did try to awkwardly grasp at my knife with my hoof. I’d seen that so many Canterlot unicorns seemed to have almost a paranoid aversion to using their hooves, but if I could grab my knife and hobble along, I would do it. But first, I had to kick all of these healing potions away, because I couldn’t pick them up with a knife in the hoof.

The blade of the knife wasn’t just a little aged. It wasn’t even old. Not even ancient. It was beyond such terms. The blade was pure age, as if time itself had condensed into a solid wedge of steel-like metal, and then had its end honed to the point of being invisible. With such a suicidally sharp weapon in hoof, I just stood there and waited for my romantic conquest to return to me.

I was going to teach her a thing or two about love.

|— ☩ —|

“Oh, Jericho,” Cherry Berry singsonged as she sashayed into the room. She was wearing socks and eyeliner, a bag of goods hanging from her side. “Um, where’d you…?” She looked around the room and saw me. Her face brightened, then darkened. “Look, I get how you’re eager and all—because believe you me, I sure as hay am—but if you’re not hoofcuffed and Jade Singer walks in, we are totally screwed, you and I.” She winked. “But don’t worry. I’ll make sure that you get out of here, no prob—”

I jammed the maddeningly sharpened blade into the side of her neck, nicking the artery or vein or whatever. I didn’t care. When I pulled the blade out, Cherry let out a breathless scream as she clutched her throat. It took a great deal of effort not to smile as she floundered around in her own blood, gasping and crying out in vain. So I just watched without any emotion as she pathetically reached out a hoof, as if asking for help. I kicked it away.

As her bloody hoof fell back to her throat, I saw tears in her eyes. They weren’t tears of pain or agony. Nor of anger or hate. They were simply tears of betrayal, of a broken heart mixed with dumb confusion.

“Oh, look. You’re hurt,” I said in a toneless voice. “Funny that.”

Before I made to leave the room, I made sure to clean my knife of blood by dragging its side through her champagne-like mane. Of course, this would be that other time that any rescuer would arrive. I made sure to get out of there before any such hero could arrive. This was because even if I was completely in the right for killing my would-be rapist, I was probably the only unsexist hero in Equestria, and they would all see me as evil for killing Cherry Berry. Because, you know, it wasn’t as if a stallion could ever say no to sex—thought every Equestrian mare ever, according to Cherry Berry.

I was just going to find Selena standing outside, and she was going to tell me that she fully endorsed Cherry Berry’s plan because she saw no moral reason why it was wrong. Then she was going to yell at me and threaten to report me to the guards. So I was going to have to kill Selena with my knife, drag her into Cherry’s room, and frame Cherry for the murder. And after all, I would still have the moral highground.

God, I was glad the Cherrypillar was dead.

|— ☩ —|

Surprise, surprise. Selena wasn’t standing in the little hallway outside Cherry’s room. Without any sense of direction, I just wandered, hoping to come across an exit. Any moment, I was sure that Selena would just be right there, and would bumble around, trying to explain how she was looking for me, and how she was slightly embarrassed that I’d saved myself, but that moment never happened.

Somehow, I wandered out into the main library. I was nearing the front desk and its comfy chair, wherein Jade Singer sat doing stuff with papers, when I heard armored hooffalls, a no doubt troupe of troopers in that pathetically inadequate steel armor. Since I was still a ways off, I didn’t do anything. They wouldn’t see me unless they all turned, and hell if I cared.

Then they came into view, the small pack lead by a white buck with a blond mane in a pristine black suit. I recognized him as that bloke who’d been leering at me as I talked to Selena. I guessed at who he was, and when he announced his name to Jade Singer, I added a point to Team Jericho Can Figure Shit Out.

“I am Prince Blueblood of House Sânge,” he said in an authoritative voice.

Sânge, I quickly thought, committing the name to memory. It sounded like sin-jay, except both the I and AY were much shorter. With the first vowel, it was almost as if the syllable had none.

Jade put a hoof to her lips and hissed, “Shoosh! No yelling in the library. I take my job and that rule very seriously.” The hissing voice stopped. “But other than that, how can I help you, milord?” she said in a chipper tone the likes of which her every action before had not even hinted.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, then cleared his voice. “You sent out a crow to inform the guards that you had captured and detained a certain stallion, one whom I have interest in.”

“Hello,” I said, walking past the front desk and walking the direction the guards had come from.

“Hello, sir,” he replied back. “Now, ma’am, can you—wait, wait, wait! That’s the guy! The one we want!” Blueblood spun, pointing at me, but never raised his voice to a yell.

Out of courtesy to such a rule-abiding buck, I stopped and waved at him. Then I put a hoof to my lips. “Well, a lot of ponies seem to want me.” I gestured back the way I’d came. “That’s why I almost got raped back there.”

“Where is Selena?” he demanded. “What have you done with her, you fiend?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I told her to run.”

“Liar!” he hissed. “Tell me where she is, or else!”

I rubbed my nose, letting out a very long sigh. “Listen here,” I bellowed without warning, “you gosh darn little pencil-pricked, own-mother-sodomizing, mouth-breathing, pen-pushing, slack-jawed, jelly-and-blue-balled, drooling aristocratic dickball, son of a filthy, rotten whore of a mare who was nevertheless well-respected in her small community! I don’t care that I went waltzing out of here with some mare you wish to put your filthy, blue-veined-but-yellow-blooded penis into—I really don’t!”

I pointed hard at him. “But you listen good! You listen good, you pile of shit getting sucked through a straw into the mouth of a flamboyant leper! I have just had a really bad day, and the only bit of light in that day was a rather fun mare I’d met before. Oh, and singing smooth jazz. That was awesome. I am in no mood to deal with you and your aristocratic swine-like ilk! I just nearly got raped by a psycho broad and had to bite my own arm off to escape. But if you wish to cut my balls off just because your horny, little—and I do mean little—prick can’t be charming enough to find a girl on your own, then fine! That’s cool. But be thou warned, he of House Sânge: I have been before challenged by gods and demons, warriors and champions, kings of ponies, titanic animals the likes of which your pea-sized brain can’t even comprehend. All have challenged me once.

“Once.”

I stepped up towards him, grabbing his chin. His guards moved to stop me, but I was faster than them. “Kennst thou my meaning, Blueblood? Do you comprehend what it is that I am saying to you?” Without a word, I threw his head back. In that same swift motion, I clocked the nearest trooper in the throat with my hoof, grabbed him by the helmet, and gently suggested that he fall to the ground, choking and gasping for breath. “So,” I went on in a cold, steely tone, “if you want to fight me over Selena, so be it. Just be now aware that you can’t cause me any real pain; I have been dealing with agony and pain for so long now that pain is practically an old friend of mine. I will take up combat in her name, the name of a mare I know nothing about other than the fact that she has a cute laugh and nice legs, and kick your asses until your genitals are weeping more blood than a menstruating French whore. And if you want otherwise, then let. Me. Alone!”

With a spring to my hooves, I stepped back. “We clear?” I asked in a happy tune.

Hey, you ever get so angry, so brimming with righteous hatred and testosterone and fury that you just pop an erection?

Me neither.

That white-coated, golden-blond maned bastard murmured something too quiet to hear.

“Speak up, maggot,” I said. “I can’t hear you.”

With the look of doe-eyed terror in his eyes and his utterly limp ears, you could tell he’d probably never been given so much as a stern talking to. Being the rich and influenced buck all points suggested he was, although less appealing in every way compared to Duke Elkington and his fancy Swastika, I bet that he relied on doe-eyed floozies to pamper him in every way, and that Selena was the one mare who refused to suck his—

“She’s family,” he said weakly.

I blinked. “Oh, you disgusting nobles and your ‘keeping it the family’ traditions!”

“N-no, I mean: I’m trying to look out for my-my family against the stallion whom I know is stealing from Princess Celestia and who I’m pretty sure beat up and locked the, uh, the singer mare—you know, with the name.”

“Wait, you think that was me?” I burst out laughing. “Oh, by all the gods that are or ever were, no! That was not me.” The laugh cut itself sort. “Wait. Selena shares your blood, Blueblood Sânge?”

“Well, I… I don’t… uh, we don’t exactly share lineage, but…”

“Oh, so she’s an in-law?” I put a hoof to my chin. “Which might explain why she’s at a nobles’ party but told me she wasn’t a noble. Because I like her enough to believe she wasn’t lying.” And because I’d seen the honest look in her eye.

“Kind of?” he replied, almost wincing as he spoke. I couldn’t say why, but it made me think of a windmill.

“Huh.” I looked at Jade Singer. Her glasses had fallen off her face, held to her only by a length of string, which looked good with the utterly slacked jaw. “You know, I feel as if this is all just one whacky misunderstanding, so if you’ll just let me alone, I can be out of your hair, and we can all be happy ponies.” I pointed at the guard on the ground, finally breathing normally. “Except you. You can be a sad pony. The Cards of our group, if you will.”

“No,” Blueblood said after a short pause. “You still broke into the Royal Archives, stole a book, and—”

“Blueblood,” came a stern but not harsh voice. It was the voice of a mare who’s spent many years as a matriarch. Everyone turned to face the speaker. There, at the far side of the front desk and leaning against a bookshelf, was a tall dame with blue eyes, a red dress torn to reveal a good deal of her legs, and a black poncho slung over her shoulders. The only thing missing from this picture was a cigarette in her mouth.

“Oh, hey, Selena,” I said with a wave. “Where’d you go after I told you to run off?”

“Here and there, really,” Selena replied. “I had to locate one of the other sets of stairs.” She shrugged. “I would have stopped by earlier, you were sneaking around the library, and then you and Blueblood got into a fight—and I must say, how courtly romantic it is that you’d fight for little old me,” she finished with a wink.

I adjusted my hat. “Aw, don’t think too much of it. We freelance adventurer-type heroes are contractually obligated to be willing to fight to the death for any girl that we met at least five minutes ago, O Dulcinea. That usually applies to rescuing them, at least. Although from what I think I know of you, the last thing you’d ever be is one of those helpless, kidnapped princesses in need of a hero to rescue her.” I glanced at Blueblood. “In fact, if anything, I’m the damsel in distress here, and you’re going to do something to rescue me.”

Selena chuckled. “I’d be lying if I said you were wrong.” She flashed me an almost wicked smirk. “Blueblood,” she said again.

He gave me a hesitant glance before looking at the lady. “Er, yes, Selena?”

“Would you kindly let my friend go?”

Blueblood looked as if he’d just been punched in the gut. “You can’t mean that! Just look at this thug!”

“Hey!” I snapped. “I might be a morally-questionable thug even on my best, most heroic days, but at least I’m out there trying to make a difference in this bleak world of ours. And I only got all of these scars and mutilations on my face by defending Equestria, and thereby also you, from this unholy hellspawn that even Duke Elkington’s Caroleans were afraid of.”

The Prince blanched and looked as if he might sputter something in response. He caught a nasty glance from Selena for it, never saying anything.

“Jericho, shush,” Selena said. “I am speaking.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I quickly shot back at her.

“Like I was saying,” she went on, “of course I’m serious about it, Blueblood. Stand back, tell your guards to stand down, and let him alone. I’ll take him off your hooves and do with him as I see fit. Are we clear?”

Blueblood looked helplessly around, like a sacrificial lamb that’s suddenly found itself at a child’s birthday party because there was a mailing mishap, which had sent the religious cult a birthday cake instead of him. The cake was much appreciated, and so was the lamb. Everyone won in the end.

“But surely…” He sighed. “We are clear,” he finally said through gritted teeth. “I just hope to the stars you know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, I know far more than you give me credit for, Blueblood.” Selena paused, then added, “And don’t ever call me ‘Shirley’ again, please.”

|— ☩ —|

As Selena stepped out of the archive’s front doors, which I’d held open for her like the gentlecolt I was, I tried to understand what it was I’d just seen. With just a few words, Selena’d essentially cowed the Prince and all his guards into submission. In fact, I could see from the door that they were all still standing there, staring. I waved at him before closing the door and scampering out into the night.

It all made me think back to my first morning in Equestria, when I’d first met Selena at the train station. There had been that odd stallion in the suit, almost like some kind of guard, who’d acted oddly to me, asking me questions but being almost silent to her. If Selena really was related to some Prince, I supposed that that whole security-type thing made a modicum of sense.

The mare was standing there at the foot the stairs leading up to the library, an almost expectant look on her face. Beyond her was a little stone path that wound through more gardens before it reached a large street. “I do believe you are now in my debt,” Selena said.

“So, now I owe you more than just a dance?” I asked, walking alongside her as she made her way towards the street. I touched at my bags, checking to make sure I had the book. I did.

“Ah, yes. And with that, I hold two things against you in this regard.”

“Do you plan on holding me in debt bondage, then, Selena?”

She flashed me a look as she took out her bottle of sangria and allowed herself a drink. “Not necessarily debt-related. Such nasty terminology, like I were some malevolent banker.”

I kicked at a stick on the path. “Well, from my place on the corner of Breaking Hearts and Forgetting Names, that almost sounds like a threat.”

Selena uttered a quick chuckle. “You feel free to take it however I give it.”

“Why do I feel that is the inversion to the standard male-female relationship?” I asked.

“The kind of relationship wherein I am troubled and you come in, penetrate through whatever holds me in bondage, leaving me in your debt, like in those silly old stories of princesses and knights?”

“Except for the part where I’m no knight and you’re no princess,” I said. “Although I commend you for daring to defy traditional gender roles.”

She again gave me that kind of look she gave just before taking a drink. Only, she didn’t take a drink this time. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll show up as a princess in your dreams, hmm?”

“Count not thereupon,” I said. “I only sleep well when I don’t dream.”

Selena stopped at that, like I’d just hit her in the chest with a rubber bat. Here under the shade of an oddly pale oak tree, she turned to me. “Excuse me?”

I flashed her a smile. “See, now you’ve put me in a rather interesting place, Selena. I’m a rather happy, hopefully quick-witted guy. But were I to delve deeper into that comment, then suddenly I sound like a terribly and emotionally scarred sort of guy, which I am loathe to be. How’s about I just say that I don’t dream because I have nothing nice to dream about, and we leave it at that?”

She brushed a strand of blue mane from her eyes. “Everypony dreams, Jericho. It happens every night and it cannot be helped. The matter is simply that sometimes we can’t remember anything from them.”

Looking up the swaying branches of the trees, I said, “Then let it be said that the contents of my dreams are the things of which I couldn’t bear to remember.” I flashed her a smile. “There. Now I’ve been given a dose of mystery. I needed to have something mysterious of my own to hold against you.”

That at least scored me a chuckle. “But I suppose we’re still far from even on that matter.”

“Yeah, because if we actually knew everything about one another, I’m sure we’d quickly find each other boring.”

“Mmm, I don’t think you’d find me all that dull in said case.”

I glanced to the empty street at the end of the path. “Same can’t be said of me. You get right down to it, and you’ll find that I’m just some guy with a few too many nuts in the wrong places.” I tapped at my temples. “They’re all too near the wrong head, if you catch my drift.”

Selena set herself back to walking down the path, and motioned for me to tag along. “Well, as a lady, I’m not to contemplate such things,” she said in an almost coy tone. “Very unladylike to think about.”

“Ah, but you think of it regardless. Because the idea that ladies are any less obsessed with those bits is a complete fallacy. You’re only pony, after all.”

She ran her eyes across me as if asking ‘Are you for real?’ Then she said, “Only pony, hmm? So can I assume you’re thinking of such things when you speak to me?”

“Only insofar as you’d think such of me,” I replied casually. “So, I have a question that has been seriously bothering me. What was that whole Blueblood ordeal about, and how’d you convince him to let me alone?”

Selena shrugged. “To put it simply, he’s afraid that little ol’ impressionable, naïve me is going to get taken advantage of by some disreputable stallion with one thing on his mind.” She uttered a mirthless chuckle. “It’s as if he doesn’t think I can take care of myself. That’s why I’m pretty sure he sometimes gets so overprotective of me. It’s a part of his family’s motto. Familie Primul, or ‘family first’.”

“And he takes that motto rather seriously, I take it. More than it should taken. Like an overly anal hall monitor.”

“I suppose. Since he considers me family, he’ll go out of his way to…” She shook her head. “If I show him a bit of force, he’ll stop trying to be my chaperone, for tonight was the most egregious thing he’s done to me. He might mean well, but I won’t stand for him mucking about with my life.”

“And more power to you for that,” I said. “Fight the system, just like the rebel you are.”

We reached the road. At this hour of night, it was empty, kept just bright enough by moonlight and lampposts. It was the sort of environment you just expected to find a corpse in, the work of a serial killer. By the side of the road was a newspaper, The Canterlot Journal, whose featured article seemed to have been printed today; it mentioned something regarding Princess Luna being scheduled to visit the Crystal Empire any day now.

“And to think,” I said, “I came to Canterlot from my little neck of nowhere, and I didn’t even get to see any of the fabled Princesses who reside here. A pity. But I suppose I’ll have time later to get a pair of binoculars and leer creepily from afar at mares whom I don’t know.”

Selena shrugged. “I’ve seen enough princesses in my day to know that they’re nothing too special. A little interesting at first, but the novelty gets old. Fast. After all, they are, to quote you, only pony.”

“Somehow, I have my doubts,” I said, looking up at the moon. “When I was a colt, I recall hearing stories of elder days. Days of kings and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and counts and knights of noble blood. Days before the gates of Anderwelt opened; before the legions of the Inferno came to infest the sacred soil of this world so thoroughly as they do today; before dark powers and hatred turned good ponies into the monstrous Niedervolk; before the Voice in the Dark was born of the unholy and forced union of a pony and the insectoid demoness known as the White Queen.

“In those days over a millennium and a half ago, the legends say, the Lord God cast two angels out of his heavenly realm for unknown yet unforgivable crimes. They were the sisters Celestia and Luna, which is why they have bodies like the angels, with horn and wings.” I sighed. “Honestly, anyone who puts stock into that old myth is likely a child obsessed with stories. After all, as an old friend of mine once said, there were no such things as immortal freaks. But now that I’m here, in a country that was hardly more than a fanciful fairy tale to me a decade ago, I’m willing to believe anything. I guess I just want to believe.”

When I looked to Selena, I could see she’d taken a step away from me. There was, I thought, an almost sad look in her eye as she said, “You’re not from Equestria.”

I shook my head. “Does that change anything between us?”

Selena hesitated like filly on a diving board. Only instead of a pool of water, it was a pool of razor blades, salt, and freshly cut lemons. “Should it?”

“Not unless you’re ludicrously xenophobic.” I smiled. “And I’ve had all my injections, so I know for a fact that I’m not carrying the next world-ending plague with me. The only thing now is, being that we’re standing out here under the pale moonlight, where do we go?”

“Well, I…” She bit her lip. “I don’t really know.”

“Because I need to run off on a day-long trainride to the Crystal City in order to deliver this here book I so kindly decided to take from Canterlot and return to its rightful city. I’m nice like that.”

“If you do that, will I ever see you again?”

I gave it a thought. “I think so. We’ve randomly met on three different occasions at three different wheres as in the span of the same month, and I think we might randomly run into each other again some time soon enough. Or maybe you could just give me your address. That way, when I’m done with what needs doing, I can stop by at an obscenely late hour, ruining the romantic mood you’ll be having with some stallion you met who’s far more interesting than me. He’ll say, ‘Sweetiepie-pookums—’ because that’s how such a fellow would speak ‘—who is this ruffian?’ Then I’ll break a bottle against your door, hold it up to his neck, and growl, ‘Call me that one more time, you pig-faced bastard. I dare you!’

“And then it’ll end with you evilly stroking a cat as you watch us fight, because this is how the real world works.”

Selena gave me an oblong look, then cracked into a fit of little giggles. “You’re weird,” she managed to say through them all. “And I think that’s about your trump card to the ‘interesting ponies’ topic.”

I smiled at her, shaking my head. No words came from my mouth. With nothing to reply to, the both of us just sort of stood there. She would occasionally flash me little looks, but we mostly just stood there, neither of us, I thought, really knowing how to artificially prolong the conversation.

Then she suddenly said, “You know, you really should remove that silly eyepatch. You have such pretty eyes.”

Shaking my head, I simply replied, “I can’t.” I removed the headband of bunny ears from my hat and put them on her head, as if I were crowning her the Princess of the Bunnies. She allowed me to carefully take the black cat ears off her ears and put them on my own, ditto for the poncho even closing her eyes as I did it, as if seeing me do it would somehow profane the act.

“Why?”

Hey, Selena, would you like to see what a eyeless socket look like with its eyelid sewn shut? What’s that? You have a creepy fetish for cripples because cripples are too pitiful to be able to say ‘no’? Well then. Now I’m scared.

I shook my head. “That’s an answer for another when.”

“Seems a bit like a copout to me.”

“So it is, Selena. So it is.” I smiled. “Now, I’ve got to ask the Devil on my right shoulder if he wants to hang out with me, since the angel on my left has abandoned me tonight on moral grounds. Not as if it really matters.”

“Is this goodbye, then?”

“I hate goodbyes,” I replied. So, backing up, I waved to her and said in a cheery voice, “Hello, Selena!”

She laughed one more time. “Hello, Jericho!”

I could still see her sigh, ears drooping, as I turned around. Next up, a full day of train riding. My life was just an endless font of excitement.

Author's Note

Footnote: 75% to next level

Quest Perk Added: Zur Rechten Rank 2 — That freakin’ arm, man. Make it stop freaking me out! In any case, whenever your right arm is healing itself, you will not suffer any maluses for consuming healing items, as the arm will bear the full brunt thereof. This counts for maluses due to lack of eating, too.

(Yeah, not too, too much happened this chapter. That’s mostly because I’m setting up for the next chapter to change everything. A wham chapter, if you will. Now all we need is a picture of Cards being adorable and a western-gunslinger-themed metal ballad for Jericho, and we’re golden)

(Jojo here. Well that was a thing and a half. The Cherrypillar has been punished for her sins, we met Blueblood—and h-he’s not a total dick? A three-dimensional Blueblood that isn’t mercilessly beaten/ridiculed for not being the pure embodiment of the ideal stallion that fueled Rarity’s spank-bank every night? What manner of sorcery is this?! What wonder (horrors) await Jericho in the Crystal Empire? Who is this mysterious dame, Selena? Why does C not put down the bottle and let me love him? Why did my psychologist tell me that I have an Oedipus Complex?! Well stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of Jojo—er… I mean, Jericho if you wish to find out.

…

:To Crushric: Now where’s my motherfucking tree-fiddy?)

(In a continuation of last update’s racism theme, we move onto the subject of half-breeds. Now, we all know that in Sleepy Oaks they were racist against mules, but does anybody know why Crushric decided that this was a possible option? Why, the answer is simple. It’s Rarity’s fault. If you’ve watched A Dog and Pony Show, you’ll notice that Rarity says that “All mules are ugly” or something to that extent. I was deeply, deeply offended. Man, Rarity is a bitch. In fact, Rarity is also at fault for the whole Blueblood debacle, since Jojo mentioned him. See, Rarity objectified Blueblood in the extreme, meaning she didn’t care about who he actually was, but just his titles, his money, and her own sexual fantasies. Rarity is pretty shallow sometimes. Prett-eh shallow. For more interdastingness, I’d suggest you read The Blueblood Chronicles if you haven’t already. It explains everything. And its logic coincides neatly with my opinion that the mane six are stupidity and evil incarnate!)

Chapter 26 — Somewhere Far Beyond

Chapter 26: Somewhere Far Beyond

“I will grab fate by the throat; it shall never drag me down.”

—Ludwig Van Beethoven

Singing.

It had a way of helping keep up morale. Morale was important if you had to spend most of the last three days on trains, especially when you had to climb up a mountain with an ass still sore from sitting. It also helped a great deal with the cold, the scary animals, the thought that maybe what you saw as green everypony else saw as red, and the unexpected crowd standing before the little bridge to Snechta’s mountain fastness.

“Here he comes; here come Speed Jericho, yeah,” I singsonged, watching my breath form those cool little clouds that kids used to pretend they were smoking. Because lung cancer was cool. “He will show up, save the day, choose not to bang the girl because he refuses to take sexual advantage of emotionally troubled victims, then march into the sunset. Whooooa, but he’ll’ve also stolen your ox.”

“Ywcjidh cwm Mrinjidh!” I heard a mare’s voice shouting, sounding amplified like Duke Elkington through his speakers he had in Songnam. “Sisters and brothers,” she went on. “Many of you are Mijôri, and many of you are from Equestria, so I will speak the most understood tongue for you this day.”

Looking past the really big crowd, I couldn’t see who was speaking. But by the voice, I knew it was Snechta. She was probably up to no good, trying to extort money from people, as corrupt religious ponies were wont to do. Plus, Snechta was a crazy pony. But then, who was I to judge?

“The Goddess Chêngrêla, now the one true deity as she is all who is left, has allowed me to spread her word to those without it. Many of you are tired, disillusioned, and have lost your way in this cruel life.

I stepped into the crowd, pushing my way through. All of these ponies, bundled up in thick coats, were actually dressed as if they cared about nudity. While I doubted any of them wore underwear, an invention I was sure they simply didn’t possess in Equestria, it was a stepping stone on the road to dressing like civilized beings. Many of the ponies here had that weird look of being made of a crystalline glass, but as Snechta had said, many didn’t look like that.

From in the crowd, a stallion looked back at me with red eyes that reminded me of Cards. Good ol’ Cards. She was probably choking to death on a spoon right now! But when the stallion and I locked eyes—that was all that I could see of him—he ducked deeper into the crowd.

“I know what that’s like, sisters and brothers, to have nothing in this cruel world,” Snechta went on. “Not long ago, I was little more than a beggar, a shameless mare starving on the streets, wishing for so much as a loaf of bread. One day, as I was sitting in the cold, staring at the ribs poking out from my stomach, with King Sombra ruling in Tol-Dolborath, two young stallions—colts, really—came up to me.”

A part of me wanted to shout “Fire” and then punch somepony in the hopes of starting a riot. Lord knew it’d be more fun than Snechta trying to scam ponies out of money so she could achieve her dream of… I didn’t know—building a statue of herself out of chocolate that she could sexually molest, because the only thing that could turn her on were lifelike chocolate statues.

Snechta took a breath, rubbing her eyes. “One of them hit me across the face with a rock, nearly taking my eye out. The other bucked me in ribs. Then the first one pinned me down, informing me that they wanted me to scream as they… a-as they…” She sniffled, tearing up. The crowd was silent. “I could feel them both feeling me, touching what they were going to claim as their prize, grasping and squeezing like animals parts of me meant only for the touch of a lover. And I clenched my tearing eyes shut; I would not scream or cry for them, as it was what they wanted.” She swallowed. “That was when the empire was frozen in time. That was what my life was for over a thousands years: tear-strewn eyes clenched, teeth gritted, two stallions grabbing me so hard that I bruised. Time ceased to me. There was only that.

“And when time resumed, it had been an eon. When time resumed, I no longer felt them there. I felt sore, but almost unharmed. Turning around in the little alley I called home, I saw them there, against the wall. They had been brutally crucified to death, as in the stories of the Ełd. Their blood drained down across their bodies, onto the ground, and formed a holy symbol. At its center was a dying raven chick with three eyes, the mark of a beast tormented by Sombra’s dark glass.”

“No passing,” a stocky crystal stallion with iron armor and a mace at his side told me. He, alongside numerous others, formed almost a phalanx at the head of the hill, separating the crowd from the almost sobbing Snechta.

Oh, boo hoo, I thought derisively at Snechta. You almost get raped, and everyone behaves as if it’s a tragedy. I almost get raped, and they tell me it’s because I dress like a slut. Why don’t ponies cry for me?

One, because you don’t tell ponies you almost got raped. Usually. And two, because you’re a child killer.

“That’s nice,” I said to the stallion. “Now let me through.”

“No.”

There was silence, save for the distant call of a raven. “Hey,” I asked trying to duck around him, “how’s your health plan?” His response was to try to punch the grin off my face and shove me back.

“Apparently, it’s great!” I barked, slugging him in an exposed area of the armor: the neck. Seriously, what was with this continent’s armor and not protecting the neck? Anypony with a keen aim could easily shoot an arrow or punch a hoof straight into the gaps. So, the guard went down to the ground, and I calmly stepped past him.

The rest of the phalanx saw me and charged. “I’m so glad at least Snechta’s church has great employee healthcare, but how about dental?” I hit a guy in the mouth with the point of my hoof. He recoiled back into his friend. “Free trips to the eye doctors?” I asked, striking another right between the eyes. The rest of the phalanx refused to get near me; instead, they drew their weapons, all maces, and surrounded me. “Hey, does Snechta provide free trips to the local proctologist? Because I get the feeling that when we’re done here, you’ll—”

“Enough!” Snechta shouted. “What is the meaning of this?”

I straightened up and said in a loud of a loud voice, “I come in the name of Snechta, High Priestess, she of Côrint, and will present to her the book Calêrhos, as I was bid. I am Jericho Amadeus Faust, he of Teutschland, Champion of Côrint, and I come as myself; you will let me pass!”

Everypony started back. I heard many whispers in tongues I didn’t understand, dialects I couldn’t fathom. “That’s him!” I heard some say in Equestrian I could comprehend. “It’s the Champion!” “I knew I recognized him!” “Lets him pass, you blighters!”

Snechta let out a mirthless laugh. “Are you Łêdjyoni honestly trying to pick a fight with the Champion of Côrint, cwm Tatõłviç Côrintvim? Ces! Ces!”

With fearful haste as if I’d turn their genitals into spiders, the armored stallions all stepped away from me, giving me an alley to pass. “Dankeschön,” I said, walking through the little aisle.

“Do you not see?” Snechta said with a flourish. “Chêngrêla brings agents to her true cause from ’round the globe. This here warrior, Champion of Côrint, proven thereby to be the greatest warrior in the world, and he comes from across the world to serve the Goddess.”

I looked over and saw a collection of priestly mares standing to the side, one of whom I recognized. When we locked eyes, I could see in her eyes the urge to curl back into a ball. When Snechta said I came to serve the Goddess, she actually did collapse into a ball, her priestess-sisters immediately trying to help her. Dopey religious cult indeed.

“Sisters and brothers who share of the Crystal Heart, of Cae-Côrdis, hear me, I beg of you,” Snechta said. “Many of you know the legends of Calêrhos, the mythical Doorway of power that Sombra lusted for; many of us know the fables of how the great paladin fell from grace, becoming the tyrant only so recently slain; ye kenn the tales of Cae Cêlyx, too.

“Well,” she said with a winning smile as I took a place standing next to her, “the Witch-Queen Celestia would have stolen from us our heritage, the one text of magic which contains the secrets of the Doorway and how Sombra sealed Cae Cêlyx to keep us from it, the text he locked in his dark library, the text in the library still not open to the public in Tah-Dolborath, the text which Celestia herself spirited away to her own greedy coven in Canterlot. The abnormous crone would sit a-cocke-horse our heritage, taking from us what is ours by birthright.

“But then a great warrior from somewhere far beyond came to me. He spoke of needing help, and in exchange for using the Gift of Chêngrêla to heal him, he promised me our birthright anon. And so returns he, Tatõł Côrintvim, beclothed as a knight of the East, carrying the book both doorway and key.”

Senchta smiled, motioning for the crowd to come on over. “But let us not stand out here in the cold. Inside the temple it is warm and bright, for crystal nights are dark and full of terrors.”

|— ☩ —|

I allowed for everyone else to enter the temple before I did. Why? Couldn’t say. Mayhap I was simply enjoying the cold as I bobbed my head and sang songs that I’d just made up. “Oh, and if you try to strip me down, I’ll kick you in the face!” Probably something like that. In any case, the two guards closed the great wooden doors at the end of the bridge as soon as I’d entered the mountain.

The interior of the temple greeted me with a gust of warmth that radiated from both everywhere and nowhere. To my sides were many large racks for hanging coats, all space nearly taken, as the ponies I could see further in there were all naked. Except for one crystal stallion in a tophat. I didn’t know who he was, but he was my favorite.

Opting to keep my hat, duster, and whatnot still on, I walked past the racks. A few ponies milled about the foyer by the statue of the robed mare with glowing eyes and the snake-like tail coming out from the bottom of her robes, but I could see that the majority were up the large stone staircase. So up I went into the large rotunda-like room centered around a small lake with a white tree at its heart.

This room was even warmer than the last, and here far more ponies fiddled around, chatted, or partially explored parts of the temple that overlooked the lake. Up in the rooms that resembled second-story apartments, that is. Snechta had lain out a buffet table on either side of the room, each table displaying foods the likes of which I’d never seen.

I went up to the nearest table and picked up a single unit of the most edible-looking substance: a blueish-purple berry that looked to be made of glass. Putting in my mouth, I very slowly bit down on it; the last thing I wanted right now was a mouthful of glass shards, although the resulting cuts wouldn’t get infected because I knew the ins and outs of proper oral hygiene. Kids, take note. But, like the bodies of the crystal ponies, the berry was flesh.

And it was flesh that neatly burst when I applied just enough pressure to it.

I recoiled back, dazed. If anypony had been looking at my face, they easily could have mistaken me for having died then and there, and thought that the rest of my body just hadn’t gotten the memo. A single word, a single exclamation, ran through my mind and refused to leave.

Sweet!

In all my years across the world’s continents, across all the foods and drinks offered to me or that I stole, I had never tasted something so supernaturally sugary.

Sweet!

Suddenly, I couldn’t understand why all of the crystal ponies weren’t all fat and on a fast track to diabetes. This was the kind of delicious sugary goodness that could collapse nations, and had to be kept out of the hooves of proletariat. In a world with such sugary goodness, I could easily predict that the Crystal Empire had never known a problem with illicit drugs.

Sweet!

I reached forwards, shoveling hooffuls of the berries into my mouth until my cheeks were fat and puffy and my mouth couldn’t close. It was like I was suddenly the world’s sexiest squirrel, hiding my nuts for the winter. But first, I had to find a tree to scamper up and hide. Dammit! If only ponies had little squirrel hands to aid us in climbing trees to store our nuts! Hooves were clearly a titanic design oversight on evolution’s part.

An arm wrapped around my shoulder as somepony embraced me in a hug from the side. I turned, muttering something that sounded like “Schlaw schlaw schlaw?” as I saw Snechta burying her face in my neck.

“There you are,” she sighed almost longingly. Snechta moved to kiss me on the cheek, but she had to stand on her tippy-hooves to get there. As soon as she did, she stopped, and burst out laughing. “Oh dear, is this your first time eating canjic syłwajic? Crystal berries?”

“Darest thou at me to laugh? Then thou mustst perish!” Or so I tried to say. What what out was more like a garbled stream of various forms of “Agh, arh, argh.”

Snechta snickered, patting my squirrel-like cheek. “Yeah, that tends to happen when folks first partake of the crystal berry. It only grows around here, and it’s the main thing that does grow around here, since it’s a major cash crop, and one of the few things we have that keeps our economy from imploding. Belike you should refrain from them for the time, lest you can’t help yourself and gorge yourself further.”

If I had a proper tail, it would have been between my legs as I whimpered in agreement. It wasn’t easy to take myself away from the table, but take myself away from it I did, trying to chew the berries the whole while.

“Come,” Snechta said, taking my hoof and tugging gently. I allowed her to lead me across the tan tiles the rotunda, still trying to chew the berries, getting a buzz in my head from the sugar. She took me up a set of stairs there that two armored stallion were standing guards by. They shot me dirty looks, like how a land cow looks at a dolphin, as they watched Snechta lead me up.

At the top of the stairs was a rather new-looking wooden door that Snechta closed behind us. The room here had a large window—with actual glass!—looking out at the rotunda. There was a large oaken desk with a cozy chair, the desktop itself decorated with a few random odds and ends, such as an inkwell, feather pen, and some parchment. Further on was a doorway leading into a rather large bedroom.

“Show it to me,” she demanded.

As I finished swallowing the berries, my blood sugar increasing to near-lethal levels, I said, “Yeah, sure, sure.” I reached into my pack and took out the book. Her eyes widened and widened until I was sure they would hilariously fall out of their sockets, forcing her to roll around the ground, screaming in pain. Somehow, that didn’t happen; Snechta just stared at the book like it made her unbelievably horny in all the worst, most rapetastic ways.

“Uh, are you okay?” I asked, moving the book around and watching her eyes follow it.

“Huh? Ñ-ñar, I am well…” she replied in the voice of somepony telling their spouse that they were awake in order to get five more minutes of shuteye.

Quickly, I moved the book up and down, then it circles, grinning as her silvern eyes danced for me. “Okay, that’s enough out of you,” I said. “Stop leering at it like a rockcat about to pounce upon and then sodomize a small deer. It’s unbecoming.”

Snechta blinked, then rubbed her eyes. “Ugh, belike you’re right, Jericho.”

“Belike? What does that mean?”

She sighed. “It means ‘perhaps’, Jericho. Now, would you please give me the book? With it, I can bring Cae Cêlyx back to life, and use it to heal you. But first I need the book.”

I hesitated. “Pardon me for asking, but what exactly is in this book that you seem so keen on? You know, the stuff other than what could help me?”

Snechta shot me an ‘are you serious?’ look. “It is merely the key to a broken doorway that the Cadance-usurper has locked away from us crystalfolk because Princess Celestia dislikes it. I require the precise rituals and incantations of the book to truly service my folken as High Priestess, and I need it to destroy the last traces of King Sombra’s corruption. He feared the Gift, Cae Cêlyx, and the key to resurrecting it is in this book. The book, too, holds the sum of our knowledge regarding Tah-Dolborath and the magic of those who built it.”

“You mean, the crystal ponies didn’t build the Crystal Castle?”

“No,” she groaned. “The Goddess merely led our ancestors to the ancient tower and the Crystal Heart, which had been built by the… by the, uh… the Old Peoples.”

“Die Antiker,” I muttered. “Hmm. Here.” I held the book out to her, and she greedily snatched it from me.

“Look, I understand your suspicions,” Snechta told me in a tone meant to be reassuring but which only made me think of spiders made of spikes, “but it is all part of the Goddess’ plan, and she is a loving Goddess.”

I grunted. “Where I am from, thoughts of fate and destiny—” and Oz, a voice reminded “—are considered almost heretical. We say that God, the Father, grants us free will. Therefore, there can be no fate, no predestination, for there is also such thing as sin and evil. The concept of sin is incompatible with the idea of predestination for the simple fact that if you have no free will yet are punished for sin, that sin was something God commanded you to do, and therefore being punished for it would mean God is a completely arbitrary psychopath. We mortals on this Earth are the masters of our own Oz.” I blinked. “Our own destiny, I mean.”

Snechta rolled her eyes. “Look, philosophy is nice and all, but there’s a time and a place for it, and it is not here, so—”

Somepony knocked on the front door. Hard. “Snechta! Snechta!”

“Lo?” she snapped in the tones of somepony who will stab someone in the mouth if they ask her another question. They knocked harder on the door, and, groaning, Snechta went to it. The mare standing at the door was panting hard, her mane a mess, eyes wild. She grabbed Snechta, said something in Mijôra, and Snechta paled.

“Uh, excuse me,” Snechta said. She bolted out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me.

I went over to the window to see what I could see. Snechta and the mare, plus a trio of guards, ran out into the main foyer. My guess? Zombies. But not just any zombies. Zombies who only craved pickled pony patooties.

Of course, that was a problem my sword and I could solve later. But first and formally foremost, there was a desk to sift through and loot! Sitting in Snechta’s chair, I opened a drawer, pocketed a paperclip, but found nothing else of want. Hey, it was my duty as an adventurer to be a part-time kleptomaniac. More than once, I’d gone into a house, grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down, and sold it. Then I’d come back with a hammer I’d purchased with that money and steal everything that was nailed down. I wasn’t very good about keeping onto hammers, though.

The right sideleg of the desk had but a single large cabinet. I pulled it out and let out a gasp filled with childlike glee. “Weihnachten has come early this year,” I said, pulling out the cabinet’s Voixson and putting it on the desk.

This Voixson had a luggage tag on its handle which read “Dzawra zô Makôrvidh”.

When I read it, the eager beaver inside me suddenly got the feeling of breaking his buckteeth. If the Voixson was labeled in Mijôra, surely the audio that this thing had recorded also was in Mijôra, right? It had been so long since last I’d seen one of these, just before I killed Sleepy Oaks nearly a month ago, and now that I find one, it’s in a language I didn’t speak? Sighing, I hit the big play button anyways, leaning back.

“More and more, I find myself speaking in Sałca,” came the crackling, recorded voice of Snechta, and my ears perked at it. Staring out at the white tree in the middle of the rotunda’s lake, I listened. “The tongue infests my head as it infests the mouths of our children, for why speak the tongue of your people when everypony understands Equestrian?” She grunted. “It is even the tongue that he speaks to me in my darkest dreams. I sing of hearth, I sing of light, I sing of sweetly frosted things,” she said in a rhythmic singsong, “but anight dream I of dark wings. And song of fire, song of blood, brings he to me a champion strong.”

The singsonging voice ended. “Darks wings and darks words. Of course, dreams are places of anythings, of fancy and madness. I would be mad to think myself an auger of the future. But alone in my temple, I heard his voice whisper into my ears; it came from everywhere. He told me that he was an agent of the truest matriarch, of Dominae Nostrae, Our Lady, just as he had whispered into my dreams the first night after the Empire returned to normal time.

“He told me that he and Our Lady had been watching over me. The voice spoke, and I listened in the darkness of my temple. He told me that, right now, as we spoke, a mighty champion from somewhere far beyond was on his way to Côrint, and the champion would find his way to me.” Snechta hesitated. “The voice told me that I had to have this champion retrieve the fabled book, Calêrhos, and use it to restore Cae Cêlyx. He said that only I could use the book to bring the orb of Cae Cêlyx back to life, and nothing would make the Goddess, Our Lady, a better gift.” Snechta sniffled. “He said that if I offered the resurrected Cae Cêlyx to Our Lady, he would reward me; he would know me, and from that union I would be impregnated with a White Savior, who would grow up to bring the Crystal Empire back to the great power it once was…”

Snechta made sounds like she was poorly holding back tears. “The champion’s name is Jericho of Teutschland; he came today, and I have sent him to find for me Calêrhos. It is the answer to all my prayers… prayers which were only answered in nightmares…” She openly allowed herself to weep.

Then, in a low, distant, quiet voice: “My name is Snechta Annarswn, daughter of Nilla, and if I’ve gone mad, then to whomever is hearing this, this is how i-it all started…”

With a low whir and a click, the Voixson died out.

I sat back in the chair, processing what I’d just heard. The Snechta of that recording sounded terrified and fearful of what she was doing, yet when I’d given her the book only minutes ago, she’d seemed more eager than a psychopath in a hardware store. They seemed incongruent. Something was rotten in the realm of Princess Cadance. It was unpleasant to think that so many ponies here in this city, though, seemed so swayed by the words of a mare who heard voices. Although one thing was nice: there was something about Voixsons that seemed to compel ponies to reveal incriminating personal secrets, and then to just leave them where morally questionable thugs like myself could find them.

Still, something about this rubbed me wrong. It was like that inexplicable feeling of dread you got when you had to go to the restroom, and you just knew that there would be a line. ’Twas with that feeling that I hoofed the little flipped tag over, looking at its back.

“His number is 2133,” it read in a hastily scribbled scrawl. “His name is Corvaet.” The name had been underlined three times. Looking at the name, a wet stream of oh shit slowly slid down my spine. AE was a Mijôra diphthong, that much I could recall from the questions I’d asked. It was pronounced like AI/EI in Teutsche, and like the long I of Equestrians. In normal Equestrian, the name would like be written as Corvite.

In other words, pronounced exactly like Korweit.

And Korweit was the Stimme in der Finsternis, the Voice in the Dark. Korweit, born from the tainted womb of the insectoid demoness known as the White Queen over a thousands years ago. Korweit, or Κῶρβαἴτ as it had been written by the captured Spiegelgestalt, the mirage-pony back in Caval. Korweit, whom Snechta was now taking suggestions and orders from.

“Oh, may God drop a flaming piano on me that explodes in French clowns who only speak the language of inappropriate ass-slapping at a foal’s birthday party,” I groaned, and sprang from the chair, over the desk, and onto my face upon the other side. “I’m good,” I insisted to nopony, standing up and moving to bolt out the door. But in that moment, the door slammed into me as Snechta burst into the room.

“The bitch usurper!” Snechta panted, rushing past me into what I presumed to be her bedroom. “Oh, where is it? Where is it?” she said in panicked voice.

I touched the hilt of my sword, just in case, as I crept into her bedroom. Inside Snechta was running around, tearing the place apart; boxes and junk were flying through the air as she removed them from under the bed, in her closet, or from drawers of dressers.

“Snechta,” I said, a calm determination in my voice.

“What?” she snapped, jolting straight up and looking at me. There was a blue sock hanging from her ear, tears in her eyes. “Can’t you see I’m busy? This is important; I need to find Cae Cêlyx now!”

My muscles tensed. I could see that this would be more difficult than the time I faced the dreaded weresloth. You’d think killing them would be easy, but you also wouldn’t expect to find “sloth” and “disemboweled the guy” in the same sentence. So long as I never forgot, I would be safe from them, though. After all, the first sign that one is becoming a weresloth is forgetting what a weresloth was.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s that bloody bitch of a usurper, Cadance, and her slavering mongrel of a husband, Shining Armor!” Snechta stamped a hoof. “She’s been looking for an excuse to destroy me and those true to the Goddess, and when I acquired the book, Calêrhos, which she knows I must have stolen, she finally had her reasons. They’re out there, in the foyer, Shining Armor and his thugs, mostly crystalfolk who have betrayed Chêngrêla.”

Snechta went back to rooting savagely through her things. Then she stopped, looked up at me, and said, “You, Jericho Amadeus Faust of Teutschland, Champion of Côrint. You, Jericho, who has a body scarred and toned from brutal experience, a face that looks like it were chiseled from hardest stone by a savage god, with a will beyond that of iron and a sword mighty. Go out there and take what they stole from me, the book, Calêrhos. The bastard Prince stole it, and now I need to find the orb, need to find Cae Cêlyx. If Cadance gets both—that’s it. We lose. The Crystal Empire with be forever a shadow under the oppressive hooves of Canterlot.”

“What, exactly, does Cae Cêlyx do?” I asked simply.

“It doesn’t matter!” she shouted through tear-strewn eyes. “Just-just help me, please!”

I gave her a long, hard look. Outside, I could hear shouts and screams. With a long, slow sigh, I pushed aside the tail of my duster and pulled out my sword, awkwardly holding it in my hoof so that I could speak. But before I could speak, Snechta’s gasped, eyes going ludicrously wide for the second time this night.

“That sword…” she muttered.

“What about it?” I inquired innocently.

“I recognize it from the stories. I recognize it from the stained glass in one of the further rooms of the temple, the ones telling the story of a legendary hero and leader who stood up against Discord in his final years and Celestia in her first years, then took his great flock across the Eastern Sea over a thousands years ago. That sword… is Caledfwlch.”

“Well, we in the Reich say it as Kaledfulch, but yes, likely the same thing.”

“B-b-but how did you…?”

I shrugged. “Eh, like I told Cards—or was it Lightning Dust?—the morning before the Songnam Slaughter: I stole it from a museum in Zentrum because the museum was dressed like a slut and had it coming. But with my sword, I’ll capture back the book, because Cadance works for Celestia, and I’m a Teutscher; as the whole saying we have about ourselves goes, we are those that challenge the sun.” I turned to leave. “Oh, and one last thing.”

Snechta looked as if she’d been hit by a cow. “What?”

“Corvaet is a liar.”

|— ☩ —|

“Everypony, calm down!” the big white unicorn in the purple platemail was shouting as he and the numerous guards swarmed up the stairs and into the rotunda. “Everypony please just remain where you are, don’t panic, and we can all go home unharmed tonight.” His light blue eyes scanned the rotunda as ponies remained anywhere but where they were and panicked. Clearly, this stallion was a master of reverse psychology. I bet that all he had to do to sleep with a mare was order her not to rape him.

As I crept down the stairs, I contemplated putting my sword away. So, from afar, it must’ve looked like was trying to dance terribly before finally deciding to sheathe the blade. I was going to try to talk first, because that had always worked in the past. Just like Sleepy Oaks when everypony went crazy, or Songnam up by the castle, or when I met up against the Devil’s Backbone… Okay, bad examples, but the point stood.

From where I was, I could see the stallion in purple armor wearing a purse… no, not a purse. That had a feminine meaning, for some reason. He had a sort of messenger bag slung around his side, the kind Snechta had been wearing, and where I bet Calêrhos was. Ponies were running and screaming around me as I walked with calm indifference towards the mass of guards trying to control what was quickly turning into a riot.

“For the love of Celestia, would you all just calm down!” the stallion shouted.

“I don’t think swearing to Celestia is wise around these ponies,” I offered, walking towards him. I could see at least one pony hiding behind the nearest buffet table ,which was near enough to the guards here. “They seem to have a vague disdain for her. Or, at least, would prefer to swear by a Goddess, not Celestia.”

He jerked his head to me, as did many of his troopers. The bloke wasn’t holding a weapon, even though he easily could have, since he was a unicorn, and the sword at his side looked paltry. “Hello, you there,” he said. “You seem like you have your wits about you. Could you help us calm this whole fiasco down before anypony gets hurts?”

“You mean, before we have to hurt anypony else,” one of his stallions offered, and the purple-armored guy shot him an almost murderous look.

“I’ll be honest with you,” I said, taking the conversation by the horns and readying to be gored, “I worked very hard to steal that book from the Royal Canterlot Archives. I mean, for God’s sake, some crazy mare tried to rape me after she caught me. And no! I don’t care how old it gets, I’m never letting anyone forget this very important fact!”

“Wait, so it was stolen!” the lead stallion shouted. “Cadance was right, and now we have proof!”

“Don’t you need a warrant or something before you can break into a place?” I asked, and the stallion just looked confused.

“What’s a warrant?”

My one good eye twitched. “God, Equestrians have no concept of justice.” I took a deep, long breath. “So, listen here, pony boys, and listen good. You are all going to leave now very quietly and courteously. You will apologize to anypony you might have hurt on the way in here. You will leave with me anything you might have confiscated from this temple. And then you will go back to that floozy, Princess Cadance—”

“Hey!” the stallion in purple barked. “Don’t you dare badmouth my wife!”

“Ah, so that must mean you’re Prince Shining Armor. Fancy that. Glad to see Princess Cadance has terrible taste in stallions. Look at you. You probably taste like lemons. And Cadance must be a special kind of daft to just eat a lemon raw, which she most certainly does because the weird system of Equestrian sexual mores probably means that she either fulfills any wifely duties you place upon her, or you are legally allowed to behead her or something. I don’t know. I’m not from here.”

Shining Armor was gritting his teeth. Some of the stallions by him took steps away.

“But what I do know is that you will leave here in peace, take nothing, and then you will wait the required period to receive a court-approved search warrant allowing you to loot and trash this place however you may like! And then I won’t have anything to say against you. I might fornicate the rules six ways till Sunday, but I at least have the decency to ask it to dinner first. Because you treat the rules like a concubine.”

The stallion seemed almost to be boiling. Then he put a hoof to his chest, followed by letting out a deep breath. Now he almost appeared level-headed, much to my chagrin. “Look,” he said, “none of that nonsense you said will happen.”

I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “You know, I find it funny that even though the Reich, if you really dig deep down into it relating to the power of the King, is technically a hereditary military autocracy that honestly believes it’s a constitutional democracy, it still is less authoritarian and arbitrary than Equestria. It’s a marvel.”

He said nothing.

“Give me back the book that I stole fair and square from Canterlot, and we can consider ourselves even,” I offered.

“And I’m afraid you’ll have to lay down on the ground with your hooves on your head; you’re under arrest for theft.”

We faced each other, staring at each other. One of us dressed in purple platemail that covered so little of his actual flesh that he sort of looked like a male stripper. The other dressed like a bladeslinger.

“It seems we’re at an impasse,” I said. “Mayhap we could compromise? You put the bag with the book down, and I’ll put my sword down. We go at this mano-a-mano. And by that, I mean I kick your ass because Equestrians don’t know how to fight.”

“No.”

I sighed, shaking my head. “Fine. Have it your way.” I had my sword in my mouth so fast that if anyone had been looking directly at the action, they’d surely have spots in their eyes from the flash of movement. At Shining Armor I went.

“I’ve had enough of you,” he said in a voice that sounded like he was ready to strangle a kitten, telekinecting out his sword. It had a purple hilt. So cute!

I ran at him, leaning myself to the left, readying for a strike. When Shining Armor brought his sword to his right to defend, I tossed my sword at his sword, throwing my body to the right.

As luck would have it, his first instinct was to try to deflect the sharp rod of steel flying at him.

His first response was not, however, to go for the bladeslinger ducking around his side. I used what I’d learned from the Cherrypillar as I struck his exposed leg. In the same fluid motion, so fast that Armor couldn’t even snap his head to see it, I grabbed the messenger bag, lifting it partially, then pulled back as hard as I could.

The fun part about this was that he fell to the ground. Even better, as I pulled on the bag, the thick straps found their way to his neck. In less obtrusive words, I was strangling him.

Game. Set. Match.

“So, now I know how your wife must feel each night,” I said to him through gritted teeth, pulling back on the bag even harder, even putting a hoof on the back of his neck to keep his face in the ground. “That must really suck about being a mare: odds are, your partner probably can’t last, and so every night you go to bed unsatisfied. Glad I never had this problem. That is, speaking of the time where I was a briefly a mare.”

Armor’s horn flashed, and a curious purple welt appeared on the back of his neck. Only, it was glowing and rather transparent, as if it were exceptionally clear tinted glass. It grew and expanded outwards like an umbrella, but worse. When it pushed at the straps strangling him, I believed I knew what he was doing. And when the little umbrella of purple got so massive that it snapped the straps, sending the pack flying over towards the buffet table, I jumped off him.

The stallion slowly rose to his hooves, panting and gasping, his eyes red and watery. Around him, the magical welt pulsed, then shifted over to his front, still in the shape of an umbrella, but still worse.

“Magic shields,” I spat. “You know, where I’m from, I was tasked with hunting out witches and warlocks such as you and bringing your kind to justice, to death, as was commanded by God and the Mare Laurentia.” I frowned, pouting. “Mostly because magic is cheating, you cheater! Cheater, cheater, not even good enough to eat out your wife-er!”

He flashed me wicked grin. “It’s not cheating if it’s a fair dice roll.”

That took me a second to process. “Natural D-twenties?”

“Of course.”

I whistled, except that I didn’t know how to whistle ,and so just sort of awkwardly spat at him. “Hey, but kudos to your gear.” I walked off to the side, picked up my sword, sheathed it, and went back to where’d I’d been. “You’re the smart kind of mage: the one who dresses like anything but a mage.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “This guys gets it. If you dress like a mage, they’re going to target you first, because mages are easy to kill.”

“Exactly!”

“So, what, you play Oubliettes and Ogres?”

“Never heard of that, but when I was a kid, I played Dunkelheit und Drachen.” I stamped a hoof. “Bitch, I’m a level twenty Bard! My charisma is so high that I could punch you straight in the face and convince you successfully that it was the wind.”

Shining Armor threw back his head and laughed. He laughed some more. “Oh, Celestia—you know I’m still gonna beat your teeth out of your skull and arrest you, right?”

“Wimpy wizard, I’d like to see you try!”

One of the guards shouted out, “No, don’t touch that!”

Armor and I whipped our heads around. The stallion who’d been hiding behind the buffet table had hopped over it and was grabbing the book that’d fallen out of the little messenger bag. He had red eyes, a somewhat curly black mane that extended to the base of his head, and looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. Something inside my head clicked, and I recognized him as Stronghold, the errant son of Dean/Mayor Kitten Whispers. All at once, I had two thoughts.

Hey, look! It’s the B plot. I was wondering when that would show up again.

And the other thought was that I recognized Stronghold from somewhere else. In fact, those red eyes of his that reminded me so much of Cards practically were Cards’ eyes. Stronghold “Strong” was the stallion I’d known as Sheriff Strong of Sleepy Oaks—the father of Cards. Which meant that Kitten Whisper’s was Cards’ grandfather. And that one officer had told me that the Tin Mare was the new girl who was a relative of Kitten Whisper’s and who seemed to be emotionally scarred, which more-than-likely meant that the Tin Mare of Hoofington was Cards herself!

Strong flipped open the door, his eyes mad. And not like the normal mad of my ex-girlfriend, This was more like the mad of my ex when she was horny. Very unpleasant memories. “Where’s it? Where’s it?!” he kept demanding of it.

“Sheriff Strong!” I shouted, and he didn’t even flinch. “Strong, what are you doing?” I demanded. Nothing. “Armor, please excuse me, this is really important!” I charged at the haggard, tired-looking stallion.

“Here!” he cried out in ecstasy, and his horn lit up as if casting a spell. “Włamaq. Caetrosch.”

“No, magic is cheating!” I yelled out, jumping to tackle him. I had contact and grabbed, but not before he let out a third word.

“Pflyç!”

A crack of thunder deafened me, my eye blinded by a green light. I held on as tight as I could to Strong, my face burying in his belly. Somehow still, he disappeared, as if he just evaporated. Judging by how cold I suddenly felt, I could safely conclude that I wasn’t in Snechta’s temple anymore.

|— ☩ —|

The floor was cold and felt like it was made of glass. There was no light in the room. My muscles kept asking me “What the hell, mate?” in their own special way: hurting me until I cried for Momma, mentally pictured her naked, and then agreed to find the actual naked pictures of her in order to sell to the magazines. My muscles were dicks like that. And mildly incestuous, apparently.

A voice in my head, that of my father, raged at me in my head. Get up, damn you! Get up, or the floor will sap all heat from your sorry excuse of a body.

I grunted. “Just five more minutes. I’m at the part of the dreams where the girl blows… Oh, God, no! Standing up!” I bolted to my hooves, the distance from the ground to my head so wide that I was momentarily hit with vertigo.

And keep your hooves off my wife, Father spat. Easily, my mind’s eye could picture him shaking his head at me, him and his proud handlebar mustache. The last time you were inside of her, you ended up killing her.

Shaking with horror and some cold, I tried to get a grip on my bearings. Although that was a little hard to concentrate on when your crotch felt as if it suddenly had too much room because your balls had suddenly decided to try nesting inside your body.

Regardless of testicular trauma, I found myself in a dark room. That was my first deduction, which I was unreasonably proud for concluding. It dawned on me that I’d probably gotten here via teleportation, and that thought sent me scrambling to touch every part of me to make sure that I was all where I was supposed to be. This ended with me grabbing my groin and trying to force my balls down, because I had to make sure that they hadn’t been swapped for, like, my kidneys or something. That was time well-spent.

As my vision better adjusted to the darkness, I could see a doorway in the wall of this place. Next to it was a little sign. “Sombra’s Door of Worst Nightmares. Do not open. THIS MEANS YOU.”

“You have tempted fate,” I told the sign, and opened the door. I saw what was inside the door, and the object in focus within was very bright. Apparently, it wasn’t a door at all. It was just a mirror. I stuck my tongue out at myself, then closed the door. “Well, that was a thoroughly unsatisfying worst nightmare,” I commented.

Pulling away from the mirror, I found that my eyes had adjusted even better. I could makes out bunches of dusty old crates forming a sort of hallway. Since there was nothing better to do than take a walk down Creepy Lane, I did.

As I walked, I saw that many of what I’d thought here boxes weren’t boxes, but more like little shrines and tables alongside boxes. One such table had a dead raven with three eyes splayed out, its underside cut open, its organs mummified. At one point, there was a severed eye in a jar that followed me around. But I stopped to stare back at it, it looked off. Its little jostles, I figured as I walked off, were focused purely around movement.

Then I came across another door. This one had a faint white light bubbling out from beneath its heavyset frame. “Either Strong is in there with that book which I need in order to heal myself,” I said, “or a giant tentacled elder thing is in there, knitting me a gaily decorated sweater. Made from the vaginal flesh of slain little fillies.”

I swung the door in and rolled in. It was the first option, thanks be to God.

Strong was standing before what looked like a really oblong, narrow doorway that stood upon a pedestal. He was reading from Calêrhos, and, bitch, that was my book! When he saw me, he swore. “Go away!” he shrieked.

“Stronghold, son of Kitten Whispers, father of Cards, I order you to halt!”

“No!” he shouted, and I could see desperate tears in his eyes, like an elephant with its foot stuck in a beehive. Elephants were terribly phobic of beeees. “I don’t have a choice, don’t you see! The legends of Calêrhos are true! I learned of them, have been learning of them, and now I finally have it! I can bring her back!”

“You’re a crazy idiot and your face is probably going to explode if you use that book; you’re no mage.”

“Leave me be! You don’t know what it’s like without her!”

I walked towards him, slowly, ever so slowly. “Who, Cards? Cards is alive and well, trust me. Well, maybe not well; I might have seriously screwed her up mentally, but you can still hug her, buy her a stuffed animals, take naked pictures of her in the shower. You know, normal fatherly things!”

“Not Cards!” he snapped. “I know she’s well; I mean the light of my loins, the one mare I ever truly loved, the monster who will forever posses my heart, without whom I cannot bear to live.”

“Blackout?” I asked, cocking my head. “Your old bitch of a wife?”

“Don’t you speak ill of her, wretched butcher!” he spat, making a hoof gestured before uttering more words. The doorway seemed to shimmer and undulate in its frame. “She’s dead, and I know because I saw the body! I cradled her corpse, wept and begged that she come back to me, and I watched you kill the ponies I’d cared for and protected for over eighteen years!”

I flinched. “But necromancy isn’t the right option! I’m pretty sure that bringing somepony back good as new and untainted requires some serious equine sacrifice, friend.”

“Necromancy?” He howled with laughter, and pointed at the shimming mirror within the doorframe. “They say that through Calêrhos is another world, a realm where all we ponies live, where they are and are not us! It’s like Fiddler’s Green. But Cadance and Celestia sealed the doorway forever and planned to burn this book. But with it, I can force the door open, I can go into the doorway, and I can bring Blackout back!”

“Okay, plot dumps aside, you’re a crazy pony.” I pointed to my chest. “Coming from me, that’s kind of a big deal. So, just come here, give me a hug, and I’ll help you buy Cards a big ol’ present. She’ll be so happy, and—”

The doorway’s mirror made a deep noise like someone punching a bowl of toilet water. A wooden door appeared before the doorway, and Stronghold smiled at me like a dog with its nose covered in paprika. “Magic is as magic does, you son of a bitch. And this book is mine.”

Stronghold, laughing like a banshee getting a really good blowjob, sprinted for the doorway. It flung open on its own, the mirror beyond it quivering like the surface of a lake wherein a racist zebra is being drowned by a sad clown. He leapt through the doorway, and the wooden frame of the door slammed behind Strong.

God! I thought, trying to chase after him. This was not how today was supposed to go.

The doorknob wouldn’t turn. I pounded and slammed on the door. “Open!” I commanded. “I want my freaking eye and horn back, so open! Open! Open!” Nothing. So I pounded harder. “Open, open, open, open!” Not a thing. Then a desperate thought came to mind, and I gave it a try. “Please open?” Something in the door clicked.

Oh, you snooty, prick-faced bastard of a door.

I grabbed the doorknob—a device which was rare in Teutschland—and swung the door open. The mirror in the door was gone. Instead, there was an image. And I looked at the image.

And I screamed with true terror for the first time in my adult life, slamming the door shut and falling down on shaky legs.

Breathe, damn you, breathe! Father ordered in my ear. Do you want to see with both eyes once again? Do you want to telekinetically pick things up once more, to be able to swordfight while providing witty banter once more?

“Y-yes,” I whispered, and the voices in my head didn’t have to say any more. I stood up, faced the door, and opened it.

Without further thought, with the simple resolve that had made me the last of my line, the resolve to continue marching on to be hero even after I’d killed all my friends through mistake or by my own hoof, with the single-minded and unflinching resolve that I could still make a difference and help people even if I was a child-killing monster, and which had allowed me to cross the world and face its horrors without ever losing the smile on my face, I stepped through the doorway and into the mirror.

Author's Note

Footnote: level up!

New Perk: Unflinching Resolve — Hey, so what if you’re a child-murdering sociopath who has absolutely no regard for equine life? You still have that undeterrable will to be a hero and fight villains and monsters. And that’s all that matters, right? Right! With this perk, your willpower is now through the goddamn roof, allowing you to better face your fears, continue when savagely injured, and resist mind-control, amongst other things. This perk also allows you to reroll if you fail low-level willpower checks.

(So, this is the chapter I’ve been building towards, wherein everything, the stakes, the players, changes. Things are bound to change so much that it’s almost another act; it’s only a part of Act II because the overarching quest is the same: to restore Jericho’s flesh back to how it was when he first entered Equestria. If Act 2 were separated into different book subsets, this would be the end of Book I, the start of Book II. I hope very much that you’ll stick around as we enter a part of My Little Pony that many of us would rather forget about.)

(And to our resident Welsh reader: Yes, yes Caledfwlch is.)

(Hey, just something I wanted to know. What are your, like, top 5 favorite lines from Jericho? The story overall, not just him.)

(Siffer: It’s “Deliberately Find Incredibly Disturbing Things About The Show” time! So, you guys know how Shining Armor and Cadence kinda rule the Crystal Empire now, right? That seems to be the general consensus anyway. Well, how many here have actually thought about the fact that they’re tyrants? I mean, I doubt the Crystal Ponies fucking elected them, aye? They kinda just showed up, killed the last King, and then took the throne for themselves. Seems kinda dark now, doesn’t it? That’s because they’re tyrants. And evil. Obviously. I mean, I can’t for the life of me see why the Crystal Ponies would allow a unicorn and an alicorn on the throne after their last evil, slave-binding tyrant was a unicorn himself. I don’t know about you guys, but I really just want to see the Crystal Empire start a bloody revolution, kick the Equestrians off the throne, and then make a democracy. They can elect their own leader.)

Chapter 27 — Courses

Chapter 27: Courses

“They’re horses, of courses…”

Huh.

It was the first thing I thought. A bit less dramatic than I’d been hoping for. Really, I’d been expecting something dark, hardcore, and terrible to happen to me, but no. Of course, knowing me, that just meant that what was really going to happen would be worse. As it was, I could feel a sensation of falling, but falling very slowly, as if the air around me had the consistency of water, and I had a lead statue of a flamboyant pirate in my gut.

“And do you know what they say about it?” I heard a male voice ask. I wanted to say I’d assume it was a dead pony who’d eaten far too many berries before a jealous cherry killed him, but my mouth didn’t work.

“Just legends,” another stallion said. His voice sounding a bit stronger, like he was in command of whomever was speaking. “You said you just found it somewhere. Where?”

“Well,” a mare spoke up, “we found it in a junkyard, up by the ruins of Caydin. Some old coot had originally found it, but when we got there, it seemed he’d been dead long enough for all his pet cats to eat him.”

Ah, cats. They were such lovely animals. Just like hamsters. Hamsters, I’d like to remind you, are known for eating their babies and raping their children. Much like how lions killed the cubs of lionesses, because that was literally the only way for a lion to get his groove on with a momma lioness. Nature was so fascinating.

“And so you brought this to me?” Second Voice asked dryly.

First Voice replied, “You recall the nightmare after we discovered the mirror pool. You of all people should know that myths and legends are no less a threat just because they’re stories you tell your kids.”

“Agreed,” Lady said. “This mirror is supposed to be the gateway to a horrible other world. Like ours, but from which only monsters come and go.”

Second Voice let out a breath. “I’ve got the threat of living nightmares pouring in from across the border and ending all life on the continent; unruly conquests in the Northlands; an unruly governor in Marzipolis whom I need to make disappear; I am this close to having to enforce martial law just so that folks don’t kill each other for a loaf of bread; I got the King of Teutons breathing down my neck, refusing to help me, and when I offered to marry his daughter, he only got offended, because that’s not a thing in his country, arranged marriages; and you’re trying to bother me with some junked mirror you found?”

He sighed. “Looks, guys and gals, I love you all like family and the realm would be nowhere without you, but really? A mirror to another world? This is starting to sound mad, even from you guys. And unless I can just knock on it, say ‘I wish for a solution to my problems’, and get one from this, we’re gonna have to put this thing on the backburner while we work with more practical options. And… there’s something behind me, isn’t there?”

At that moment, I felt my right arm spasm, as if it were frantically trying to clutch its tendrils deeper into my body. It felt like I had the world’s angriest kitty stapled to my shoulder. With a sudden jolt, something flung me forwards.

I landed on what felt like the bottomside of bathroom rug, all rubbery with little circular patterns. As I groaned, my eye still shut, my body laying on the ground, I could hear Second Voice, now much closer, shout, “Geremiah’s blood!” All around, though, I heard a plethora of voices gasping and muttering prayers.

My body felt all wrong. It felt as if I’d been locked in a freezer for days, taken out, partially thawed, and then beaten half to death by dwarves wearing eyepatches. There was also a part of my spine that felt as if it’d been cut opened and raped by a bull. Judging by the sore agony, it was probably a Tuesday morning.

“What day is today?” I asked.

“I… did he try to speak?” someone said.

“I said, what day is it?”

“It’s, uh, it’s Tuesday,” another answered.

“Thanks,” I groaned. “I bloody well knew it. Tuesdays hate me.” With a grunt, I forced my good eye open. Sure enough, there was that stuff that looked like the underside of a bathroom rug. Grumbling rather loudly about how I was going to murder Stronghold with a rusty coat hanger up his penis so that I could slowly watch him die of tetanus for what he’d done, I put my hooves out in order to push myself up and…

Huh, I thought for the second time.

I pushed upwards, trying to gain leverage upwards. Their feel and manner of articulation were different. It was like… it was like all the bones and muscles had been replaced. The left one felt weird, but the right arm seemed almost relaxed, like it was back to normal. Even where the arms hooked to my shoulders felt different, felt broader, more spaced apart. I was struck the suddenly image of me as a mannequin being manipulated by strings made of cheese, my proportions stretched out and exaggerated to better allow for easier control of limbs.

Raising myself partly on my arms, I looked down at what should have been my hooves, and were now C-like hands, their palms splayed out on the rubber, their spidery digit splayed out like a snake’s jaw as it tries trying to eat a banjo. What had once been fur was now skin, like C’s; only thing was, my skin was a light tannish-beige color, like the reflection of sun-filtered dust off distant gold.

Something on sides of my head—Ears! a voice inside me said. They’re your ears!—suddenly experienced a sensation like rat tails dragging over them, sending chill bumps down my spine, a spine which very much wasn’t like the spine I’d grown so used it. In fact, nothing of my body like like it was were it was supposed to be, Absolutely noth—wait, no, my penis. That certainly felt to be in about the right place. Yay. Glad to see there were some universal constants.

Then I noticed the thin locks of hair around the edges of my vision. It took me a moment to notice that it wasn’t just hair, it was my hair, and a further moment for it to click that I didn’t remember having hair so long that it must have stretched just past the base of my head. There was also the further thought that the hair I could see looked slightly wavy, which was a good reason why I kept my mane short. There was no telling what I’d look like with long hair. And long wavy hair was for little bitches, no offense to any badass little bitches out there.

So I tried to stand, and when I did, my right leg bent upwards, curling up to my breast, the hoof… the foot at its end setting its ball down on the ground. I had never made a motion quite like that before, but already it was as if my new body was working for me, like the motions I’d been used to had unionized, but this new body was willing to work for half their wages and didn’t have unions to trouble me with.

With all the thoughtless thought of standing up in my old flesh, my new body stood up and rose my head up to a dizzying height. Looking down at this ludicrously long body and the two legs upon which it stood, I said, “Well, it appears as if I’ve become C.” It was a strange feeling, sensing all of the tiny, minuscule little motions that the body performed every second, little muscle movements, to keep itself standing still. They were probably the same things that went on in my normal body, but that my mind had simply learned to tune out over the decades.

This other side of the doorway suddenly reminded me of a module for the game Dunkelheit und Drachen. It was like one of those modules where you’re only allowed to play as a certain race, and if you’re not of that race, you have to roll a new character as that race. I had the sudden thought that I’d been forced to reroll a character, but had cheated and just changed the race on my character sheet from “unicorn” to “skinwalker”. And, for some reason, I was sure I’d changed my sex from “male” to “Yes, please!”

“E-excuse me?” Lady asked, and my neck pivoted to let me see the mare. Or not a mare. Her face had all the features I could recognize, emotions I could. But her body, the vaguely hourglass space of her above the legs, was like that of a feminine C. She was she much shorter than I, looking up at me with bespectacled eyes.

Speaking of eyes, my eye was drawn to her chest. There were these bulbous, certainly cancerous lumps on her chest that I couldn’t stop staring at. I just wanted to jack a knife to them and pop them like balloons.

I watched myself raise an arm, and extend a hand out to her. Four digits on the appendage curled up into a ball, a fist, as if saying “Well, screw this shit!” while one long finger remained outstretched. It did this purely on instinct, the thought that I wanted to poke her.

“Um… hello to you, too,” she stammered, the whitish-peach skin of her face going red as I poked the cancerous lumps. Moving my hands and fingers around it, I checked for lumps. Since I had doubts that something this cancerous had any feeling left, I was sure she didn’t mind. In fact, she didn’t say anything; she just stood there with this stunned, horrified look on her face, and silence equaled consent. I even squeezed when I didn’t find any apparent hard cancers. They were much softer than I’d’ve expected, since tumors were often rather thick.

“How long do you have to live?” I asked.

“Wh-whaat?” she stammered.

I poked them again. “Those cancerous lumps. Surely, you must be too sick to even stand. I commend you on your willpower, ma’am. Were I so infected with cancer, I would surely be bedridden and crippled. You have my respects, warrior.”

She pushed her glasses, a baffled look on her countenance. “Well, I, uh…”

I suddenly became aware of the distant, soft humming of machinery. In that moment, I realized just how sterile, bright, and white this room was, and just how many faces likes those of C’s race were staring at me, male and female. Most all of them were clean, pristine, and wearing white coats with black shirts underneath, except for one such skinwalker in a black suit. Their skin was all a similar whitish-pink to that of the first lady.

Then what I was wearing occurred to me. There was the old, trusty but old, hat on my head that had absorbed so much sun that its color was dying, and been washed of so much dark blood that you almost couldn’t tell it had been whitening. My body was clad in a worn, but not entirely dirty, leather duster, with thong-straps and pockets abound, a knife or two hidden away under it, and with several stitches all over from where it’d been gashed opened and I’d had to manually repair it. Further down, and I saw faded blue jeans so worn and sunbleached from use that they were starting to turn white. And brown leather boots with steel toes, oddly, which I hadn’t been wearing before. In short, I was all worn, hardy, traveling, fighting gear, and they were all clean, well-kept, civilized-looking folk.

So, either this was about to turn into a high school drama where I teach these clean kids to dance good with my phunky-phresh urban style, or it was the setup of a really bad porn novel.

I blinked and said, “Lab coats. You’re wearing lab coats.” To me, my voice sounded astonished, and I could easily fancy that they heard it, too. “Then you, warrior,” I said, looking at the cancer-fight lady. “You must be a priestess here, for this must be a temple of technology. And technology here must be good, for science never really took off before people invented the stylish lab coat.”

“May I?” Second Voice said, putting a hand on the priestess’ shoulder. She stepped back, and the skinwalker took a place before me. Of us, I was the taller one. I looked into his amber eyes, looked over his short black hair, and had the queerest sense of déjà vu. “Son, do you know where you are?”

“Yes,” I said, sounding a bit like a tribal trying to explain his vast knowledge of socioeconomics to a civilized idiot. “I am through the portal, within a temple of technology, in a place populated by unfamiliar creatures the likes of which my flesh would appear to be emulating. Although your skin is a more pallid complexion than mine own, so mayhap I was slightly charred when I arrived through the doorway.”

Hey, is it just me, or do you sound different? Like, your word choice is all odd. Is it possible that a part of your brain got scrambled when you got this new body?

“You have a name?” he asked, and I shrugged. Ooh, shrugging was weird with this skeletal structure. “Well, my name is King Charles Elkington.”

My first thought was a dull recognition that his first name was French, said almost like shahl. The second thought came out more of an explosion, and it came out aloud. “Elkington!”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“No, no, no, you do not understand!” I tried to take a breath and slow down, but the thoughts were coming out too fast. “Stronghold remarked that beyond the doorway was like Fiddler’s Green, a purgatorium, a place where there are like those from my side of the doorway.” He took a step back as I clasped my hands to his shoulder, the new sensation of grabbing someone with fingers nearly destroying my chain of thought. “Elkington, you are here.”

“I-I am,” he said back. There was a look in his eye like a rabbit being tied up by the farmer who liked to rape fluffy things.

“And you have not yet met a terrible fate on my side of the doorway!” I laughed. “On my side, you are still alive and well, and the only one in any possible position to kill you would be myself, whom you hate with perfect hatred now that your first enemy is dead, even though now we are on shaky but vaguely allied terms!”

The skinwalking Elkington’s face didn’t change. He continued taking calm breaths.

“And when Stronghold went through… Heaven’s blood, he means to go to Sleepy Oaks to retrieve the mare long dead through my side of the gate… long dead in my world.”

“Mare?”

I nodded. “Yes. A female of the species, as is called in Equestrian. I know not what the male and female of your species are named.”

“Man, men for male. Woman, women for female,” he offered hesitantly. “That’s what they hight.”

“Hight?” I asked.

“Are called,” he offered after a moment’s thought.

“Yes, as in heißen,” I muttered, and the man blinked hard at that. “Like, ‘I hight Elkington’. Is this correct?”

“Yes, but that language. Did you just speak Teutonic?”

I tried to take a step to the side, to get around him, but I thought about it too much. This resulted in me falling to the ground. “I do not know how to walk,” I announced. “I thought about it too much. I would apologize, but I am not sure about anything anymore. Please, Duke Elkington of Songnam, you must help me find a certain mare—woman, a certain woman before Stronghold finds her; it is the only way I can get back the dark text which brought me here, the only way to return, and the only way to make sure that Stronghold brings no harm to your realm!”

From where I lay, I looked over and saw the mirror that I’d entered through, the one that had been behind the wooden door back on my side. It looked dead. Really, due to how much the universe hated me, the only way to get the door to opened back up was to get Calêrhos back from Stronghold.

“Hear me, please, I beg,” I called out to Elkington-man as I tried to figure out how to get off my back and back onto those two legs of mine. “Elkington, you must lend me your hand, you must help me track down this woman before this Stronghold gets her, or all is lost! I want what he stole from me, and I want my left eye back, and I can’t let him win. In my world, the mare Blackout was located in the small town of Sleepy Oaks, and I don’t know if—”

“Sleepy Oaks?” he asked, a horrified look on his face, like he’d just seen pictures of his mother vigorously mastrubating. Vigorously. Elkington looked around to the techpriests. “By the Founding Fathers, this is a lot to handle in what was supposed to be a short checkup.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Well, I was scheduled to receive healing for my wounded flesh today; that was when a lunatic obsessed with legends of your realm stole the book I’d fairly pilfered from the Royal Archives, and used it to penetrate into this world, forcing me to follow in order to retrieve him before he incited far too much harm.” I blinked. “Wait. That look of horror on your countenance. The fact that you don’t know me by name. And, does the name ‘Devil’s Backbone’ strum any familiar chords?”

The look on Elkington’s face said it all.

“The Backbone lives yet, doesn’t he?”

Elkington hesitated, looked around, then nodded. “Codename DB, the Devil’s Backbone; he is alive, representing a clear and present danger to my kingdom.”

I threw my head back and laughed, banging my head against the ground. It couldn’t be helped; it was just so funny.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, as if reading my mind, which I hoped he wasn’t. I had to kill all mind readers on general principle of mind-rape.

“Oh, Ellie,” I said, trying to hold back the laughs. “Where I’m from, after you declared your undying hatred of me, you hired me to go out and kill the DB. And kill him I did.” I pointed to my eye. “Where do you think I lost my eye?” I snickered. “Hey, I don’t suppose you’re still brutally obsessed with some Celestia lady, are you?”

Elkington blinked. “Celestia? My secretary of education?”

“Yeah, her,” I went on. “Where I’m from, Princess Celestia is the immortal goddess of the sun, or so everyone believes, and you’re an almost fanatic follower of her because you’re head-over-heels for the broad.” I tried to get a grip on my body’s laugher. God, even the shape and size of the lungs felt different. Bigger and longer, even. Like I simply had far more air per breath wherewith to laugh.

“And…” Elkington hesitated, looking around to his techpriests. “And just where are you from? The land you are from, that is.”

I smiled. “Elkington, I come from somewhere far beyond.”

|— ☩ —|

Elkington stared at me. “Are you dancing?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. Although in truth, it could have been called that. As I twisted, jostled and moved my legs beneath me, trying to get a feel of what they could and could not do, I might have looked like dancing.

Duke-come-King Elkington was sitting behind a large wooden desk decorated with all manner of things. He had vague bags under his eyes, little splotches of blackness like some angry women had tried to gouge his eyes out with mascara, but he never once seemed to slightly nod off or so much as yawn. Here in this big office, I suppose that was something.

All I knew about this place was that Elkington had led me to a lift, like the one that had taken me to DB’s lair way back when, and it had gone up until it felt as if my stomach was trying to buy new property down by my gonads. Elkington had an office on the the fourth floor, and behind his desk, I could see a city at night, lamplight keeping dark streets bright as an utterly alien moon watched over.

I made it back to Ellie’s desk and collapsed into the chair opposite his side of the desk. “Why does the moon look so different?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Different?”

“Yes, there’s no mare in it. There’s a mare in the moon where I am from. Which is to say, the various maria on the moon greatly resemble the head of a mare, the female of my species.” I shrugged. “Of course, other cultures see it as other things, like as a rabbit.” I pointed, really digging the pointing features of hands. “That moon looks sort of like a red grinning face. And I don’t trust that murderous look in its eye.”

“It is the Nightmare Moon,” Elkington said simply.

Uncreative? Sure. And pigs would dance on two legs under the unswotel Nightmare Moon of Winterfulth came the voice of Proud in my head, as that Carolean had said to me back in Caval.

Elkington went on. “For nar a week in Winterfulth, the Nightmare Moon rises. You shouldn’t stare at it; staring thereat long enough, ’tis said, will drive a man mad.” Winterfulth, I thought. Yes, that was that weird name for October, right? “It’s the lingering curse of Black Erelith, ever since the old witch was burned at the stake nar a thousand years ago.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, nodding. “So, it seems to me that while people here are sort of the same, Elkington is Elkington, for example, the actual world itself, its events, its history, its wording, mayhap even geography, are all wrong.” I leaned back in my chair. Promptly, because I didn’t know what I was doing, the chair fell down. I opted to remain sitting in the fallen chair as I asked, “So, Elkington, how’d you become a king? You’re a duke where I’m from.”

Hey, your word-choice is getting back to normal. I just noticed that. That’s good.

“Conquest,” Elkington remarked evenly as I jostled out of the chair. “When I was a boy, Evesland was hardly more than a ragged collection of freeholds and petty feudal realms, from the Northlands down to Free Marches. I took the throne of Songnam when I was only fifteen. It began when I created the Caroleans to safeguard my nation; the bloodshed began when I discovered that my neighbor, the Lord Paramount of Rhone, was going to marry his princess daughter off to a noble cousin of mine that I’d kicked out of Songnam for being greedy and selfish, which would have given the Lord Paramount of Rhone a reason to attack me, to burn Songnam.”

He pulled out a bottle of wine and a glass from under his desk and poured himself a glass. “Leading the Caroleans myself, I attacked first. One thing led to another, foreign nobles conspired against me, angry neighbors, poverty, and so…” He shrugged. “Now all of the great noble houses of Evesland are gone, and I wear the iron crown of Geremiah, as bestowed upon me by the Congress. People have never been freer and richer than they are today, especially considering that I was the only lord in Evesland to adopt a constitution, the only one to implement social welfare systems, the only one to abolish noble privileges. Really, though, I simply got the idea from looking across the sea, to the Rike.”

Setting the chair back up and now with a thorough knowledge of what this bastardy body was capable of doing to chairs, I sat down. “That sounds like Reich, but with a hard K for an ending instead of the catlike hiss I’m used to. In my where, I come from a place known as the Reich.”

“I figured something as much,” he commented. “From the color of your skin, I can tell you’re a Teuton. They have that tannish-gold look that drives all the girls wild here. And… What’s wrong? What’s with that look on your face?”

It was just a simple, quick thought, really. People in this where are like skinwalker copies of those in my where. Then: But it appears that this where is without my influence, amongst other things; this would explain how Blackout might still be alive, and belike even Glasses, Cards’ friend whom I killed. That lead to the logical conclusion. Which means that somewhere out there, likely in this very city, Cherry Berry is still alive!

Glancing over my shoulder to the door out of this massive office, I was sure that Cherry was about to come in, because somehow her new job was Elkington’s secretary or something. Nobody came in.

“Um, stranger?” Elkington prodded.

“Yes, so,” I said quickly, and took a deep, nasal breath. “Just give me some corn products, because those demonic explosive runes that DB used stop working when exposed to corn products, and I’ll go kill him for you, same as last time. And I’ll do it as I wait for Stronghold to get to the little hamlet of Sleepy Oaks. Because I’m just nice, nice like getting your head bashed in by a bag of carrots. Which I once did to a stallion, since he was a clown, and you can’t trust a sad clown. No sweat. The Backbone was just a lone creep out in the swamp, anyways.”

“I get the feeling that the Devil’s Backbone of your side of the looking glass isn’t that of mine.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, running my cold fingers across my snazzy new countenance. The sensations and sensitivity of these new digits were intense; just touching things was like its own drug.

“The Devil’s Backbone was the Warchief of the Seven Tribes of Light.” He sipped at his wine. “Three years ago, the Caroleans and I defeated his invading horde at the Battle of Bryan’s Breach. He vanished after that. And for years, things have been getting worse in the realm. Strings of natural disasters, an ancient evil prophecy or two going off, a number of local crop failures, some civil unrest because many folks are still a bit irked at having been conquered.” He shrugged. “Manpower is stretched pretty thin trying to keep order and distribute aide across the realm. Then, when out of the dark morass of the western mires comes back the Devil’s Backbone with a small army of demons and other creatures of the dark.”

Elkington sighed. “The Teutonic King, when I mentioned this all to him, was ready to mobilize troop and resources to help us, then I pissed him off.” He hand a circular gesture with a hand as he leaned back. “In many coastal cities, a downright majority of people have converted to the Rike’s religion; and due to my freedom of worship policy, those priests have moved inland, too. Songnam only has a small following, though I myself am not one. So, when a young girl in one of these cities gets accused of witchcraft, and they’re ready to burn her alive, I logically step in to prevent the death of an innocent girl for some silly reason. Now, the Confessionists are angry at me, and the Rike’s King sides with them, and wants to extradite the witch to burn her, which I won’t allow, because I have morals.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. Of course the Confessionists were right. And, you know, it wasn’t as if my job back in the Reich had involved tracking down witches and other supernatural things, since that would be silly—oh, wait. That totally had been my job. Reasons like this were why King Elkington was a total pansy. Much like sentient hats.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t pretend to understand the geopolitical structure of a world I know nothing about, but I know I heard you wishing for a solution to your problems.” I patted myself on the chest. “As it happens, I’m a professional problem solver. A killer of evil creatures the world over. And while the Devil’s Backbone of my world was more-or-less just a corrupting figure out in a swamp spreading enervation out and doing evil with you as you planned to find a way to doublecross, betray, and then defeat him, I’m pretty sure I can kill him all the same. Because, as someone once told me: When going up against a bigger, stronger opponent, kick them in the nuts. If they have no nuts, well then you can totally just stab them a lot. Stabbing. Solves. Everything. Just like fire. So, stabbing someone while on fire probably cures cancer. I don’t know.”

Elkington made a sound like lettuce. He looked about as confused as a cow who’s just discovered her favorite food is horseradish.

I slammed a hand on his desk. More new feelings. “Elkington, I’m on the case like being hit with a mace. Just point me in the direction of Sleepy Oaks and its hundred or so people, and I’ll save the day, get what I want, get back to my where, and we can all live happily ever after. Except for all the people I kill. But they weren’t really people anyways, which is why they’re dead, and I’m not.”

“On the one hand,” Elkington went on, “you’re a weird stranger from another world with a weird knowledge of this world that isn’t entirely accurate, you stated yourself that you don’t know your body, I have no evidence that I can trust you or that you’re not actually an elder thing come to reap the souls of the living, and there’s an endless list of why I shouldn’t let you go do that, most of them on the grounds that doing so would make no practical sense. And on the other…”

I smiled. “And on the other hand, this is the part where you tell me that, despite all of that, you trust me, and will help me out in any way, right? I’ve seen this sort of thing before in comic books. You’ll doubt me, but then you’ll help me. I’ll save the day, come back, and you’ll say something like, ‘I doubted you, stranger, but I was wrong. Thank God I was wrong!’ I’ll be a big hero, and I’ll return back to my where. Go on! I always love this part of the story.”

“I’m afraid that is not correct,” he said in a calm voice. “This is the part of the story where the good king temporarily detains the mad stranger with the Mark of Kane until the good king can make sure the one with the dark mark isn’t a demon in disguise.”

“Mark of Kane?” I asked, standing up. My hands twitched, grasping at the air. They wanted to hold a weapon, but I wasn’t even sure how to hold my sword with hands.

“The thing on your lower back that’s almost a tramp stamp,” he said with a flick of the wrist. “Don’t think that I don’t recognize it. And after talking with you, I’ve come to give credence to that old myth.” The doors far behind me opened, and I heard the thunder of bootfalls. “Please, I don’t mean to offend you, but I’ve come to be very cautious. If I am mistaken, and I hope I am, no harm will come to you, and I’ll send you on your way. I am the good guy, after all. But if it turns out you are the Marked One.” He gestured to the chair. “Please, take a seat.”

I remained standing. “In other words, welcome to prison. Population: You.”

“Sir,” a gruff voice said from behind me. It was the kind of tone that Selena would have added an I prithee to. “I’m gonna have to ask you to please sit down.”

“How long will this all take?” I asked evenly.

“Mayhap a week,” Elkington said. “Nar some blood tests, DNA tests, chromosome tests, skins tests of the mark. Need to also get the court wizard to look you over.”

My eye twitched, and my hands kept shaking, wanted to grasp something that could kill. I didn’t think I would have a week to waste. “Do I have the right to a strip search? And a guarantee that you don’t stick your spindly man-fingers up my ass? Because I know about cavity searches in my world, and that last thing I want is fingers anywhere near, on, or in my genitals.” Wait. Is Kane the Equestrian pronunciation of the name Kain? And Kainsmal is one of our words for cutie mark, so… “And for that matter, just how in God’s name did you see my Kainsmal?”

“Sir,” the gruff voice came again, the tone itself a threat.

“Elkington, we might not see eye-to-eye in either of our wheres,” I pleaded, “but you’re making a huge mistake!”

“Sir.” More violent. Like the emotional disposition of a salmon who caught salmonella from a Neighponese sushi bar.

“Elkington!” I said, my right art suddenly throbbing with heat. The man just sat there, an almost smug look on his face, like that of a stallion… of a man who’s just successful destroyed rap music. God, where was Octavia and her cello when you needed her to play an evil theme?

“Sir!”

I spun around, fire in my eyes. “Would you just shut up and let me alone!” I barked. In that very instant as the men—all six wearing spiffy longcoats and hats of blue, all with strange sticks pointed at me that I instantly took for some sort of crossbow—flinched back, my right arm twisted, its hand digging into my bag.

The fingers, both seeming of my will and their own reckoning, curled around something large and heavy, something which my palm could feel and told me was some sort of worn wooden grip made perfectly for a hand.

My right hand came out of the bag, fingers perfectly placed and wrapped around, almost lovingly, the massive thing that was the rightmost of the two heavenly weapons. The sensory data from the hand was beautiful enough almost to not make me want to almost not uncertainly cry. Words came into my head for the parts of the weapon for which I had no exact name, all provided to me by the hand.

“He’s got a gun!” I heard one of the men shout, but it was distant, muffled, as if in a dream.

Each man seemed almost frozen in time as I stuck the barrel of the weapon up to the nearest man’s forehead. My thumb reached up, pulled back on the little lever, the hammer, and cocked the weapon with a pleasant click that just screamed “Kiss your ass goodbye.” The pointer finger, index finger, curled back on the weapon’s trigger.

The sound wasn’t like a crack. Wasn’t like a pop or a bang or a snap or a crunch. It was like the in-your-ear sound of an artillery cannon—the big stationary ones of the Reich’s great ironclads. Everyone in the building must have heard it clear as day.

There had once been a head there, I thought dully about the man now crumpled to the ground. And then, as the hand cocked back the hammer and aimed at another man: Hey, does this mean I can punch people with my right arm now? Click. Fire. The round impacted the second man in the chest. Instantly, his chest caved in, like the side of a barrel hit by a sledgehammer.

I cocked, shot, and killed four more times.

Then it was over. There was a blistering stinging sensation in my wrist, but I ignored it as I stared out at the carnage, more than I could have rightly caused with a sword. The metal slugs from inside the… from inside of the gun didn’t stab into you like arrows did. They destroyed men; in neatly one side, and it tore everything side of them out the other in an explosion of gore. It was, without a doubt, the single most inhumane, savage, and deadly weapon that I had ever seen.

And I loved it for that reason, if the smile on my face didn’t already give that away.

“That was awesome,” I croaked out, my knees feeling weak, my wrist burning. Finally, I looked down at the wrist. The gun was lying on the floor, its barrel smoking. Looking at the inflammation, sensing the pain, I realized that I’d broken my wrist. The recoil of the gun had just pulverized my wrist.

I swing not with the hoof. He who swings with the hoof has forgotten the face of his father. I swing with my mind, the oddly calm voice of my father said in the back of my head. Adjusted for hands, and adjusted for shooting a gun instead of swinging, that part of the old warrior’s creed actually explained a lot. My wrist had broken because I had allowed my hand to aim and shoot. I had forgotten the face of my father.

So I picked up the gun with my good hand, set it in the bad, and turned to Elkington. His face was as expressionless as dead sea lion covered in cream cheese. “King Elkington,” I said. “I’m not going to lie, but that was totally awesome, killing those men, and it gives me some whacky flashbacks to the Songnam Slaughter of my world.” I put my hands on my hips and smiled. Quickly, I flinched my right hand away and shook it, making little hissing noises as I felt C’s arm do its creepy healing thing. “So, here’s how it’s going to work, my friend. You will tell me where Sleepy Oaks is. You don’t have to help me get there, just tell me where it is and how to get there. A map would be dandy. Then I’ll go there—and you won’t impede me at all. I’ll save the day, and you’re going to feel guilty about all six of those men you led to the slaughter because of some crackpot theory you had about me. Are we clear?”

He looked up at me from his desk with an unreadable expression. After a long moment, he gritted his teeth and grunted, “Crystal.”

I smiled at him, baring as many of my teeth as I could. They were weird teeth, ones I wasn’t entirely used to, but so long as I didn’t think about every little movement of my tongue and mouth, I could speak just fine. New mouth and new teeth to fit in it, you see. “Elkington, I do declare that you’ve just made what may be the preeminent decision of your life.”

|— ☩ —|

I sing of hearth, I sing of light, I sing of sweetly frosted things, but anight dream I of darks wings. And song of fire, song of blood, brings he to me a champion strong.

That little singsong of Snechta’s, the one from her Voixson, ran through my head as I walked through the dark tunnel, a torch in hand. Elkington had given me a map, shown me where things were, cursed my name, then led me to the tunnels under this city here of Songnam. I recalled that, in my where, these tunnels had been built by the diamond dogs that Elkington employed, and I wondered if that meant diamond dogs lived in this world, too. Of course, I also wondered if it was possible to weaponize angry ex girlfriends, but that didn’t get me anywhere.

No, what did get me somewhere was just following the path Elkington had noted for me on a little map of the underground he’d given me. I didn’t ask why he wanted me to go this route, but since us adventurers are compulsively drawn to absurdly spacious sewers, I couldn’t ask him. Now, as I opened the large grate and stepped out into the night, I think I had an understanding why.

Here from the ditches by the sides of great weald, I could see, a little ways away, Songnam. Unlike in my where, this Songnam was protected by massive wall of stone, with guards patrolling and marching along. But more importantly, on the rocky alcove above the huge sewer grate which was still a bit small for my tall body, I could see words written in a faintly glowing paint.

“WE KNOW, MARKED OF KANE. VOUS VOIS.”

I looked around, seeing if I could see anyone watching me. If Elkington had meant to try to creep me out into being on my best behavior, he could go screw himself with a cheese grater. A more pressing matter regarded the so-called Mark of Kane on my back, what it was, and how it might screw me over somehow. More immediately, where was I?

Around me in this place that was part ditch, part dumping grounds, I could see all manner of rusted steel things which I had no words for. There was a large wooden box with insect-like antennae in one place, its front side composed mostly of thick glass which had long ago shattered. As I observed the little nest within it, I wondered if this was some kind of wildly silly oven designed for the hands of men.

Holding the torch, bathing in its heat and flickering orange glow, I trudged through the ditch, just observing all the trash. Like an old, faded newspaper with the frontlines “Olympia Fallen”, the graying, barely identifiable cover photo depicting a split image. The image on the left was of a great, Hellenish-looking sort of building that was probably some sort of government center. Weirdly, with the age of it, it looked as if the building was resting on a floating island above the clouds. The picture of the right appeared to be off the same building, only it was smashed, ruined, and in pieces on the ground; around it was an entire city, smoking and burning, smashed and broken like the first building was. None of the words on the page were even remotely legible.

So I slogged through, wondering if it was possible to kill the woman Cherry Berry in some sort of really extravagant way that I couldn’t do in my where. Maybe I could cut off parts of her, cauterize the wounds, and make her watch as I took those parts of her body and whittled them down into likenesses of my face. Not that I could whittle, of course. But, for her, I would learn.

Ah, and there it was. A slope shallow enough for me to climb out off and get out of this trash. But before I got to the slope, I paused. On the far end of the the ditch—which was starting to look more like some great trench—there was a cave. Or, well, it looked like a cave of junk and stone mixed with a little outdoor cantina, with a little makeshift awning above the entrance.

“Come on, ya piece a shit,” the man inside was saying to a small box with antennae. It wasn’t like that big oven thing; too small, not enough glass. “Why won’tcha work for Daddy?” he asked it as I walked through the tiny creek at the trench’s center over to the little cave. The man, his eyes yellow, his hair an off-blue hue, turned to face me. He was wearing a leather-and-felt coat that had seen more wear but less love than my duster. “Eh? Oh, why hello there, brotha! Who are you? I hight Filmrock, but what hight you?

I stopped. “I’m just a traveler. What’s that thing you’ve got there?”

“Hmm? This old thing, brotha?” He shook the little box in his hands, hands which were wearing gloves that were missing bits and scraps. “It’s nar a regular ol’ livebox, is all.”

Finding a good place for it, I set the torch off to the side where it wouldn’t burn anything down, then walked under the awning of the cave. “Is the livebox broken?”

“Aye, the damn thing’s a bust, brotha. ’Twas workin’ fine until a few minutes ago when it just brast. It’s bursten before, but I’ve usually fixed it with some shaking.”

I held out my hands. “May I see it?”

He shrugged, setting the livebox upon the little counter that acted partially as a wall between the cave proper and the outdoor part under the awning. Why a little cave in a trench would have a barcounter, I didn’t know. “Sure,” he said. “Knock yourself out. We’re within spokespan of the broadcaster, so I dunno why it ain’t working.”

“Like a dwarf trying to play king of the icy hill,” I said, looking the livebox over.

“Aye, somfing as that, brotha,” he chuckled.

I poked at the box’s antenna, straightening bits of them. The part I deemed to be the front had a number of buttons and a large central dial, sort of like a combination lock. I played with the dial before going over to the back, opening a little back panel. Inside were number of little thick, rubbery colored strings that reminded me of blast fuses, which reminded me of my sixth-year birthday party, and the resulting country ordinance forbidding me to ever celebrate my birthday ever again.

“So, what’s a gunslinger like you doing here?” the stranger asked.

I looked up. “I am a gunslinger?”

He gestured his finger at me. “Well, you’re wearing those low, crisscrossing bandoliers filled to the brim with bullets on your hips and crisscrossed ones over your chest.” The man slapped his thigh. “And the low, low way you’re carrying those revolvers. You look like a desperado, brotha. Shit, I bet your guns actually work, too!”

Inside the livebox were three little glass tubes filled with a weird assortments of colored string and metal. As I looked into the box, I noticed that all but one the colored strings were anchored at both ends. There was a little place, a little tab, that looked like it’d accept the free end of the string.

“Really, brotha, the only thing you’re missing now’s a horse.”

I connected the string to tab, and instantly the livebox roared with sound. Gasping, I tossed the box onto the counter and flinched away.

“Bloody brilliant, brotha!” Filmrock cheered, clapping his hands. “You’re a fuckin’ miracle, thank the Fathers.”

The livebox, I realized, wasn’t just exploding with sounds. It was playing music. The only thing is, when I’d looked inside the livebox, there’d been no place for a record, not even the compact ones we used in the Reich. But the song and music played. Or, at least, the song and music was fading out.

“Hey,” the male voice from the livebox announced, “that was Songs of Bygone Days, and you’re listening to Livebox Free Evesland. I’m your host, the lovable Big Bag-a-Wolf, and now for the news.”

I looked up at Filmrock. “The hell kind of sorcery is this livebox?”

But Filmrock ignored me, fixated upon his livebox.

“Reports are coming in today from Songnam that some weird shit’s been going down. Apparently, King Elkington’s got a problem on his hands that he ain’t up for telling us about. A few hours ago, it seems, the entire White Halls building up on Capital Causeway had some sort of shooting. People heard the six or seven shots, and then some bodies in tarps got taken from the top floor. This, of course, is following the reports that Elkington was seen with a weird-looking Teuton, which was further following up our earlier report on those shady things Elkington was importing into Songnam this morning from the ruins of Caydin.

“Look, King Elkington,” Big Bag-a-wolf said in a lower, more passionate voice, like a man trying to reason with a bag of feral carrots, “I know you’re trying to do what you think is best, but this sudden rash of shady shit that’s been going on lately has gotta stop. It’s scaring people.”

His tone shifted back to the charismatic explosion of earlier. “Well, that’s my impassioned plea for the day. From the LFE to Y-O-U, this has been your host, Big Bag-a-Wolf, with Livebox Free Evesland. And now, some tunes!”

The lifebox seamlessly switched from him to one of those old-timey-sounding songs. Slow, low audio quality, and a bit dull. I recalled that last time I heard one of these was when I was walking the streets of Songnam with Lightning Dust, just before I’d met that conjoined twin zebra who was working with black magic. What’s more, I distinctly remembered that Lightning Dust had called this kind of stuff “pop music”, and stated her love of it.

I looked up from my thoughts to Filmrock and demanded, “What kind of black sorcery is this livebox?”

“Sorcery?” He laughed. “You’re a funny bloke, brotha.”

“I mean it.” With a finger, I poked the livebox. “There is no record within this contraption, yet it conjures up song and voice from far beyond. I know not how it functions; and with no visible means of discerning, I must conclude your infernal contraption is the work of the Devil’s machinations.”

The man looked at me. “Brotha, what’s with the arcane words? Ya tryin’ to sound fancy, or what?”

“I must destroy things I don’t understand!” I shouted. “It is my way!”

“Shit,” he laughed. “You really are a thing straight outta the old Wild West, huh, brotha?”

I glared at the livebox, making sure that it didn’t move. If it moved, I’d shoot it dead. You couldn’t trust the work of the Devil. But the livebox just sat there. Menacingly. Clearly because it knew its time was short, the livebox let out a sharp, crackling whine that would not have gone well at all with cheese. I held my hands near the guns at my hips, glaring at the livebox.

“Huh,” a distant-sounding but clearly masculine voice said through the livebox. “Thanks for fixing this thing, muppet,” it said. “I’ve been trying to say hi to you, mate, but the arm o’ mine doesn’t exactly possess a mouth; this has to do for now.”

“I know of your evil, livebox!” I spat. “Attempt not to corrupt me with your evil.”

“Evil? Well, that’s a funny way to speak to your old friend C.”

I blinked. “C?”

“Sí,” it… he chirped. “I hight C. I’ve been looking for a little conduit to step in and see what’s to see, and thanks to you, now I got me one. So, just stand there, please. In this place, I can bounce from signal to receptory well enough, so that’s how I directly going from my side to here.” The livebox crackled with weird sounds that made me suddenly want to learn how to play volleyball. Then a white little light flashed before the livebox, like frozen lightning, only worse.

Before my very eye, I watched flesh take form before the livebox. Arms and head came first, then the midsection, and then the legs. He fell down onto the ground beneath the awning. He looked up at me, and ours eyes met.

Then C looked down at himself with what I could only think of as horror on his long face. He raised an arm, let it fall. He did it again with the other arm, letting it fall to the dirt. C looked right straight at me and said four words in an almost amused voice that was more nasal than his normal one, fours words that seemed to very neatly explain his current predicament to me.

“I am a horse.”

|— ☩ —|

“I am a horse,” C said again. “Brilliant!”

I blinked. Just looking at him, a part of me felt sick. Sick like a lizard who’s just eaten a parliament of owls. Did you know that owls came in parliaments? That was some hot stuff right there. “The hell’s a horse?”

C whinnied, moving his long, long neck around. It was bulbous and muscular. Looking at him even more, I realized what he looked like: C looked now like some horrible artist’s cartoon version of a pony, hellish, ill-proportioned, far too huge, arms and legs far too long, the hooves at the end angled weirdly so that they didn’t end at the end of limbs quite like a pony’s was supposed to. He arched his brows at me as I looked over his brownish-blond-gold fur, his long hair that ran down his neck, like he was some kind of mustang. He was like a pony, but all wrong!

When C stood up and got off his haunches, the massive thing that was once a skinwalker was about a foot shorter than me at the withers, which still made him bigger than any pony should rationally be, even those affected with gigantism. Elkington had measured and weighed my new body: I’d clocked in at a dizzying two-hundred-eight centimeters, or about six feet ten inches; and this body, lean as it seemed… well… I didn’t want to think about my new weight, because it made me feel like a fatty-fat-fat-fat compared to the weight I’d been as a pony. It was a credit to the skinwalker’s skeletal system that it could hold so much weight without looking or feeling bulky at all. But the point was, C’s withers stood at about six feet, with was still massive.

“I am a horse,” C said for the third time, still in that vaguely nasal voice.

“Huh,” Filmrock said. I’d forgotten he’d been standing there. “Well, ain’t that precious? A talking horse that came out of the livebox.” The man collapsed to the ground.

Reaching down, I checked his vitals. Or what I figured were his vitals, going off my knowledge of ponies. “Aaand he’s dead,” I announced. “Fantastic.”

C performed a weird half-dance, half-trot in place. “Horse!”

“Hey, now that he’s dead,” I said, “do you know what this means?”

“What?”

“We get to loot his body and place and steal all his worldly possessions.”

“Yes, a horse that steals!” He stuck out a foreleg—because it was more like a leg than a pony’s arm—and just weirdly smacked it into the ground. The man… horse… whatever… did it at least four more times before I asked what he was doing. “Horse things. I am representing, mate. But, I can’t make any clop sounds on this rock. Do you think the dead bloke has a coconut lying around?”

I looked at C. “Why doesn’t the arm you gave me let me punch ponies? And how did you get here? And why am I nowhere near as freaked out as I should be?

“In order: I don’t know. Because I can interface with technology from my side of the door; I’m not really here, just my avatar, which is a horse, it seems. And I don’t know.”

“Avatar? What’s that?”

“It’s a metaphysical representation of oneself in a place other than where one can go,” he explained in a horse-like manner. “My arm got some weird vibes, so I checked it out, and it seemed like you’d somehow found and entered Calêrhos. I merely hooked into the door, found a device capable of transmitting myself, and came out through the livebox. Very simple magic to an elder thing such as myself; I grew up with such bits all around me.”

I looted the little place as C continued to dance in place and whinny. There were various bits of paper money that were labeled as “bucks” that I pocketed, totaling to about twelve bucks. Nothing else of value was here.

“So,” C said to me as I finished. “What were you doing?”

“I was going to stop a stallion from taking his wife out of this world and into my world, getting back the book Calêrhos from him, which mean that right now, I am going to walk to the town of Sleepy Oaks.”

The horse looked at me his terrible, unblinking eyes. C’s tongue slithered out of its preposterously long face, doubled back, crawled up his face, and licked his eyeball before slithering back into his mouth. “Can I help?” he asked.

I leaned against the barcounter. “Honestly? I don’t know. I just have no idea about anything anywhere. Really. Ask me my sexual orientation, and I’ll tell you that I don’t know.

He narrowed his terrible, unblinking eyes. “Hey, here’s what. Horses are fast; if you agree to let me ride you back in the real world, I’ll agree to be your trusty stead in this one.”

“Wait. ‘Real world?’ What does that mean?”

C put a hoof on my face, and I recoiled. “Oh, it’s just my way of seeing it, because I’m even more unkillable here, since my real body is still on the other side of the mirror. It has nothing to do with us being on level seventeen of Calêrhos.”

Rubbing my cheek where he’d touched me, I asked, “Why do you sound so different? Not just slightly in voice, but in wording?”

He shook his muzzle. “Look, mate, it’s been a long day for me, and I may or may not have devoured the living souls and tongues of some Equestrians today. And eating one’s tongue is how I learn one’s speech and mannerism, and so their manner of speech has influenced mine now.” He did that thing he called ‘representing’ again. “What? don’t look at me like that. They attacked me first because I frightened them, and I logically responded by ripping their living bodies limb-from-limb as I tore their faces and tongues off, ate them, and then devoured their souls while they screamed. There’s nothing uncivilized about that.”

I just stared into those infernal eyes.

“It went a little something like this,” he said, and leapt over the counter. Now he stood above Filmrock. With a horrible, throaty squeal of murderous intent that sucked in air rather than expelled it, C’s long head split in half. Out came several insectoid arms, black with chitin. They lashed out at Filmrock, slicing his body into bloody, gory pieces which black tentacles from further in the face grabbed and dragged back into his face.

When he was done, it was only by sheer virtue of having not had anything to drink today that I didn’t piss myself. His face sewed itself shut, just like his smile had when first I’d seen C. “Okay, fine,” he sighed. “If you let me ride you back in our world, I promise never to do that thing I just did to you or anyone you care about, plus you can still ride me here.” I continued to gape. He rolled his terrible, unblinking eyes. His body undulated, and out from his flesh formed what looked like a leather saddle and reins, like those a pony would use for a Höllenhund or a mammoth. “Here. I made this from his clothes… and maybe his body, but who knows?”

Nothing. I just stared.

“Please?”

Slowly, and very weakly, I nodded. “I… okay.”

He smiled. “I am a horse!” And then: “It is, frankly, one of my back goals to literally ride every animal on this planet at least once, including the pony. You’ve helped suppress my urge to kill for another day, mate.”

C struck a pose like a boastful pony. “Up on my back, friend. Quick, quick! Take my reins; I’ve always wanted to do this! Ride upon my back and I’ll take you to a magical land of adventure and… and stuff!”

“That sounds pretty much exactly like what a pedophile would say,” I said, crossing my arms and giving him a suspicious glare.

He looked at me like a water bottle looks at the ocean. “Boy, trust me, compared to how old I am, you’re still an infant.”

“That doesn’t ease my concerns at all. In fact, I think it makes them worse.”

“Obey me, or else!”

With all the slowness of a baby trying to figure out how best to kill himself with a lemon, a block of cheese, and a dead parrot, I stepped up the saddle’s side and onto the horse. It was like riding a Höllenhund, except all wrong. This was like the cannibal’s version of riding an animal. I was pretty sure that I’d never again be able to think of the concept of “riding” in the contexts of a pony as something sexual anymore; it was purely this.

I grabbed the reins as best I could with hands after I picked my torch back up. As I would for a Höllenhund, I indicated with the reins for C to move. “Hiya,” I called out in a weak voice, and C slowly ambled out of the trench and up the slope.

Taking out my map, I tried to figure out where I was. As I figured out what to do, I informed C the Horse. Here we were, a small distance away from Songnam, by a place hight “Junktown”. Sleepy Oaks was a distance away. Really, it had never occurred to me just how far Songnam was from Sleepy Oaks; that riverboat captain of the S.S. SSSSS must have been a speed demon to have gotten us to the city so fast when we’d gone.

There were a number of interesting-looking places between Songnam and Sleepy Oaks. “The Drawers” and “Ruins of Olympia/New Pegasus”, for example. According to the map, too, I’d have to pass near or through them on the road to Sleepy Oaks.

When I gave C the distance, he remarked that, on horseback, we could make there in short number days, which struck me as weird for some reason. Like, as weird as a pony-come-man riding a skinwalker-come-horse. Because my life was weird. Everything was so surreal right now that I honestly expected to start seeing some melting clocks around here, like that picture I saw in the Songnam museum with that mare who penned the Mare-Do-Well comics. Only this time, the clocks would come to life, turn into crows, and my penis would suddenly have an eyeball on its tip which demanded of me to use it to spy on mice in their mouseholes because this new body was flexible enough to do that.

“Well, here we go,” I said, checking my hat and bandoliers. I need a haircut; long hair doesn’t do me, and I still can’t remember ever having long curls like these. Me no likey. Indicating with the reins, I spurred C to move with a “Hiya!”

“I am still a horse,” C expertly concluded.

Author's Note

Footnote: 25% to next level.

(So, here it is. The second part of Act II, which takes place on level seventeen of Calêrhos, which accounts for the differences between this and the EQG world of the movie. I’ll explain more in the story later. But the doorway, Calêrhos, thing here is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and so have I for a while wanted to do something with our friend’s heavenly weapons, essentially being for a short while a type of gunslinger, and have wanted to do for long before I read The Dark Tower. Nevertheless, since the term “gunslinger” and doorways are now forever entwined with Stephen King’s book in my mind and those who’ve read his series, you’ll have to excuse the incidental—and once or twice purposeful—similarities. We both drank from the same well of Western flicks, I suppose, although I would like to hope I have a hint of Fallout with my flavor. So, to those who’ve read The Dark Tower, I urge you to divorce Roland Deschain of Gilead from the word “gunslinger” from hereon in, please. I’ll be using it a lot, I suspect.)

(Oh, and I got word that somewhere out there, a man went as Jericho for Halloween, and his lovely wife went as Blackjack from Project Horizons. So, this is a shoutout to you, you awesome family, you. You’re just awesome. Would love a picture thereof. Oh, and yes, there is an overarching endgoal to Jericho, so may that belay your concerns.)

(And so we’ve ended Book I of Act II,, and started Book II of Act II, “The Man with No Name”.)

Chapter 28 — Gunslinger

Chapter 28: Gunslinger

“The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”

Revolvers.

Those were what Filmrock called them, the two weapons at my sides. And as I looked down at the gun in my hand, the huge thing that could easily double as a nasty bludgeon, I took a breath of fresh morning air. Here at this little rest stop along the large dirt road, just a few logs and a burnt out campfire by its side, I concentrated on what C told me. Well, except for “I am a horse”, which was his goddamn catchphrase by this point.

The right hand did it all for me. I just watched as it reloaded the six fresh bullets into the weapon all on its own. Just looking at it made me feel sick; it looked about as natural as a stallion excreting liquid caramel from his nipples. Which, thinking about, wasn’t that sickening by itself. I don’t want to go into it, but I’d seen such a thing before. Oh God, had I seen such a thing before. Of course, that was after I’d dipped an apple into the caramel fountain, taken a bite, and complimented the candy maker when the host came up to me and demonstrated his caramel-spewing nipples. I recalled seeing it and gagging. I went back for seconds because it was good, but I still gagged inside!

“Can you feel it?” C the Horse asked. Did I mention he was horse?

“Feel what?”

I could feel him breathing on the back of my neck in a way that made me really want to hold onto a dead Cherrypillar for comfort as he spoke. You know, just to be sure she was dead and not breathing down my neck. “I just cut your hair with hooves. With. Hooves.”

“So what?” I asked, looking up at his terribly long face and nostrils so big you could stick at least three spoons in them and call it a mining company. In truth, it felt divine to have my hair back to the reasonable length I was used to. Or, at least to having this body’s equivalent of that hair. “You used hooves to cut my hair. That’s nothing special?”

He whinnied. “You’re insane! Hooves, my friend, hooves!” C’s lips flapped like the wings of a pegasus who doesn’t realize he’s actually a very fat seal.

“Stop that, ” I warned.

“Fine!” he spat. “I’m gonna go over here and graze, like horses do. You continue trying to do that thing with the whatnot.” C walked over to the side of the little clearing and bit a tree. “Wait a minute. This isn’t how you eat grass at all!”

Shaking my head, I felt the weapon in my left hand. It felt lighter by about six bullets than the one in the right. Taking a breath, I tried to imitate the motion that C’s hand had known. In a quick series of fluid motions, I’d reloaded the emptied weapon.

“Oh God!” C called out. “Grass is terrible!”

After holstering the revolvers, I spent my time playing with my hands. Fingers were magical in what they could sense. I could easily imagine that fingertips were more sensitive than even sex organs. Speaking of which, I rapped a knuckle on my groin, hearing the pleasant thump of the codpiece. That lead to me wondering what it would feel like to have hands on one’s genitals, which, I concluded, would likely feel deeply unpleasant, and so skinwalkers likely didn’t touch themselves much.

Somehow, that lead to far more genital-related questions than I cared to explore, such as “Could I use fingers to rip the flesh of a man’s unit like peeling the skin of a banana?” So, I shook the thoughts from my head and called C, who dutifully reminded me that he was a horse and, oddly enough, that agility was important for shooting guns.

An animal squealed, and I jerked my head up to see C skewering a squirrel to death with his tongue. As C recoiled the tongue and dragged it into his maw, I heard him chuckle. After it went down his bulbous throat, the animal clearly still squirming and alive, C looked at me and smiled. “She was pregnant, almost ready to give birth. Meant there was more food for me.”

“O…kay,” I said. “So, uh… are we going to ride today? I want to get past New Pegasus today, whatever that is.”

He came up to me. “Right. Get upon me; there’s adventure to be had, Timmy!”

|— ☩ —|

Near an hour later of fast riding and the forest gave way to a ghastly sight. I’d been seeing parts of it from afar, through gaps in the tree, but I’d never expected it to just be so suddenly there, like it’d just fallen from Heaven and broke its ass in two. That’s right. Its whole ass.

Nestled in a dimple in the land that extended as far as I could see, which wasn’t all too much given how big it was, was something that had once been a city. It was absolute ruin. A fallen city that was more like a dried and decayed corpse than a bastion of civilization; it was a husk that suggested a shape without fleshing out the details. The outline of the victim was there, as were the empty holes where it used to look out upon the world—but glass or eye, the critical things that made it alive and breathing were long gone.

I tried to whistle, but I would never learn that I couldn’t whistle. C walked into the city at a snail’s pace. Well, no, I clearly saw a drag racing snail pass us by. But it was okay, because this place was just so fascinating. I’d seen such places as this before. It had been years ago, when the Rheinwehr was marching south and southeast to reclaim our nation from demonic hands, and I’d seen the great cities of the South like this. Only, this was worse.

This city looked as if a titanic earthquake had ravaged and obliterated it, and then the earthquake had released a Titan from under the world, and the Titan had seen the city, narrowed his eyes, and whispered. “I shall brutally copulate with that.” And then he did, because cities can’t say no. And then I was riding C the Horse in that event’s aftermath.

C took me through the streets which had once been paved with bright orange-gold bricks, but which now looked like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, only less sexier and filled with debris. We came across a lamppost and stopped. It was ludicrously tall here in the overgrowth that was claiming the city, its steel gray color standing in strong contrast with the lush green bushes around it. Hanging from the lamppost, bloated from rot and the sun like fat whores after eating far too many pounds of bird shit, were two bodies. They couldn’t have been too old, still freshly dead enough.

The bodies were of a man and a women. They’d been stabbed, mutilated, and one of them had been disemboweled. Both of them had what looked like dried tears on their cheeks below their dried-out eyes. The reasons, I suspected, had to do with the fact that, despite the the mutilations, despite having been hanged, the man and the woman were holding hands. Below them, written in blood, were the words “MEDASIN MEN 4EVER! DEATH TWO WARDENS!” Clearly, whoever had written this had had nothing but the utmost respect for the Equestrian language.

My hands caressed my guns like a stallion would his beloved mare, only with actual love. Slowly, my hand went to my knife. I could feel the reason why on the hairs of my neck. And, just then, the bushes by the lamppost exploded as a half-naked man jumped out, holding a rusty chunk of metal that he must have thought was a sword.

“Medasin Men forever!” he shouted.

“Haha—no,” I replied, leaning to the side and quickly stabbing him through the eye.

The man gurgled something as I jerked the knife out of his body. Based on how he looked—short-shorts, no shirt, faded sandals, a number of bright feathers sticking out from his hair bun, and a hot pink cloak—he had probably been trying to say something like, “There’s a sale on hookers today.” The prostitutes in this city very aggressively marketed their wares, it seemed.

When I wasn’t jumped by a random horde of barbarians as I’d been expecting, I got off C, cleaned the knife, and examined the man. Rummaging through his pockets, I found three of those blue papers that called themselves “bucks”, a pencil that’d been chewed almost to the point of unrecognition, and a ticket stub from “Paradise in the Skies Theatre”. Looking up from his body and past the bushes, I could actually make out a ruined building with a sign on its front advertising that very same theater. Probably just something he took while he was hiding there.

“You know,” I said, almost absently, “if I keep getting attacked by random people, do you think one of them will eventually learn to stop trying to attack the scary-looking guy who keeps killing them?”

C gave me a look like a dog trying to figure out how to wag its tail. “No.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so either. I could probably kill them all, and never once would random robbers ever learn not to screw with me. Like dreamcatcher spiders are hovering over their memories.”

“I… am not familiar with that creature,” C said after a brief pause.

As I got back onto C, I said, “It’s just a translation of a word, Traumfänger.” We resumed going down the street, myself watching for any more would-be raiders. “Dreamcatcher spiders are these neat little spiders that prefer to build their webs above the beds and other places where things sleep. When you sleep and one is near to you, its eyes will go crazy, and you will not dream, no matter if you suffer from nightmares. When you wake up, you are beyond rested.” I shrugged. “Nature is fascinating, all the weird things it comes up with. Especially the ones that don’t make any sense.”

|— ☩ —|

“Oh, the stallion from another land,” I sang, C providing me a beat with his voice. “He’s riding a horse, he’s carrying guns. Here he commm-buh-duh-dums. Watch me ride ’pon the stead, great in deed, with no fleas. Here he rides to save the day, and maybe… uh…”

“See some T-’n’-A,” C singsonged back, and I repeated it.

My voice carried through the empty, desolate streets. Well, desolate except for that giant centipede with arms like a man we’d found earlier. That was something to stare at. Not far away, in the direction I was slowly trying to go in, I could hear definite sounds of a great many voices talking and dealing amongst themselves.

“The duster’d knight, here he comes. He tells kids ‘Don’t do drugs’. Though he knows smoking’s cool, he tells you that it’s bad. Because he might kill kids, but he still cares about your future. So lo and behold—he’s RSVPing your birthday paaarty, where he’ll accidentally seduce your single mother and kill your dog! Yeah!”

As we turned the corner, I made C stop. At the end of the street—a street that might have at one point been some sort of main street, given how large it seemed—was an opened gate made of repurposed steel and other junk. Standing upon the gate and around it were men in suits of armor that looked like the gate: thrown-together piles of metal and junk.

C and I went down the street, mindful of the tall, ruined buildings around the street that watched over us like jealous househusbands. The sounds of people, of civilization, got louder the nearer we got to the great gate. Nearing it, I noticed that the men all wore beards and sported long, clean hair, like the destruction of the surrounding city had erased all knowledge of razor blades but, dammit, not even the end of the world could keep these men from their combs. It was respectable.

Arms crossed, they looked at C and me before looking between themselves, but they never stopped us. Above the gate, hanging from a banner, were the words “Welcome to New Pegasus!” Next to it was a sign with a barely clothed woman laying on her stomach, giving me what was supposed to be a seductive look but seemed more like a constipated grimace next to the words “Visit Double-D’s—the premier venue for all your needs!”

“If I was a single father and widower, would you have my dead wife, diapers, and a bucket full of scorpions, as all fathers want?” I asked the sign under my breath. “That’s what I thought.”

When we’d passed through the gates, I finally saw New Pegasus. It looked like the world had ended, with cracked streets, ruined buildings, and with the look of a refugee camp, but one wherein nobody realized that the world had ended. Open-air stalls with merchant hawking wares and little caravans set up with even more wares absolutely filled what had once been a massive town square, with people of all sorts walking through. Some of them strode with a purpose, on their way for something in mind. Others milled around, drifting from place to place, like window shoppers in a land where windows are just an old wives’ tale, and shut up about them or Daddy will have to spank you.

High above at the center of the bazaar was a flagpole with two flag flying therefrom. The bigger of the two was of a flag fluttering fluidly in the wind, its sigil that of a manji, the Equestrian word for a Swastika. Below it was a small black flag depicting a wingéd silvern eye.

The voices of men and women bartering and selling, talking to friends, lovers, and children filled the air with a feeling of life that could only be solved with far more fire than was called for. Spreading out from the central bazaar were more streets lined with people walking to and from what I suspected were other districts.

If any of these people had something in common, it was that they all dressed like battered refugees. Oooh, and there was one refugee with tatters but wearing also a monocle and tophat. She was my new favorite.

C and I went down the street towards the markets. Children, dirty and wearing outfits like slaves, converged around us, oohing and ahhing at the sight of a real live horse. I leaned forwards and whispered into C’s ear, “If you tell them you are a horse and then devour them, I will kill you.”

He blew air through his lips, spraying a now-laughing child with bits of spit. Why the girl-child found this something to laugh and squeal excitedly about was beyond me, but I suspected it had something to do with being the closest thing she’d had to a bath in months. In any case, C said nothing, likely because horses—which were apparently a fairly common animal here, said C—were just animals, like Höllenhunde or bears or communist spiders.

Kids molesting and petting C, I observed the façades of the buildings. Here, unlike everywhere else, it at least seemed like folks had done a half-assed job of trying to fix the place. Many buildings looked like you could live in them, with some even having curtains, though none that I saw had glass. Seriously, what was with the lack of glass? If I found a Flammenwerfer and went to the beach, I could conceivably end up a very rich man in this where.

By far, though, the most well-looking structure was the big one to the far end of the bazaar. Its sign labeled it as “Double D’s”. Above this was a large billboard of a women’s near-naked thighs as she bent over, most of her body unseen. Next to her, though, was the image of a well-groomed, fine-looking man holding up a glass of wine. “For all needs and preferences,” said the blurb by his head. And then, at the bottom: “Family Fridays: Kids eat free with purchase of adult meals or services.”

Clearly, this place was two things: A good place to find out what’s what about what. And, a safe, family-friendly establishment.

C was purring like the cat as the children pet him. When I indicated for C to go, he actually hissed at me and refused to go. I hissed back at C, fierce and more catlike. He hissed back, and soon he and I were in a literal hissing match. The children laughed and giggled at us, and even a few women—mayhap their mothers, as deathly skinny as they were—came up to watch.

With a sound like grinding flesh and bone into a fine herbal cough remedy, C’s neck twisted around a full hundred-right degrees, staring up at me. His tongue came out of his mouth, whipped around, and smacked me across the face and he uttered a guttural, lion-like growl.

The mothers gasped, the children screamed and ran away. I watched as C spun his neck back the right way, not coming back the way it’d come but instead going the full way so that he neck had made a full revolution. The skin of his neck was twisted brutally, but then, before my eyes, it sawed and gnawed itself until the flesh gave way. It jerked, and I could see the muscles in this new cut reassembling themselves before his fleshed sewed itself back on right.

“Aww,” C groaned, ears flopping.

“They’re so cute when they piss themselves in terror and run away.”

“Yeah.” C sighed like a lover waiting for her soldier-lover to return home from the war, unaware that he’s currently banging, like, two chicks right now in a foreign land and has no interest in ever returning to his natty old hag of a girlfriend. “Let’s go kill some evil orphan matrons in order to teach kids the value of murder and the lack of inherent value in a life.”

“You read my mind so well that now I am thoroughly startled,” I said calmly, without much tone, “so instead of obeying your soulless will, let’s go to Double D’s and see what there is we can find out.”

“Ah, the titty/family-friendly bar,” C replied. “You got it, rider.”

|— ☩ —|

I stepped into Double D’s, having tethered C outside. The very first thing I saw was a woman with freckles, a smile on her face, and two bulbous, grotesque fleshly tumors hanging from her bare chest. It was a miracle anyone could stand to look at them; they were so horrendous and cancerous and malignant.

“Howdy there, sugar!” she chirped, and she sounded exactly like the very first Equestrian mare whom I’d met way back in Ponyville. In fact, she sounded exactly like that mare, even looked like her, down to the ludicrously skimpy brown pseudo-blouse. But when this bare-breasted woman looked me over, her smile faded slightly.

“What, uh, what can I do ya for?” she asked with a wink. This time, it wasn’t like the ludicrously but otherwise accidentally sexual line the mare had spoken to me. Her voice sounded like she meant exactly what the other meaning of that phrase was. “Or are ya just looking for other somesuches?”

Trying not to make eye contact with the cancerous lumps on her chest that were glaring malignantly at me, I stepped past the woman and… oh, God. Why did all the females here have such great cancer?! Off to the far left was a lower area of this place, where I could see men and women dressed up in weirdly erotic costumes marauding about. Further beyond, there were women dancing on poles and in cages as weird music played, music made of sounds the likes of which I’d never heard. They too had great lumps on their chest.

But here, in this elevated part of the building, it was just a large, large bar, mostly filled with men serviced by bare-breasted waitresses. I thought, Wow, this place must earn a ton of tax write-offs for hiring all these disabled workers, just before I realized that even the women who clearly didn’t work here had them too.

The way each such lump was tipped with a nipple suddenly made me think about something. Could they not be cancers but instead be some sort of grotesquely oversized mammary glands, swollen because this is their mating seasons, like the ass of a horny she-monkey? It was a weird thought, since the bulbous sacks of what were likely just fat must have weighed beyond reasonable weights, and I could easily imagine that many of the women should have been hospitalized with chronic back pains for such mammaries.

Taking a long, hard breath, I refocused on the task at hand. Past all the tables and patrons and booths was a long bartop counter, the bartender a woman who didn’t look like a spring chicken. I walked to her, ignoring the many, many weird looks I got. Not one of the people here had naturally tanned skin like I did.

“What are you having, stranger?” the surly bartender maid asked with a species of curiosity in her voice normally only found in cacti.

“I know not,” I replied. “You have food and drink, I presume.”

“Yep, that we do.” She looked at me, and when I said nothing, she rolled her eyes. “House special tonight is a steak. Drinkwise, it’s scotch.”

“Yes,” I said, my own tone sounding amazed, like a child whose realized the utter lack of inherent value in sentient life. A part of me noticed that the chatter and noises beyond me were getting quieter. “I shall have one of these steaks, and I shall have a glass of scotch. While I eat and enjoy your fine services, I would like to hear about this strange city within the husk of another, much deader city.”

The place got quieter as she spoke back. “I don’t mean to be hostile, stranger, but how do you expect to pay for this, eh? You seem to me the kind of who’s not got a sure grip on his cash.”

Reaching into my bag, I brought out a gold coin, holding it betwixt two fingers. Some folks gasped as I brandished it, and some more gasped when I set it on the counter. “Will this cover it?”

She looked down at the coin. “We can’t make change for gold here, desperado.”

“I never expected it.”

The woman gritted her teeth, like the gold offended her deeply, even if it clearly was to her benefit to posses it. “Fine,” she spat out. “How’d you like the steak?”

I blinked. “Medium… rare.”

She nodded knowingly at that. “You’re not as bad as I’d originally thought, stranger. No one who takes their steak medium rare can be all that bad.” And she walked off to speak with a man through a little hole in the wall and grab a drink.

Taking a seat at the bar, I listened to men and women jeer at me from behind. I turned to them, and they didn’t stop. My eye did turn, however, over to the far, dark corner, where a woman sat in corner booth, her hands folded together and resting on the table as her dusty amber eyes looked out at me.

“Is there a problems, gentlecolts?” I asked.

One man, big, hairy, and looking like he’d just got fisted by an ape, barked something that I realized was a strange species of laughter. Well, more like a cousin of laughter who was always stopping by to borrow money he never returned. “A problem?” he asked, looking innocently around. “No. Just some brown-skinned punk Toitcher mozzies on into our fine establishment and flashes his wealth like ’tweren’t nix.”

Toitcher? I thought, and then realized it was just Teutscher but with the R pronounced. His last word, nix, I recognized well. It was a teutsches slang word that meant ‘nought’; nix was also somehow the root of the Pig Equestrian word ixnay, somehow. As in, ixnay nonay ethnay peakingsnay Igpay Questrianey.

“And that, gentlemen, is a bit rude, don’tcha think?” he finished, provoking agreeable murmurs.

“Yhar,” a rat-haired woman called out. “Why not nar skidaddle on outta here ’afore the likes a ya gets hurt.”

“Settle down, Eisla,” another bloke with a keen brogue said before calmly drinking from his mug. “Or do you all forget how you hated me when I first showed up and acted like him, and how now I’m a friend of you all?”

“Ayuh, we remember, O’Sparkler,” another man spoke. “But you’re good, clean, Orish folk. They’re honest, hardworkin’ folken a man can respect. You ain’t no Toitcher punk.”

The O’Sparkler bloke pointed his finger at the last speaker and said, “That’s a double negative, Dazzler.”

Near to me, a burly man in black leather stood up—the one who’s spoke first. “Listen here, Toitcherman.”

“Teutscher Mann,” I corrected in a calm voice.

The man grit his teeth as his two buddies, who looked like him minus the muscle and general disposition of having been raped by an ape, stood up from their chairs. “Whatever,” he growled. “I ain’t gonna take some brown-skinned punkass bitch dressed like some wannabe gunslinger in my hangout, mocking me and my friends with everything he does.”

A glass was placed on the counter as the surly woman filled it with scotch. She pointedly said nothing as I thanked her kindly for the drink. It was always important to thank folks who provided services, like waiters and others, because you might just be the only person to thank them their whole day.

“So, Toitchsie,” the man spat. “Why don’t you get out of here now? Y’know, ’fore your foreign ways get you hurt. Folken ’round here don’t take kindly to your kind.”

Sighing, I spun around from the little bar stool and got to my feet. The sensation that flesh feet within leather boots gave me was a comfortable one. “I’m sorry, gentle…men. But do you have some sort of problem with my kind?”

“Didja not hear a thing I said?” the man demanded, taking a step towards me, his buddies backing him up. “Or maybe it was that you can’t get it through your thick head that I’m trying to be subtle.” His voice came in whisper-like and throat, akin to a dog trying to recite his ABCs. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”

My eye flicked around, examining his body, comparing it to what I knew this body could do. Flexibility and articulation of the joints were different, pressure points as well. Hands in my pockets, I just looked him over.

“Do I have to repeat myself? Or do I got to use my fists to persuade you?”

“Leave him alone, mate,” said O’Sparkler.

He whipped his head around. “Dammit, I am sick and tired of you enabling this freak, O—” But that was as far as he got.

Kontaktkampf worked on all sorts of things. In this new body, using just a few alterations, I figured I could make it work here too. But though the fighting style born and taught in the Reich was rather fun to use for its devastating counter attacks, because the look of surprise on the faces of ponies bigger than you was always priceless as you kicked their ass, I figured that this would be just as fun.

It was a swift kick to the side of his knee. He gasped, flailing as he lost balance and collapsed. Hands still in my pocket, I stomped down on his wrist as he landed, the blow landing with a satisfying crunching sound so fun to hear that I couldn’t hold down the lunatic grin of my face. Before he could even scream, I rammed the steeltoe of my boot into his friend’s groin; and since his friend wasn’t smart like me, he wasn’t wearing a codpiece.

“Oh, man, what the fuck?” the third one was saying just before the steeltoe of my boot became best friends forever with his chin. Quick as lightning, a hand shot out of my pocket, grabbed his face, and thrust his head into the table before letting him drop to the ground.

I looked out at the tavern and shrugged—“Some people, huh?”—and sat back down. The men were groaning with that sense of agony that just made me smile as I took a sip from my shot glass of scotch. “Ah, my compliments to the house,” I said to the surly bartender.

She gave me a look like she was planning to spit in my steak.

“It’s funny,” I said, shrugging my left arm and shoulder, not looking at the people behind me but speaking loud enough for them to hear. “Everywhere I go, it seems like somebody wants to do me woe. I walk through the ruins of this place, and some crazy guy jumps me. I step through a doorway-mirror, and I get accosted by Elkington’s boys. I enter some odd bar joint in this city I’ve never heard of until yesterday, and some racist blokes try to attack me. Honestly, it’s like I’ve got some sign on my back that reads ‘I eat babies’ or something. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m still standing, and all those who’ve picked fights with me aren’t.”

Someone slammed their hands on the table. “Yhar, well, maybe that’s ’cause ya just look like a cunt!”

“You shouldn’t say such words,” I remarked. “It’s degrading towards, uh, towards women.”

“Fuck you, I’ll say whatever I want, Toitcher!” he snarled. “You and your elitist cunt-kind just sicken me to the core, waltzing around like you own the whole damn world! You think nar ’cause ya carry around guns makes you look tough and scary? Fuck, I bet they don’t even work!”

I shrugged. “Good for you.”

“It’s not like there’s many a working gun left in the world outside the hands of the government, let alone two in the hands of some punk faggot.” He laughed. “You count your lucky stars that you got a rotten cock and not some sweet little butter cunt, bitch, or else me mates and I would teach you a lesson in being arrogant!”

I grit my teeth, saying in a calm voice bereft of almost any emotion, “You think they’re fake guns?”

“Yassuh, ya cunt faggot.” As he spoke, the rest of the tavern was speaking in more agitated whispers, slowly riling up. “Just look at ’em. The damn things are so big they’re clearly toys.”

“My,” I said, still calm as sin, “your wife and kids must be so proud to have you in their lives.”

“Shit, I ain’t got no family,” he replied in a guarded tone.

I glanced at him to gauge his location, just a far few tables away. In a single, fluid motion, I pulled out the revolver in my left hand and pointed it at him, thumbing back the hammer and cocking the weapon. “How unfortunate for you.”

Without looking, I pulled the trigger. There was that deafening roar of the weapon that sounded orgasmic, then came the sound of a chair falling over, and a large, fleshy object hitting the ground. Gasps and even some screams, but nobody ran to help the man, no. Instead, too many of them were staring at me, transfixed as I worked my finger magic, reloading a bullet into the gun with the one left hand as I finished my shot of scotch in my other. The people gasped ever harder as I reloaded the weapon and put in back in its holster.

“How in the Fathers’ names did he do that?” one man whispered with horror.

“I don’t know!” another hissed back at him. “But he just shot a man’s head off!”

“Aye, he did, but no one really liked the bastard. I say good riddance.”

“I think I got some brain in my beer. Can I get another one?”

Looking back over to my countertop in my lonely section of the bar, I found the surly woman refilling my glass as she set down a meaty steak before me. Her expression was flat, if mildly sharp, as she set down a questionably clean fork and knife before me. My reflection in the utensils was marred by little specks.

Clumsily, I grabbed at the utensils, trying to figure how just how the hell I was supposed to hold them with hands. No, that was felt clumsy. No again; this just looked silly. I didn’t even want to think about my third attempt. Defeated, I looked up and asked, “how does one hold these things?”

The surly woman blinked. “What? Do they not have forks and knives in Toitschland?”

“N-no…?”

She gave me a puzzled look as folks snickered somewhere. Then the snickers stopped, replaced with agitated little sounds. “Shit, is she getting up?” “The Warden’s lass?” “Ain’t never seen her get up.” “Why’s she going to meet the foreigner?”

I turned just in time to see that dusty-eyed woman from across the tavern sit down in the stool next to me, her opal-colored dress slightly sparkling in the light. She was some sort of long blood-red bandana around her neck, its tip ending midway down her breast, the way it was tied around her neck creating two lengthy tails behind her that must have looked pretty cool when the wind picked them up.

Beneath her dress, I could see, she wore a tight-looking bit of clothing that ran down most of her upper body, stopping just above where I was pretty sure the navel was; the way it hugged her chest pressed against those sizable fatty mammary glands, holding them up and perky, and I could easily imagine that it hurt like hell to wear. Why anyone would wear something like that was beyond me. Perhaps she belonged to some weird masochistic cult that demanded constant chest pain.

When she caught where my eye had gone, she chuckled. “Eyes up here, fellow. But I know what you’re thinking, and yes—” she winked “—the breasts are real.”

I looked her in the eye. “You have two chests?” That’s when something inside me clicked, like the sound of cocking my revolvers, only worse and was likely to cause my hand to turn into a pink lobster excited about the upcoming spring fashion season. I recognized her voice from somewhere.

The woman laughed. “In a way, I guess.” She reached over and grabbed my utensils, holding them in a queer sort of way that at once looked impractical yet really supporting the tools. Then she set them down, looking expectantly at me.

With all the speed of a deadly grannie, I picked the utensils up, holding them as she had. “Hands are weird,” I commented. “Weird and feely.”

“You say it like you’ve never had hands till now,” she said in a tone that gave me chill bumps. Not the good kind, either; the kind you get when you know your estranged aunt is coming over and is going to pinch your cheeks before demanding you go on an epic quest for her. I’d gotten these particular ones only once before. But, to be fair, my aunt was locked up in a mental institute for being criminally insane, so I didn’t know what good the bumps did me. Still, it was interesting to note that skinwalkers also got chill bumps.

“You want something, don’t you?” I asked in a tone two drops too venomous for what I’d been aiming for.

The woman with the voice I recognized sat back, cocking a brow as she put an elbow on the counter. “Can’t a girl—”

“No,” I interjected. “I don’t know what it is, but no. Not in a place like this. Not with that tone. And not because I’m trying to propagate a patriarchal culture that oppresses females and doesn’t allow you to do things.” I cut off a piece of steak and bit down into it. The thing tasted a bit like cardboard that’d been soaked in the rotten digestive juices of a deer before being shoved into a mincemeat alongside a few good slices of flesh. “You’re clearly here because you want something of me. Now, I don’t know who or what the Warden is, but based on that one line I heard randomly, I’m going to assume it has something to do with him. Or her. I don’t rightly know.”

“Him,” she said. “He’s been looking for a type like you. Stranger. Out-of-towner. No local ties.”

“And he is?” I prodded, cutting the steak into ribbons. This really was rather efficient. I wondered idly if I could cut people up as nicely as I could this steak using these hands.

“The Warden is the local warlord, if you will. Leader of the Wardens, the gang currently in protective charge of New Pegasus, tasked with safeguarding it from outside threats.”

“Yeah—no,” I said. “I have standards. They’re vague, but they’re there. Generally speaking, it’s bad form to accept work from warlords and gangleaders. If you want me to ferry your drugs for whatever reason, I’m right out; there’s no way I’m shoving bags of drugs up my ass for some man I’ve never met.” I rubbed my back. “It’s bad enough when I have to hides knives down there, so your drugs are right out. Look, I’m a violent sort, but I’m not passing through because I’m lost. I mean, I am a bit lost, but that’s not the point. Nor is the point carrots, so don’t be thinking that, either. I’m just passing through on my way to Sleepy Oaks.”

“Easy,” she said with a shrug. “The Warden and the task he’d ask of you lies on that road.”

I looked the woman with the voice I recognized, thinking of the mare whose voice hers had belonged to in my where. How that girl could end up here and doing this was beyond me. “Do you just sit in here all day, waiting to ensnare random travelers with random sidequests?”

“I just look after the Warden’s interests: I watch, listen, and send interesting folker along his way.”

“The answer’s still no,” I said, and shoveled meat into my mouth like some sort of homophobic joke that I was too tolerant to make. Most of the steak was gone by now, because I was the fattest man ever.

“Such a shame,” she replied with a frown. “You’d think a man as smart-looking as you would know not to pass up on such a lucrative deal.”

She went to say more, but I cut her off with a sharp gesture and said, “I have no interest in currency.”

“Well, currency is one thing,” the woman went on casually. “The Warden is a generous, clever man sure to be able to find and acquire for you the things of which you desire. And, to top if off, you’d be doing a good, heroic thing.”

I grunted. “You’re trying to tempt me, this I can see, but you make the mistake of thinking you have something worth lusting after. This is a great fallacy, ma’am.” I continued looking ahead, observing her out of my peripheral vision. There were doubts that she even realized I could properly see her like this.

For a second, the woman bit her lip and thought. Making a face like someone about to take of a bite of fried bull testicles, the lady whose voice I recognized took a breath. Then she flashed me a little, almost malicious smile, like she’d sensed my weakness for syrupy waffles and was going in now for the kill. The syrupy, waffle-ridden kill.

“Are you so sure about that, stranger?” My muscles tensed as her hand grabbed my leg, herself leaning over and giving me a little pleading sort of look that sat in my gut about as well as would a pineapple made of spiders. In fact, as she angled herself weirdly to expose more of the so-called breasts, I couldn’t help but imagine that they were actually just filled with spiders. So many spiders like I couldn’t believe. Oh god, the spiders!

“Please, won’t you reconsider?” she asked in an almost childlike voice, jostling her shoulders ever so slowly, reminding me of that one epileptic whale. “It’d make me so happy.”

I cocked a brow. “My, how this world changes those we think we know.”

She gave me a puzzled frown. “What?”

“Well, I could explain exactly what that means,” I said, “but the story’s so strange and bizarre that were I to tell you, you’d be forced to think me mad.” I drank half the glass of scotch in a single swing. “Suffice it to say that I kenn you from another where, and I find it sad and not a little bit shameful that now you’re working for some ganglord in the ruins of whatever this place is when you’re clearly meant for better things. I’d ask how you befell such a fate as this, but I figure it has something to do with the fate you ended up with in my where. Tell me, ma’am: after your life first went to shit—shitter than it’d been under your abusive father, that is—how’d you get over the alcoholism here?”

The woman took her hand off my leg and leaned back, her jaw hanging open by an inch as she fidgeted with her bandana. “How in the Founding Fathers’ names do you even know any of that? I never told anyone!”

“Like I said, I could tell you of my bizarre adventure, but then you’d think me a nutter.” And with another swig, I finished my scotch. “But see here: you’ve got far too much pride to be doing what you were just doing, that much I know. I suspect it was some sad attempt at seduction, right?”

She sat silent, staring at me.

“And see, the last time you tried that in my where, it was because you were so terrified and desperate that you were willing to resort to it as an option, for you and everyone else there seemed to think that sex equated to instant control over a Mann. The circumstances are different, but for you to present yourself to me like a whore begging for a client must have taken a lot of pride, if you’re anything as I know you, which means that you’re just trying to play cool, that you think that without me assisting your boss, something terrible awaits. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

The woman said nothing. She only swallowed, still fidgeting with her bandana as if she were afraid it would tall off.

“So, because I’m still fond of you in my where, I’ll bite, girlie. What kind of job does this Warden wish me to do? More specifically, what kind of dirty work is involved?”

She took a deep breath as she looked at me. “It might involve some people needing to cease being.”

“Killing, you mean?”

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Yes.”

And finally! Life was back to normal, with random people whom I didn’t know, or at least who didn’t know me, walking up to me out of the blue and asking me to murder some people I’d never met for a reason or cause I had no true stake in.

“Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so?” I asked.

“Huh?”

With the speed of a fat kid with honey on his legs being chased by a tiger, I leapt up out of the seat and pointed a finger at the ceiling. “I’ll take the case!”

|— ☩ —|

Whatever I’d been expecting, this wasn’t it.

The woman with the voice I recognized had led me a sizable distance through the streets to this place. It was a ways away from Double D’s, past the city’s great railyard and and place called “Doc Holiday’s Hospital”, which was more a clinic than a hospital. From the outside, the overbrown building it looked a cross between a scavenger’s castle and a government building. Inside, it looked much the same, bearded men in junk armor standing guard in places or generally milling about. Here, the flag with the wingéd silvern eye could occasionally be seen, with none of Elkington’s manjis here to stand against it.

Most unexpectedly of all was the final room. It looked like a throneroom that’d been haphazardly built into a large courtroom. Men and women sat or stood all around the room, like courtiers in a feudal court, all leaving a large alley where no one went from the doors to where a judge would have sat.

There was a man there, big and burly with a great beard and long hair, sitting upon a gigantic black cat. His armor looked like proper steel armor to me, except for one thing. Upon his head, fashioned together with leather thongs, was a crown made entirely of live flying squirrels that seemed to have long just accepted their position in life.

“So, you have been brought to me!” the man called out to me, sounding as if he were trying to speak from inside a barrel of fish. His tones, though, were oddly flat, like he was a good actor poorly trying to imitate the stiff way that bad actors spoke. “This is good, yes.”

A little girl who’d been playing with a little toy wagon on the floor looked up at me for a moment before laughing. “Really? This is the warrior we’ve been looking for?” she asked through her laughs. “He looks far too skinny to even hold those guns at his hips.”

“Girl child,” the man snapped. “Be quiet. If she, the Warden’s Hand, found him and brought him to me, clearly he must be who we’ve been looking for. Why must you insult our guest?”

“Because just look at him!” The child pointed at me.

“I see a character like those in the storybooks I read to you,” he said. “Clearly, it’s a good sign.” The various courtiers murmured their agreement. I just stood there, staring at the court.

The girl rolled her eyes. “That’s exactly why this is all ridiculous. He looks like one of Geremiah’s Knights of the Round Table, down to the duster and look of the guns.”

“Hmm. Is he maybe just a really convincing cosplayer?”

“A cosplayer would imply he’s a wannabe nerd.”

The man upon the giant cat frowned. “I thought cosplayers were people from storybooks who came to life via magic.”

“No, that is not what a cosplayer is.” She looked around and gave a ‘give me a break’ shrug.

“So, he’s not a cartoon or comicbook character either, right?”

“Does he look like he’s of a different graphical style than the real world?”

He squinted, leaning his head forwards. “Hmm. I don’t know. I may need my glasses to be sure.”

“You don’t wear glasses,” she said plainly, arms crossed.

“I don’t? Then what the hell have I been wearing on my face these past few months?”

“Nothing. You have been wearing nothing.”

The Warden titled his head. “Huh. Well, this is news to me. So, in that case, no, no he doesn’t have a different graphical style,” he said, and the people in the court murmured agreements.

I shifted my weight, looking around the old building and its barbaric kingdom-esquer refurbishings. The guards eyed me, and I waved at them. One of them even waved back. He was my favorite guard.

“Huh,” said the man on the cat. “Well, I suppose we can’t just kill a man for cosplaying, can we? Is that against the laws?”

“You have never codified any laws against any sort of cosplaying or dressing up,” she offered. “Although your passing of a legal casual Friday was much appreciated for everyone’s morale, though not so much for saving lives when our patrols have to fight on those Fridays.”

“You know much, female child,” the man said, stroking the squirrels in his crown. “I have taught you well.”

“Oh, whatever. Why not just kill him anyways?” the girl asked. “You’ve been killing a lot of people recently, including my parents.”

“Well, after I butchered them for siding with the Medasin Men, I thought you were so cute that I took you in and raised you as my own. Isn’t that enough to earn your forgiveness?”

“No, not really.”

The man sighed. “Fathers, I’ll never be able to understand women. If you had a penis, you’d’ve forgiven me by now.”

Besides me, the woman whose voice I recognized cleared her throat. “Um, Warden?”

The Warden blinked, them seemed to remember I existed. “You there, cosplayer! Why are you here?”

“Um, the lady here brought me after I beat three men up in a barfight, then shot a man in the face-head with my gun,” I said. “I guess that qualified me for this job, which must mean you have terrifically low standards.”

“You have no idea,” the girl groaned, rubbing her eyes.

“His guns do work, and his aim is beyond keen,” the woman offered. “I saw him do it with an uncanny speed and agility, and knew he was just the kind of man we were looking for.”

“Ah, so you’ve done good, my Hand,” the Warden said, scratching behind the ears of his giant cat until I could hear it purring. “The girl child is for once incorrect in judgement, which is cause for celebration. But till this day of partying, I must ask whence such a man as you comes.”

“In a word, I suppose, I’m from Teutschland.”

“Ah-ha!” he yelled. “I knew you were Toitcher based on your skin.”

The courtiers gasped, mumbling amongst themselves things like “He knew!” and “He knows!” and, as one exclaimed quickly and to which everyone vigorously agreed, “We truly are blessed to have such a wise and all-knowing leader.”

The little girl put her face in her palms, shaking her head. Next to me, the woman—the so-titled Warden’s Hand—gave the girl a look that said, “I feel your pain.”

Rubbing my neck, I asked, “So, Warden, I don’t suppose you could tell me what’s going on around here, could you? What’s with all the ruins and gangs and whatever, that is. I come from somewhere far beyond, and have no real knowledge of your land.”

His eyes widened far. “Yes, I could.”

When he said nothing further, I spoke again. “Are you going to—”

“Many years ago,” the Warden declared in a dramatic voice with those same weird tones as before, “this was the nation of Olympia, a city building above the clouds, flying, where men and women lived and worked. Then… then came Elkington, the man who turned his back on the Congress for his own brutal expansion.”

He stopped. Just as I got the awkward feeling that I should speak up, and not a second later, he went on. “In the end, Elkington had conquered Evesland, and only Olympia stood against him, the last bastion of freedom. Our warriors were mighty and feared, our city would fly around and do cool tricks that sometimes ended with people falling off, and we were rich. The greatest of men, like my grandfather, were the Squirrel Knights.”

“Squirrel Knights?” I asked.

“The Squirrel Knights!” he bellowed. “It was a name feared by our enemies. Men, the greatest of men, would train their whole lives to ride the great flying squirrels of Anhkbod. They would fly around to defend our skylands, ridden upon by mighty knights. Of course, they would eventually have to land, because giant flying squirrel can’t really fly; they can only glide for a really long time. We would rain down death from above, eventually land, and our Squirrel Knights would ride their squirrels up tall trees to hide where our enemies couldn’t find us. We had never lost our wars, always preserved our independence. We were strong, mighty! And we grew arrogant.” He sniffled, wiping away a tear. Many of his courtiers were barely holding back sobs. “This arrogance was our downfall.”

“What,” I said flatly.

“Before the city fell, we stood up for Evesland, for the Congress, and our great city flew to war. We laid siege to Songnam, but… Elkington was prepared for us. He cut down the forests near where we were coming from, and he built a giant whistle. Whistles… the giant flying squirrel’s only known weakness.” He looked around and sighed. “We attacked, but he had foreseen our attack and whence we’d come. We’d never fought on a battlefield before, only upon battleforests. Elkington himself blew on the giant whistle, and our squirrels fell to the ground. We tried to fight back, but there were no trees to scamper up. He… he cut us down like calebs. Only, calebs that didn’t bark, wag their tails, or play fetch. And, really, why you’d kill calebs is beyond me. I mean, I’m a cat person, but even I don’t see the deal with that metaphor.”

Calebs are dogs? I wondered.

“Just call them dogs, Warden,” the little girl said in an exasperated tone. “Your new word for them is never going to catch on.”

“My new words are the bomb-diggity!” he shouted at her. “Everyone uses them.”

“No one uses them,” she said.

“I say caleb,” some courtier said, and then the whole court burst out into statements like his, as well as people asking each other about each other’s calebs. One female courtier even asked, “What’s a dog? Is it a type of caleb?”

“Oh good fathers,” the little girl groaned, dropping limply to the ground and sighing.

“Um, is it always like this here?” I asked.

The Warden’s Hand sighed. “Oh Fathers, yes. It always is. B-but if you really got to know the Warden, you’ll find he’s… good at keeping things as is. I mean—” her voice dropped to a whisper “—he’s something of an idiot savant, really.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied. “How’d be become the warlord of this place?”

She shrugged. “Well, he followed the time-honored position of being the first to apply for the job.”

“I… what? How the hell does one apply for being a warlord? ‘Oh, hello. Yeah, yeah. This is the Office for Barbarian Warlords. Ah, yes. We’ve read your application, Mister Warden, and we think you’d make a lovely brutal barbarian king of a ruined city in the middle of nowhere. Welcome aboard.’”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” she snapped. “That’s what he tells people, and I’m pretty sure that even if it’s not true, he believes it himself.”

“I see,” I replied.

“Enough!” the Warden bellowed. “Stranger, after our legions of trained Squirrel Knights—but not trained squirrels, for even though we rode them and tried for centuries, you cannot tame giant flying squirrels—had been defeated brutally, we tried to run. Only, Elkington’s elite Carolean recon super sniper demolition team of ninjas got into our city, and blew up the great city’s core, built by the Old Ones before mankind walked the earth. The city fell, and only by sacrificing a legion of virgin goats to some pagan god nobody cared about did we slow the fall enough so that the impact didn’t murder us all, only most of us. Thus fell Olympia.

“Now,” he said, scratching the bellies of the tiny squirrels that made up his crown, “we once proud Olympians scrabble over ruins, forming petty gangs of crime and evil and raiding in our dead city. Thanks to my crown of squirrels, signifying my respect and power, nobody can stand up to me and my gang, the Wardens. But now, we need your help.”

“And, uh, why’s it named ‘New Pegasus’?” I asked. “Whatever happened to Old Pegasus?”

He shrugged. “New Pegasus was the flying city’s military district, where man and squirrel lived together as one with only occasional bestiality, which made it perfectly fine.”

“That’s doesn’t make it fine at all!” the little girl snapped. “Just because it went on doesn’t make it right.”

“Yhar, uh, well,” the Warden stammered, “the ancients of Hellamatra used to sleep with little boys, and today we respect them for their sense of freedom and democracy. Now, why anyone would go to bed with a little boy who wasn’t, like, your own baby you’re holding at night is beyond me. But, since they did it, it’s totally fine for me to round up all the boy children and use them as blankets. Right?”

“No! J-just no!” The little girl fumed, pulling at her hair. “I hate everything!”

“Well, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with sleeping with little boys, as I see it,” the Warden said, and I just gawked at him. My hands were ready to go to my guns.

“Just because you have no concept of the birds and the bees doesn’t mean you can just go around saying that,” the little girl said, throwing her hands up in the air.

“I don’t like bees. Or birds, for that matter. Can we have cats and squirrels instead?” he asked, and the courtiers also voiced approval for this chain of events.

“Oh, for the love of!” She covered her mouth with her arm and screamed. “I’m only twelve and yet I’m still gonna be the one who has to teach you what the birds and the bees are.”

“The cats and the squirrels, you mean?”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she curled into a ball, put a hand on her toy wagon, and drove it back and forwards in utter silence.

“Anyways, buddy,” he said to me, “I need some stranger with a gun to kill somebody and his evil gang before they destroy the whole city and bring about the end of the world. Any questions?”

I started. “Wait, what?”

“Courtier number eleven-point-five,” the Warden said darkly, “drop me a beat, just as we rehearsed.”

A man wearing a poor jester’s costume stepped out of the crowds, covering his mouth with his hands. “Bum-tish-bada-bum,” he sang like this, making up random sound effects as he went.

Meanwhile, the Warden stood up and jumped off his giant domesticated cat, hitting the ground with an expert roll. The cat, however, seized this opportunity to jump up onto a broken section of the wall, then leap up to a balcony, where the people up there screamed as the cat ran amok through them.

“My name is the Warden, rap master of Blackwatch Keep. I’mma teach you a lesson in rap, stranger.” And he broke out into a stylishly unstylish dance, spinning and jumping all around as he sang in a weird tune.

“This be the story of the city

And with an evil man who’s kinda shitty.

He be ballin’ with the Blackguards,

He be up to no good,

So ya gonna stop by ’n’ give ’em my deathly regards.

We got the swag,

This bitch be in the bag.

Now go kills some people you don’t knows

And save the world to get all the hoes.”

When it was over, he was laying on his side and looking at me. “You have your orders. Hand, take him out, show him what’s what, and—” he took a long, hard, deep nasal breath “—save the world!” He smiled. “And remember: now you’re friends with the Warden. Holla if ya need me.”

“What the hell did I just witness?” I asked dumbly. “Because I feel violated and in desperate need of a shower.”

|— ☩ —|

“Hold on, I’m coming!” the Warden’s Hand called out. C blew air through his lips and shook his head as I sat upon him, arms crossed, waiting for the woman. She was running out from the building towards me. “Wait, wait, wait!” she yelled.

“We’re not going anywhere,” I said loudly as she finally got to us. Despite the run and her armor, she wasn’t panting as hard as I’d’ve expected. “And that’s what you’re wearing?” I asked, cocking a brow.

Gone was the dress and weird tight tanktop thing, replaced by this. It looked like some kind of light armor, starting with the strangely wingéd shoes on her feet to her gray-black pants. Mind you, they were pants with a gap partially up the leg and were only connected to the waist-covering parts with visible black garter belts. Then there just was this gap of armor, exposing mildly tanned white flesh from low on her waist up to just above her navel, like she was trying to expose the most possible skin so that attackers would know exactly where to stab her, because she was just nice like that.

Above her navel a shirt picked back up, studded in places with black leather, exposed with a large V-cut on her chest that exposed an unsettling portion of her bust, complemented by another cut that exposed small parts of her side. Although she was still wearing that bandana, just that she’d angled it to make sure as much breast as possible was showing. At her hip was a sheathed sword, which likely went with the little shield on her back.

She frowned. “What’s wrong with it? It’s comfortable and mobile; it’s what I wear when I actually plan to go out, not just sit in a titty bar all day and stay atop all the freshest rumors. Plus, I look good in it.”

Shaking my head, I said, “For God’s sake, woman—for all the protection that offers, you might as well be wearing a bikini. Look at all the exposed flesh? The menfolk here aren’t wearing revealing outfits like yours.”

“So?” the Warden’s Hand demanded, crossing her arms.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just, like… ‘Chainmail Bikini—plus five armor, minus five cold resistance’. Seriously, ma’am. If you’re going to wear armor, the least you could do is wear armor that actually protects you.”

She only glared at me.

I sighed, rubbing the side of my face. If her looks here are interpreted the same way by her fellow skinwalkers as they are when she’s a pony, then… “Look, just because you have a great body and a tight ass doesn’t mean you should be trying to flaunt them when folks are trying to kill you. It means you should wear armor to protect those goods so that you can live another day for people to leer creepily at you and think dirty thoughts. I’m just concerned and trying to look after you, for what little it’s worth.”

Her hard glare softened considerably. “Look,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck, not looking me in the eye, “I… I think it’s kinda uniquely sweet that you’re trying to look out for a stranger, even though why you know so much about me is still freaky, but I’m a big girl and I can handle myself.” She finally looked at me with her dusty eyes. “Hey, uh, what’s your name? I never asked, and if I’m going to be filling you in on what the Warden wants of you, it’d be handy to know.”

With a wave of the hand, I brushed the remark off. She’d never asked me my name in my where. “There is power in a name,” I said. “Forgive me for being superstitious, but I’d rather not give it.”

She glanced around. “Well… I still need to call you something. And, well, you do kinda look like the ancient paladins of Geremiah, so… how’s about Gunslinger for a name? Can I call you that? Because you sure as hell look like one.”

I tried not to laugh. “Reminds me of what they called me in the place I was in before this one; they said I looked like a bladeslinger.” I shrugged. “So, tell me about this man I am to kill, little skinwalker.”

The woman blinked, taking a step back. Then she glanced around as if to see if anyone was watching her. For some reason. I expected her to shout “Surprise, you said the secret word of the day!” because it sounded like something the Warden would implement.

Instead, she asked in a low voice, a palpably apprehensive look on her face, “What did you call me?”

“Skinwalker,” I replied in conversational tone. “Is this not what you are?”

“No! Fathers, no! Why would you—I’m not a skinwalker! Why would you accuse me of that?”

I shot the woman a puzzled look. “So… you and I are not skinwalkers? I thought this was the name of this species in this tongue.”

“No, we’re werekind!”

“Where-kind?” My thoughts went to C, whom I was still riding. “So… what’s a skinwalker, then, and why do you suddenly look so scared?”

“To even mention the word is to invoke them!” she hissed back at me. “And I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want in my life is to even be within a thousand miles of one of those unholy abominations of legend!” As she finished, I chuckled. She was literally within spitting distance of a skinwalker. “Why would you even mention one of them? Who gave you the impression werekindred hight those?”

“Strange,” I said, ignoring her question. “I met a skinwalker once, and he was a fairly chill bloke… if mind-bogglingly terrifying.” C the Horse beneath me made a horsey noise that, I thought, conveyed vague annoyance.

Her face grew dark, like there was a sudden cloud obscuring the sunlight above us. “What? You… you actually met one?”

In my mind, I jostled about what I should tell her. Finally, I grabbed my right sleeve and pulled it up, revealing the limb mutilated with all sorts of symbols. Her dusty eyes ran across the arm before going back to my lone eye, her brow furrowed with puzzlement.

“What’s with the tattoos?” she asked.

Tattoos? Huh. So, these… uh… werekindred have a name for the mutilations. Tattoos. “Must have been about three weeks ago,” I said. “This arm was infected, blood poisoned. I was forced to cut it off, cauterize it, even. As I’m laying there, dying, the skinwalker finds me, stands above me, and tells me a former confederate of mine asked him to look after me. So, he cut off his arm and gave it to me.”

“That’s…” the Warden’s Hand trailed off. “That’s impossible.”

I smiled. “Take out a knife, ma’am, and stab my arm. Watch as the arm regenerates, and the mark where ’twas cut seals with a new tattoo.”

The woman looked at me like a small child looks at a very large knife, full of apprehensive thoughts yet a vague intrigue about how the child could use this knife for evil. I offered her my knife, and she took it, taking forever to just stare at it and admire the suicidally sharp thing. When she looked back up at me, I nodded, gesturing my eyes to my tattooed arm.

It took her what seemed like a minute of soul-searching—the kind wherein you remember that your daddy touched you and that you secretly always hated the color purple for some reason—before she did it. The Warden’s Hand plunged the dagger into my arm. She let go and let the blade stick out of my flesh.

Gritting my teeth, I tried to pretend it didn’t hurt like the ungodly pain that it was. She looked up at me like a dog looks at its master after it shits all over the carpet and eats the furniture and also may have fornicated with your daughter somehow. With a soft smile, I grabbed the hilt and pulled it out. Lots of blood was to follow, the pain burning and intense.

Her eyes widened as C’s arm did its thing and healed itself. When it was over, there was a new tattoo, and it depicted a bird flying at the looker, its wings twisted so that the bird looked like the outline of a skinwalker… of a werekind skull.

“Oh my Founding Fathers,” she whispered.

“If you cut any other part of me, I bleed and do not heal like it does.”

“So,” I said in a cheery voice, “would you like to get on my horse, tell me what I’m to do, and then go your own way?” I held out my hand to her.

After a moment’s hesitation, the woman whose voice I recognized smiled and grabbed my hand. I helped her onto the skinwalker I rode.

|— ☩ —|

“He is the Black Man,” she said to me as C merrily trotted through the streets, past the many people still within the settlement of New Pegasus. She sat behind me, still in the same saddle. I could feel her body pressing up against my back. “Some call the Black Man the Black King, which is to say, the King of Outlaws. But whatever you call him, he is the leader of the Blackguard.”

“I absolutely love how people just respect the written language these days,” I remarked as I saw a small sign. It was nailed to the side of a building, and it read ‘Whalz iz teh awsum’. “Really, it’s pride to your national and ethnic heritage that you care for it so.” I sighed. “But what’s so special about this Black Man that the Warden needs a crazy foreigner to deal with?”

She seemed to ignore my comment, which made me frown. “Simply put, the Blackguard are most vile gang of outlaws in the world,” she said. “They’re also one of the two biggest gangs in the ruins of Olympia, the other being the Wardens. We stand for peace and protection, to bring back and hold a civilized life for the survivors of Olympia; they seek an end to all things. Their raids often go far beyond Olympia, and are known to rape and destroy farms many, many miles away. They’re a local terror, and we needed a knight such as yourself, a proper gunslinger, to take them out.”

“Might I ask why my guns make me so special? If you know what they are, surely you must have them.”

I felt her shrug, her bust uncomfortably rubbing on my back. God, how did these people live with such sacks of fat weighing down their chests? “Well,” she said, “most guns nowadays are produced for and exclusively owned by Elkington’s government. Most guns otherwise are so old that they’d never work. That’s why Elkington managed to conquer Evesland so easily; his was the only faction able to produce firearms at all in a time when everyone still remained true to the sword and bow. Not to mention his Caroleans, who were the only army trained to use guns. So, to see two working revolvers—six-shooters, no less, instead of the modern three-shooters—in the hands of normal person is literally the stuff of legends.

“Many local tribal warlords, in fact,” she went on, “got their starts because they owned a gun, which was more than most anyone else had. Papa Bear, leader of the Medasin Men, in fact, has an ancient scattergun, as the rumors say. So, if you’re not a part of the government, the old tools of steel are still your best friend.”

“Hmm,” I grunted. “And so this Black Man, his raids are just so vile that he must be stopped? That’s the reason?” She had mentioned that they committed rape, and if the Black Man sanctioned it, I had no choice but to stop and kill him and his gang. As I thought this, we crossed the threshold of gate, not the one I’d entered from, this one was along the path to Sleepy Oaks, and towards the Black Man.

“Not exactly,” she said in a teeth-gritted voice. “The Blackguard are fanatics. When they kill you, rape you, even torture you, they believe that they claim your soul, which they believe grants their victim unquestioned entry into High Haven, a sort of paradise after death.”

“Like Fiddler’s Green?” I asked.

“I… suppose.” She shook her head as we slowly rode past armored men in fortified positions on the road outside the city gates. None of them were wearing chainmail bikinis. “The Blackguard are convinced they have a holy mission, and that is to bring le Cœur back to life, and then overdrive it so that it goes supercritical, explodes, and annihilates all life within the hemisphere.”

I made C stop. “Wait. What?”

“Le Cœur was the heart of Olympia: built by the Old Ones long before us, it was magical device that kept the city in the sky flying, kept the air breathable, the winds low so that they didn’t kill us. He and his gang want to get le Cœur up and running again, even though Elkington sapped it so hard that it will never work perfectly ever again, and then he wants to charge it up so much that it explodes, killing most of this part of the planet, and taking him and his cultists to High Haven.”

Turning my head around, I came face to face with her dusty eyes, out noses almost touching. Granted, that was the first time I’d actually taken notice of this new nose between my eyes, and so I tried not to stare at it, but the point stood. As we held eye contact, I could see the wind playing with the twin tails of her bandana.

“Is that the gist of what the Warden wanted you to tell me?” I asked.

She nodded, her nose rubbing against mine in the action. “I’ve told you where it is, how to get there, and why we need a man with guns to take care of this: lead beats steel every time.” I continued staring in her eyes. Eventually, as she stared into my eye, she said in an almost absent-minded tone, “You know, your eye is really pretty. It’s a real sin that you lost the other. Two eyes like yours would’ve been the kind that so easily got pretty little pairs of legs to spread wide for you, huh?”

When she continued to stare at me, I cleared my throat. “You’re free to leave now.”

“Wha’?” she said in an almost slurred tone. The woman blinked. “Oh, I, uh, just… Sorry. Phased out there. Was just thinking about the sound of gunfire, the smell of gunpowder, the sight of a gunslinger of old gunning down monsters wearing the skin of men. And, call it girlish, but I always loved the stories of those knights.” She fidgeted with her bandana. “And there’s just something darkly romantic of a gunslinger wandering into town and saving the world, y’know, Gunslinger?”

I continued looking at her. “So… what you’re saying is: bitches love guns?”

“Pretty much,” she said with a laugh, then fell silent.

“Are you going yet?” I asked. “You told me what needs to be told, and I highly doubt you have any interest in going out to the Cœur to help me out there, since your armor is so revealing that it’s bound to be no help.”

She fidgeted once more with her bandada and looked up at me much as I looked down at her. With a steady, but not forceful resolve, she said, “No, I don’t think I’m leaving, Gunslinger.”

I cocked a brow. “Why?”

“Because I still know the way better than you, know all the little hiding places, know where all the good viewing spots are, et al. If you get lost, we’re screwed. Plus, when I was a little girl, my father worked in the Cœur, and I learned a bit about it from him. If you want to deactivate the Cœur and then take it offline permanently, I’m your girl, else you’ll just be fucking with things you don’t know of. No offence, Gunslinger.”

A little smile crept across my face. Everything she’d just said had been bullshit. It was true, I was sure, but still bullshut. Just using to truth to support her bullshit conclusion. “In other words,” I said, that same grin on my face, “you want to come with me?”

“Is it so wrong that a girl gets off to gunslingers shooting bad guys in the face?” she asked with a shrug.

I laughed, and C made a weird animal noise that was probably also laughter. Or a rape threat. I couldn’t rightly tell. “Well then, milady, welcome aboard Team Gunslinger.”

|— ☩ —|

“Huh,” I said, looking around the street. Around here, the buildings were taller. Or, had been taller once upon a time. Fragments of that tallness remained in the still-standing skeletons around me. From seemingly everywhere, green plants and vines sprung up, trying to claim these lands for the evil that was nature. “The streets are empty… They must have known I was coming.”

The Warden’s Hand stretched out her arms and back, yawning. “Nah, not really. This part of town is just terrifically haunted.”

“Oh, that makes it all better,” I sighed. “How’d it get haunted, anyways?”

“Well, in the final moments of Olympia, thousands gathered around this part of the city, linking hands and holding loves ones, all in prayer that the Cœur would start up again, that the city wouldn’t die.” She hesitated. “When the city crashed, this area was hit with the brunt of the force. The people were turned to paste, their bones to dust.” The woman swallowed. “Nobody came ’round here till Elkington’s engineers were trying to build a railroad through the city. As it turned out, absolutely nothing remained of the dead people here, save for—look, there! One of them.”

I followed where she’d pointed. It was like a figure standing there by the alley, only without the figure. A shadow, really. It was like a literal shadow had been burned into the ground and part of the wall. More likely, I figured, the city had some very creative graffitists.

“The shadows there, without bodies, will still rotate around the center, where once their body was, depending on the position of the sun. And sometimes, you can see the shadows move, and often they disappear and move around when no one’s looking. Like, on the anniversary of the day Olympia fell, at around twilight, you can see all the shadows of the dead people here. In the right light, they say you can even see the people themselves.”

“Huh,” I said. “How dreadfully spooky. Remind me again why you took me to the place where some demonic little ghost girl is going to come out and rip my face off.”

“Because the gangs all avoid this place,” she replied. “Most out of fear of the ghosts, and the Blackguard avoid it because they view it as holy ground. And because it’s so close to the Cœur, it makes an ideal back entrance into Blackgard, the fort they have at the Cœur.”

“So… let me get this straight. The Black Man leads the Blackguard out of Blackgard?”

“Pretty much, yhar.”

“Great,” I sighed. “It appears that everyone here has the naming ability of a very angsty preteen. ‘Let’s make it all black, because black is hardcore. Also, let’s name everything else after blood and demons and fire, and we’ll have blood fountains, wear all black, and-and-and also, no girls allowed.’ I mean, good golly, Miss Molly, this just sounds silly.” Glancing off to the side, I swore that I saw a shadow turning slowly to watch me go by. I glared at it, shaking my head. That would teach it not to stare at me.

“Hold up, stop here,” she commanded, and I brought C to a halt. “Over there,” the lady said, pointing off to a large concrete building. “There’s a little way through there, up across that, into that building, and then sneak the Cœur district, avoiding the brunt of the Blackguard as we slip into Blackgard.”

Her indicated route took us for stories up the concrete skeleton of a building, then across a fallen tower of metal that had once formed a weird and super narrow but tall pyramid thing that formed a bridge across the street, into another building, and then wherever. The reason, it seemed, we didn’t enter the second building first was that its base was covered in concrete ruins, making entrance likely impossible. When I got a good look at the first building she wanted us to enter, I gave a loud groaned.

The fallen sign by its side labeled it as the “Heaven’s Hospital”.

“Great. A haunted hospital. Nothing can possibly go wrong here.” I looked down and around to the Warden’s Hand. “If my genitals end up getting possessed and turning into a serial killer, I’m forever blaming you.”

“Oh, it’ll be fine. I’ve been here a few times, and I only got attacked by a poltergeist once after staring for too long into a haunted mirror,” she said, getting off C. Without any hesitation, she strolled up to the wiry mess that had once been what I imagined to be some kind of front doors. “Are you coming, Gunslinger?” she called out.

“Uh, do give me a moment. I have to whisper to my trusty stead.”

“Cool, whatever,” she replied and ducked under a fallen steel beam, disappearing into the building. Well, I could still see her through the mess, but hardly.

Getting off C, I asked, “Do you sense any problems?”

He looked at me. From a headlong view, his eyes looked like they were bulging out of his face with pure horror. “I am a horse,” he replied. “But, I can sense a pack of feral dogs roaming around.”

It occurred to me that while my voice had a slight echo in these empty streets with this looming shells of buildings around me, C’s voice did not echo in the slightest, like the quack of a duck, if that duck were a horrific flesh-eating abomination from beyond your worst nightmares. “And what if I need you later on?”

He shrugged in a way that I was sure his horse body was never meant to move. “Well, just whistle. You know how to whistle, right?”

“No,” I said, and his ears drooped.

“Oh, God damn you, tsaius.” He sighed. “Look, if you need me, just… uh…” C looked around, licking his eyes with his ludicrously long tongue. “Yeah, I got nothing. I’ll probably just randomly appear whenever I appear randomly.”

“That’s so thoughtfully generous of you that I’m shedding invisible tears,” I said flatly.

“Oh, whatever. Get on out of here. You have a bad guy to kill, and I have a pack of dogs to invite to a tea party.”

With a nod to the skinwalker, I turned and went after the Warden’s Hand, into the hospital where some demonic little girl was doubtlessly waiting to tear my face off.

|— ☩ —|

Inside, I saw the woman scrounging around boxes and loose articles within the great front lobby of the building. Bits of the wall had caved in in places, broken chairs were about, plants grew in places, and the glass of a great ceiling window had shattered long ago. A bird flew around somewhere up by the tall ceilings, flaunting the fact that vengeful spirits never bothered taking out their vengeful fury upon random birds.

“Oh, there you are!” the lady called out. “Was wondering when you’d stop talking to your horse.”

Walking up to her, I asked, “What are you doing down there?”

She shoved over an empty tin box full of broken coffee mugs before she stood up. “Well, since no one ever comes here, this part of the old city is still a great place to loot and look for supplies in. Plus, I’m pretty sure the ghosts like to restock this looted stuff every few weeks. Like, this one time I found three bullets in a locker, then a few weeks later I wander in here, accidentally open up the same lock, and find a stimpack that totally wasn’t there before.”

“A stimpack?”

“Yhar, you know. Scary needle things that deliver healing potion stuff straight into your blood and body.”

“Ah, you mean like a Muntermacher.” I reached into my bags until I found one of them, one of my very last. It was a syringe filled with a red liquid. Oddly, in the hands of this much bigger body, the Muntermacher looked tiny, as if using it would be like shooting myself up with some make-believe drugs. I moved it around, wondering if the red liquid inside the syringe—an extract from the Doktorkäfer, the doctor bug—would even have the same effect on a werekind body.

I could just picture myself using it to heal a wound, and all it would do was give me a nasty case of hives and also melt my left lung and only my left lung, because my left lung was my only good lung. My right lung was still the lung pierced by the bit of metal when I’d fallen off that balcony trying to kill Elkington way back when. I actually found myself massaging that part of my chest just then, or at least what felt like that part of my old chest on this new chest.

Putting the Muntermacher back, I realized that the lady had wandered off. I followed her through a broken set of double doors, followed as she swung a left into a dark and scary backroom, lit only by faint cracks in the wall and from the outside halls. In here, she tried a seemingly random door, only to find it locked. I didn’t ask questions as she kicked it open. She pumped her fist and arm as she looked into the newly revealed stairwell, lit only by faintly glowing paint.

“You know, I swear on Geremiah’s grave that this door was open last time. Unlocked, too,” she said, crossing her arms and looking into the darkness within. “Well, onto the fourth floor. C’mon. The livebox tower’s our only way across.

She went in, but I paused. Turning around, I saw several imprints of children’s shadows standing behind me that were not there earlier. With a hissing noise, I said in a low voice, “Back, demons! Back, I say! For I’ll have you know that while I may not be a priest, I am carrying several bottles of sulfuric acid that I had a priest bless, making me the sole man in the world likely carrying holy acid.”

Making an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture at the shadowy imprints, I backed into the stairwell. With a final frown of disapproval, I shut the door. That done, I proceeded to bravely scamper up the stairs partially to the third floor, where the lady was. If any ghosts tried to eat my face off, I would grab her, toss her at them, and run like hell, as any brave stallion would do.

“So,” I asked, trying not to think of children’s ghosts following me forever, watching me trying and failing to figure out again how to properly urinate with this body’s weird anatomy, “who’s this Geremiah fellow I hear so much about?”

The woman glanced at me as if I was begging her to teach me how to breath. “Geremiah the Great. Don’t they at least teach you about him in Toitchland?”

“Nope,” I replied with a spring in my step.

She sighed. “Well, uh… In short, Geremiah was an outlaw from the plains to the west who gathered up an army of one hundred men, himself included, with proper working guns about twelve hundred or so years ago. Those were his valiant, heroically romantic Knights of the Gun. Then he managed to unite the countless tribes of Plainsmen in the West under his banner, crossed through the Great Divide and into Evesland, where he conquered and settled all the land before submitting to the Congress, whereupon the Congress crowned him the President of Evesland, bringing back civilization to a ruined, lawless land.”

“Well. That sounds interesting,” I said. “I’d love to learn more.”

“Yes, but we don’t have time for a history lesson right now, thank you very much,” she said, opening the door onto the fourth floor. I followed her out, since she seemed to know where she was going.

As we weaved through the broken building with holes in walls and gaps in the floor and hospital beds scattered about, I made sure not to pay attention to any of the things moving out of the corners of my eyes, the phantom sound of distantly laughing children, or the teddy bear with a knife through it and the words “Play With Us” written in blood behind it. The Warden’s Hand explained that away with the always comforting dismissive wave of the hand. Plus, with all the brokens bits of the building, we were never too far away from sunlight, so there was that.

And finally, there it was: a huge tear in the building Façade where that weird tower of metal had landed, creating a bridge between this building and the next that certainly wouldn’t randomly break and kill us for seemingly no reason. And to keep the feeling, somebody had taken the time to lay down planks across the tower, nailing and tying them down just so perfectly that there are parts of it that you almost didn’t see the ground through. Totally the antithesis of a death trap.

It was behind a door, though, to what had once been a patient’s room. The room had windows thereinto, and when my guide peeked through them, she grunted “Shit!” under her breath and dropped to the floor.

Crouching down, I gave her a look like a hamster trying to contemplate modern art. “What’s wrong?”

“Three of them,” she hissed. “And don’t you dare say ‘I thought you said nobody ever came here’, because I don’t know why they’re here, either!” She blinked. “Oh, wait. You have a gun.”

“Two of them, actually. Revolvers.”

She smiled. “What am I worrying myself over? Go out there and shoot them in the face.” Then she paused, gnawing on her thumb. “Wait, no. Bad idea. The sound of gunfire would likely reach Blackgard from here.”

I shrugged. “Allow me to solve your problems, milady,” I said, suddenly remembering that I still had a sword with me. Plus, blades had that unique advantage of being silent and never needed reloading. I stood up, standing behind the door as my hand went to the sword. Fingers prodded the hilt, wondering if the grip would even work so well with hands.

“Wait, what are you doing?” she demanded.

Nevertheless, some flourish was called for. So, I pulled my hat forwards to hide my eyes, put a hand in a pocket, and opened the door. With a cool, almost casual demeanor, I strolled to the edge of the room and took a tentative step onto the makeshift bridge. The three men, each loosely dressed as soldiers of old with swords, shields, bits of chainmail and leather, however, paid me no mind. To top it off, they were wearing black neckerchiefs and black capes, because black was the new black.

No, they were too busy staring downwards, pointing and gawking at the horse sitting in the middle of the street. Only, it was sitting at a sizable table, drinking tea with eight dogs of various breeds, all strapped into the chairs and freaking out in what was either pure terror or terrific under-the-table blowjobs given by a many-mouthed tentacle monster who may have very likely been an extension of that horse they were drinking with. Also, they were all wearing tophats and monocles.

“Oh, Founding Fathers,” one of the men was saying in a tone like he had a nasty tummyache. “This place really is haunted!”

A twinge of irk coursed through my blood. I had intended to meet these men head on, act all cool, then quickly kill them in a badass duel. But since they were ignoring me, and never being one to refuse taking advantage of serendipity—for if serendipity were a mare, I’d probably be a sex offender—I just promptly walked up to them, loudly greeted them with a “Hi!”, and then watched as two of them accidentally threw themselves off the end while I lazily kicked the last one over. Far less badass than I’d been hoping for.

On a related note, I did get to watch C salute me, then gallop over to the dead bodies. He promptly picked them all up, and dragged their bloody, gooey corpses under his tea table to do whatever with them; I didn’t care to contemplate.

When I went back to the Warden’s Hand, I found her standing by the open doorway, fidgeting with her bandana. “Well, that went over a lot differently than I’d expected.”

I shrugged. “It thought it was find of amusing. Plus, it was easier than stabbing them a lot.”

“I see… well… we probably should get going.”

|— ☩ —|

“Ugh,” I groaned, my back against the stone wall. I dared not look down as I made my way to the right. “Why must there always be a narrow ledge above a bottomless pit,” I asked, still not looking into the black void of nothingness further down here in this building, “and why must I always cross it?”

To be exact, it probably had a bottom. Just that it was a murky pit of blackness wherein there was only rape and darkness to find. It looked bottomless, though. And no matter the cowardly thumping in my chest, the woman stood on the other side of the ledge, where the building once again had a normal floor. Through a crack in the gray concrete wall, a ray of sunlight illuminated the dust floating lazily behind her, giving her a cherubic halo that did not match at all that almost psychotic grin on her stupid face.

“Oh, come on,” she said with a wave of the hand. “You’ll be fine.”

“Are you enjoying this?” I asked, scooting along the ledge, worried more that I’d lose my hat than my life. I was just another hero killing people I didn’t know for people I didn’t know for reasons that I didn’t fully understand; we were a dime a dozen. Now, fine hats on the other hand…

“Mmm, a mite bit,” she chirped. “It’s a rare thing to see a gunslinger squirming like this. Rather amusing to see.”

With a quick leap, I scrambled up to the more solid ground. “And I think watching parents smack their snotty, self-entitled, misbehaving kids is exhilarating—but you don’t see me slipping kids some money in exchange for them misbehaving till their folks snap. Not often, at least.”

She giggled at that, but I only sighed, a question forming on my lips. “How many more ruined buildings do we need to crawl through?”

“Yonder,” she said, pointing down the hall. “Through a hole up here is the central location of the Paradise in the Skies Theatre. Should still be in the haunted part of tome, but through it is a direct way onto the roof of a building in Blackgard.”

So I followed her down that way. Save for me getting into a staring match with a strangely placed bucket of fresh turnips, there was nothing odd in these ruins. Well, not until we stepped through the hole in the wall, onto the fourth floor of the theater. For before us was a huge atrium that went up even higher than the fourth floor, although the fourth floor clearly was the highest floor here.

At the center of the atrium’s floor was a twisted, gnarled old white oak tree without any leaves. Around it, the floor which had clearly once been a pristine checkerboard pattern of tiles was now covered in bits of the fallen ceilings, parts of the upper floors, weeds, and half of the floor had been thrust upwards but half a foot from when the city had fallen. Light filtered through the twisted, broken bits of ceiling onto the popcorn stand at the tree, where a man clad in dark blue robes stood.

To be more precise, save for a small radius around the old tree, the whole of the ruined floor was covered with men and women wearing a all sorts of paltry, scavenged-looking armor, their only distinguishing features being black bandanas around their necks or faces.

More Blackguard, I thought. At least now we know where those other three had wandered off from.

These Blackguard took up space from the little vomitoriums leading into various theaters to the mound of rubble that created a ramp up to the second story. Around the edges of the second story, they all stood, staring at the tree in the atrium. There were even Blackguard on the third floor, most of their arms crossed as they looked down, their armor still looking laughably makeshift.

Silence was the king of this place. Silence… save for the quiet but echoing sobs of the naked woman tied to the tree, her limbs splayed open. Although hard to make out from this height and the considerable distance, I could see her dark blue hair, and her white flesh looked dirty or mayhap bruised.

The man standing nearest to her, the fellow in the dark blue robes with the pointed hood that concealed his face, rose a hand into the air. “Brothers and sisters,” he said with a vague hint of a drawl, his deep voice reverberating all throughout the atriums and sending a chill down my spine. He paused to looked at the naked girl. “Near are we to bringing the Cœur back to life.”

“Near are we to being utterly genocidal psychos, more like it,” I mumbled under my breath, the Warden’s Hand and I crouching up to the fourth floor’s railing. Thankfully, up here, the railings were more like short walls in terms of looks. Visual cover it was. Although we’d gone to the left upon coming through the hole in the wall, I saw, if we’d gone the other way we could have walked down a set of rather broken stairs. But my guide had wanted to go this way, and so had we gone.

“We are mayhap nar a few days from ascending into High Haven,” he went on, bits of the ancient metal superstructure to this once grand building creaking off in the distance. “For the safety and ascension of all pious persons, we gather here, in this holy place of haunting for that most ancient of traditions: sacrificing this unsullen, this virginal beauty to the Old Ones, those who constructed the Cœur in the before times, in the hopes of earning their favor yet further.”

The woman sobbed, but she did not struggle. A pit in my gut told me that she’d long been forced to accept that there was no other option, and I could easily imagine that her ankles and wrists had been worked raw from struggling already.

“Sister, would you do the honor of playing the tarot to determine who amongst us shall be granted the sacred privilege of burning her?”

I didn’t hear a response, but out from the shadows stepped a woman wearing black robes and a plague mask. Seeing her, my blood ran cold. She make a flicking gesture with her hand, and immediately the crowd took a step back from the tree. The woman pulled out and shuffled a deck of cards, then set down seven of them.

She turned them over, one by one, accompanied only by the sound of quite, defeated sobs.

“The Sorceress,” came the woman’s voice, sounding far more youthful than the cobweb-genitaled crone I’d been expecting as it echoed through the atrium. At the card’s name, I suddenly had a sick feeling in my stomach.

“The Gun.” My hands caressed the revolvers in their holsters.

“The High Priestess.” My mind went quickly to Snechta, and then to the card of same name that Felicitat’s so-called oracle; that card back then had displayed a mare that was, when I thought about it, a deadringer for Snechta.

“The King.” Much like the stallion in the oracle’s card, my right arm was now slightly darker than the rest of my body, both as a werekind and a pony.

“The Murderer.” That card had looked like it was displaying Cards. I didn’t know what the card that this witch was using looked like, but a sinking feeling in my gut told me that it would display girl who would look exactly like a werekind Cards.

“The Liar.” Thoughts in my head went to C’s grotesque, unnaturally huge smile, the one he’d worn when I’d first laid eyes upon him.

Then the woman paused, seeming to hesitate as if confused. It was hard to exactly tell, what with her plague mask. Then, with a sudden jerk, she looked straight up at me. There was no way she should have seen me, but I could still feel her eyes boring into my face. Eyes that I just knew had to’ve been blue.

She held up her hand; betwixt two extended fingers were two cards. She took one of them, shook her head, and ripped it. At last, she held up the last card, its face towards me, holding it sideways. “The Fool, lengthwise.”

That was what had separated the tarot reading of Felictat’s oracle from the one the Blue-Eyed Lady had shown me. The oracle had said I was the Hanged Stallion. But the Blue-Eyes Lady had called that wrong, had labeled me as the Fool, even though she’d called me “Hanged Stallion” until just then.

“You,” the woman yelled out, looking directly at me. The mayhap hundreds of people in the room turned to follow her gaze, and a good many of them reached for their swords and axes. “You shall be the one to show us fear in a handful of dust.”

I glanced to my companion, who was alternatively peeking over the edge towards the tree and looking at me, fidgeting with her bandana. From somewhere off, I heard the sound of heavy bootfalls. My hands went to my guns as I saw the flickering light of a torch upon the wall; they were coming up from the broken steps.

“Shit!” my companion hissed, looking not at the stairs but down the other narrow way. Creeping out from a stairwell was a host of Blackguard, swords and axes drawn.

Jerking my head to the stairs again, a look on my face like a rooster finding himself tarred and feathered, I saw the host of men. All wearing their makeshift armor, black neckerchiefs or bandanas around their faces. Well, all save for the one carrying the torch. He was wearing black robes sans hood and ridiculously thick glasses, a wicked grin on his face that just screamed “my favorite pastimes include punching babies and raping slave boys”.

Now, I wouldn’t pretend to know anything about math, but based on a mere headcount—which I had to restart twice because I lost my place by thinking of cats in leather jackets eating chips—I quickly found that there were far more men than I had bullets for. At most, I had twelve shots between my two revolvers, and I suspects that wouldn’t be enough. Mayhap if I could do a full reload, but by then, they’d be upon me. While my duster would easily protect me from being stabbed and cut and even shot with arrows, the duster only prevents the cuts; it did not, as much as I’d’ve wished for, stop the crushing, blunt-force trauma from those kinds of wounds. Trust me, even if the axe doesn’t cut you, axes hurt!

For some suicidal reason, rather than fire at will, I glanced over the railing to the atrium. Then down below me. The drop would kill anything. But, there was a snag. Literally, a snag. The floor below me jutted out just slightly on a little lip, still far enough down to break your legs, but this was where the snag was. See, there was nopony on the edge of the third floor beneath me; instead, there was a huge pile of rubble, including a savage-looking metal pipe sticking out. It was my snag.

“Girl,” I said to my companion, and she snapped her head towards me. “Give me your hand.” Hand extended, I smiled at her, standing up.

“What are you…?” she tried.

“Grab my hand, girl.” I winked. “Trust me; we’ll be fine. Well, you’ll be fine. I don’t know about myself.” Glancing to the women tied to the tree, I took a breath.

“But what are…?” She bit her lip, tugging on her bandana. The Blackguard were taking their time, slowly lurching towards us, the man with the torch and the pedophile glasses still smiling at me.

“Trust me,” I said calmly. “You do trust me, your Gunslinger, right?”

The woman hesitated before taking a breath, standing up, and grabbing my left hand.

I turned towards the atrium, gripped the woman’s hand as tight as I could, and vaulted over the railing, taking the girl with me down the four stories to our death.

|— ☩ —|

She screamed, and I screamed, but for entirely separate reasons. Blood, hot and red, was leaking down my tattooed arm as I tried not to scream. I swung my feet forwards, grabbing the third-story ledge, and hauled the girl up to the railing. She frantically grabbed onto it, like a wet cat in a waterpark, and scrambled over it.

Gritting my teeth, blood dripping from a new gash in my cheek, I scanned the floor. No Blackguard. Good. Now, for the pressing matter of how I was still alive, if barely.

My right arm, as I looked at it, suddenly reminded me of a mouse caught in a trap. Only, instead of normally crushing it to death like any sane person would do, my arm had been skewered like the world’s bloodiest marshmallow. Also, my right arm didn’t taste very good. I would know; I once chewed it off.

Looking at the limb, I could tell that it was only held on my tendons and muscles and flesh. Compared to normal, the arm looked freakishly long. The force of the fall had torn the arm from its socket , and I could feel wetness inside the now dislocated joint. Whether that was blood or synovial fluid, I couldn’t say, only that it burned like that time a priest dowsed me with holy water, only for me to find out that it was actually holy acid, because the priest was a crazy pony. I still kept some of the stuff in my bag, just in case vampires needed to be taught the true meaning of religion.

But, neither of those were quite the worst parts, even though the gashing pain was so tremendous that my first scream had torn my vocal chords, no. The worst part was when I tried to blink away tears in my eyes from the pain, and realized that I had blinked with both eyes. One eyelid caressed a lovely eye; one eyelid caressed a cold tip of metal digging into an empty hollow.

Suddenly, I realized that the blood on my cheek from where the metal pipe had gouged and still stood wasn’t entirely from the gash in my cheek. In fact, I was sure that I could feel a line of surgical stitching dangling across my cheek. So, yeah. This was fun. Because even when the plan is terrible, I still always found a way to end up worse than I’d’ve figured possible. Especially when the plan succeeded.

“I like how you’re just standing there,” I croaked to my companion, who was pretty much doing just that: standing there and staring at me with a face like she’d just walked in on her parents engaged in hardcore BDSM sex, and they had seen her, and they had decided that they wanted her to watch.

Extending my left arm, I grabbed onto the railing, not paying much mind to the shouts of the Blackguard below me on the ground floor. The first thing I did to free myself of the savage steel snag was to jerk my head, getting the metal bar out of my eye. With how deep it was, I mused, it was probably better that I had no eye there left to pierce.

The only thing was, with the way I’d moved, my eyepatch was now hanging slightly off as blood dripped down my countenance. When I tested out by blinking the wounded eye, I found that it didn’t blink quite right because the metal pipe had ripped my bottom eyelid nearly in two. The girl was staring into the empty socket before she leaned over and vomited out something that was oddly bright orange .

“Help me,” I whimpered, and, slowly, the Warden’s Hand spat out a last bit of vomit before grabbing my free arm. I tried not to look at the way the metal snag weaved in and out of my grotesquely elongated arm, through muscle, bone, and flesh. Together, as I tried to drag myself over the edge and she pulled me, the arm was slowly freed.

The sound was as deafening to me as it was quiet to most everyone else, I figured. There came that teeth-grinding sound of squeezed metal being dragged, that high-pitched whine like a very angry and clawed kitty attacking a chalkboard. But that was nothing compared to the sound of the wet flesh, the blood now rushing out; it was like the sound of mud dropping into a puddle—schlop and schloch!—only I had the fun knowledge of knowing that sound was my flesh and muscle.

As the blood ran out of the newly metal-less wounds, which had been stemming the blood flow, I suddenly felt woozy. Like, the kind of woozy where all of my thoughts revolve around half-mad musings about genitals. The first of these thoughts was that the sound my arm was making was more akin to the sound of a very tenacious stallion trying to brutally fornicate the lifeless, half-liquidated-by-rot corpse of his grandmother at her wake.

But with a sound like finally getting your foot dislodged from the mud wherein it’d been stuck, the metal snag finally popped out of my body, and I tumbled over the railing. I was pretty sure that I got some of my companion’s vomit on my cheek when I landed. Coincidentally, with the gash just under my eye, that meant I got some lovingly orange vomit in that cut, which was fun. Infected wounds? Hi, hello; yeah, it’s me. Table for one, please!

Still, it could have been worse, as the sudden mental image in my head depicted. That is, I had the sudden mental image of me falling down, scraping along the ground, and all of my companion’s vomit getting scooped thereby into my empty left eyesocket. At that thought, I jumped up off the ground and onto my feet, my arm just gushing red, myself having clearly nicked the same artery several times over.

“Oh my Fathers, are you okay?” my companion demanded, and I just looked at her.

“Well, I could do without your vomit in my wounds, but other than that, I’m positively peachy, love,” I said flatly, staring intently at her with my good eye and my empty socket.

She covered her mouth with her hands, and at just that moment, someone yelled, “I got ’em!”

I looked around, seeing distant outlaws ascending the stairs far off to one direction. When I tried to reach for a gun, I grunted hard. I realized two thing just then: one was that my gored arm felt pleasantly numb save for the burning area around the shoulder, and the other was that my right arm didn’t work. At all. It just hung limply, like the world’s saddest penis—

“Dammit!” I hissed at myself. “We are not going through this again.”

“Wha-wha’?” the Warden’s Hand stuttered, reaching out to me.

“Not you, girl,” I spat. “I’m talking to my brain. We are not going through another period where every other thought involves the word ‘penis’, are we clear?”

Go screw yourself with a breakfast cereal composed entirely of somewhat sharp-looking rocks.

“I’m glad we had this chat,” I replied. Then came the sound of an arrow whizzing near me and hitting one of the large stone columns that held up the ruined building. Also, oddly, there was the hissing sound of a fuse whence had come the sound of the arrow hitting.

The Hand’s eyes went wide as she shouted, “Oh, fuck me with a rake!”

“You know,” I said, body slightly swaying, “I like you and all, but don’t you think you’re pushing this relationship a little too fast? I haven’t even bought you dinner ye—”

I realized about then that the girl had grabbed my good arm as she went running towards the wall and away from the railing, and I was coming with. Still dragging me alongside, she dolphin-dived behind a rusted snack cart whose label advertised cotton candy. Landing besides and almost atop her, I noticed that some artist with a rudimentary sense of humor had crossed out the “candy” part of the ad from this side of the cart, replacing it with a new word so that the ruined thing now advertised “cotton pussy”. That was lowbrow. Nothing at all compared to the rigidly high-class standards of incoherently babbling out the word “penis” whenever it crossed the mind—now that was proper humor.

An explosion suddenly tore me away from my musings upon the high arts just as the third-floor lip we’d landed on cracked, splintered, whined, and tore itself free from the rest of the floor. It was like a beautiful butterfly, except that it was mostly made of debris, and it didn’t fly, and it probably killed a bunch of people when it hit the ground. Yay, butterflies. So majestic.

I glanced over to the distant place where those Blackguard had been coming up from, and they were still pleasantly jogging for us, the dust still hanging, the air smelling of explosives. Just as soon as those men were yelling and pointing at us. My eye fell to my right arm, still mangled and hanging out of its socket, still bleeding, but the bloodflow was beyond reasonably controlled. One of the perks of having some skinwalker freak’s arm replacing your own.

Standing up, I tried to control my breathing as I clamped a hand over my dislocated arm. Fact was, I could manipulate it past the elbow, down to the hand, but it was still otherwise useless.

“C’mon, Gunslinger!” my companion urged pointing down the walkway that slowly curved around the atrium, the opposite direction from the oncoming outlaws. Still holding my arm, I tried my best to keep pace with her, leaving a trail of blood as we sprinted.

Arrows shot past us, a storm of running boots rang in my ears, someone threw an ugly baby doll onto the third floor, and men and women were screaming for our blood, many calling calling us “Profligates”. So I ran as if the Korweit Himself were after me.

What the hell am I doing here? I found myself thinking as I scrambled over a pile of rubble on the floor from a fallen bit of ceiling. The men were still chasing after us, and when I glanced into the atrium, I could still see that tree with the nude woman tied to it, that women in the plague mask silently watching me. Still, I had my hat, and it wasn’t as if I was going to groan and say, This can’t possibly get any worse. That would have just been tempting—

My companion and I slid to a halt as we turned a corner around the next column, and came face-to-face with a huge wall of rubble.

“Oh, come on!” I bellowed. “That was just an example; I didn’t actually say ‘Ugh, this can’t possibly get any worse’!”

A roar erupted from far behind us, pretty much exactly like the sound of a heavy gunshot if that gun were fired from inside a wooden barrel. My companion looked pale and said, “Shit, that sounds like a scattergun!”

“Oh, no fair, fate!” I shouted. “That’s just cheating!”

The Warden’s Hand spun around, and I followed her gaze as she examined the wall of rubble. “Shit… shit… shit…” She clasped her hands together. “Okay, idea—see that little hole in wall?” She was referring to narrow space between the debris and the floor, one of the several little holes in the unsturdy wall, but mayhap the largest. “Look, I’ll try to squeeze through there, and-and-and I’ll see if I can find a way to help you get on through.”

I just looked at her, briefly glancing to her chest. “Are you sure you could even fit with those?” I asked. “They don’t look very agreeable to squeezing through tight places, and rather uncomfortable to have to crawl upon with.”

She stamped a foot. “They’re only size C; I’m not some boob monster, dammit!”

Suddenly, I had the image in my mind of the Warden’s Hand taking off her clothes, and on her chest were just two of C’s faces smiles at me, and trying to engage each other in small talk. In that moment of silence, she threw herself to the ground and slowly, with grunts and groans, went about squeezing through.

I turned around to face whence the Blackguard would come. With an effectively useless right arm, this was going to be about as fun as playing Pin the Tail on the Pony against a blind kid. And blind kids cheated! Taking a breath, I grabbed a revolver and held it in my left hand. Of course, there was this little snag about not having a left eye wherewith to help me aim the damn thing, and I could only hold it in one hand, not two like any sane person would have done. Pulling the hammer back, I listened to the nearing shouts, waiting for them to turn the corner.

And then they came, just four men here. They caught sight of me. One of them called out, “You shoulda stayed home, Toitcher!” as he raised his axe and shield, the four of them charging.

My first bullet hit his buddy in the throat. His neck twisted unnaturally as he fell down, convulsing and drowning in his own blood. Second shot went wild. Cursing, I pulled the hammer back. The next two bullets struck true, the third was false, and the final bullet hit the last man’s raised shield. I watched as it punched right through a rather thick-looking bit of steel, and then got to see his arm split open a bit like a banana as the bullet went through his arm and ended its journey in what I thought was some part of his lower throat, the part that was purely inside the body.

I barely had any time to reload the revolver before the next wave came, only three this time. Out of the six bullets I fired, only two of them struck true. The last Blackguard rammed into me, carrying a sword in each hand, but the blades just harmlessly knocked the everloving wind out of me, sending my gun flying and skidding across the floor towards the railing.

“Hold on! I think I can move this!” the Warden’s Hand called out through the rubble.

A swift and desperate kick to the groin stopped him in his tracks, letting me kick his legs out from under him. Ah, testicles: they were like a big pair of self-destruct buttons placed at the most conveniently kickable place ever, especially on these werekindred. So, when he crumpled to the ground, I stomped on his neck for all I was worth. According to the several stomps I had to make before he finally stopped struggling, I was worth about the same as a small Neighponease girl-child.

Panting so hard that I coughed, I barely heard the ferocious locking sound. I looked up from my kill to see a man who looked like the Black Knight if he’d blown his knees out, nursed himself back to health on nothing but the tears of orphans, and then killed a man over a game of blackjack. His black outfit looked hand-sewn, ditto for the black poncho slung over his shoulders, and the black hat on his head that was of a suspiciously similar design to my own. Then there was the long twin-barreled gun he was aiming at me.

Before even thinking about it, I dove to the right, towards the wall as his gun went off. The twin barrels went off with flash. It sounded like thunder if it had been wielded by God and was made of pure rape and malice. A train of pellets slammed into the concrete rubble behind me as I rolled around the floor like a fat walrus attempting to learn the Stop, Drop, and Roll method.

When I managed to spring back up to my feet, the man was laughing. “Boy, I hope you like the sight of your own blood,” he said to me, fiddling with what I was now sure was his scattergun. At first I thought he snapped it in half, but when two spent red shells sprang out of the opened breach and I saw the bandoliers of similar red shells around his chest, I realized that this was how the scattergun was reloaded.

The man let out a roar, springing forwards and charging me as he tried to fit a red shell into each barrel. Soon the roar was replaced by a howling laugh. When he ran, I did the first thing I could think of. Because, sometimes, the best plans were the instinctual plans you made without thinking about them because you simply had no such ideas.

This wasn’t one of those plans.

The first thing that occured to me was to run as hard and as fast as I possibly could. To run like I’d never run before, with all the fury of a fat man who’d just dropped his bag of chips behind the couch. So I did just that, he got nearer and nearer, and I ran and I ran and I ran… straight into the wall.

Well, more like I ran into it at a funny angle with all my might, ramming my shoulder straight into the wall. It felt like a thousand razor blades soaked in cherry sauce were digging into the socket of my arm as the sheer force of blow shoved the dislocated bone back into the socket. Cherries had the most damaging effects upon my psyche nowadays, you see. Lemons were too easy, those sluts. So when I cried out in the wet pain of it all, salty tears threatening to form in my eyes, the scattergunner howled and whooped like a banshee, which was good. He was bringing himself within striking range.

Although I was just some idiot pony in a strange werekind body, I did have that one superpower of mine that C’d given me, and by God I was going to abuse and cheat with that until the universe found out how to screw me over for it in the end. And it was going to screw me over in the end, make no mistake. C’s arm was probably going to end up actually giving me that eyeball on the edge of my penis that I was always ranting about, only it’d have tentacles, and would fly, and would constantly speak in really racist, offensive jives.

So, when his gun was almost in my face, I put on the biggest, scariest smile I could muster, the kind that would get most people locked into a room with soft, white walls, and I thrust my right arm forwards, grabbing the barrel of his gun. At that exact moment, the gunbarrel to my left erupted in that same thunderous sound, the pellets hitting my arm point-blank, the arm practically melting as the shot tore it to pieces.

I didn’t stop moving towards him, arm extended.

His laughs died, his smile turning upside-down so fast that I wished I could have taken a series of pictures. And it was all because my arm was reforming before his very eyes partially around his gun. The man seemed as if in a daze as my hand reassembled around the gun’s triggers as I tore it out of his grip. By the time everything seemed to register to him, I was spinning the gun, still partially in his hands, around to face him.

“Wells, looks like the ball’s in my court now,” I said in a calm voice, pulling the trigger. The pellets literally tore the top third of his body off the rest of him.

“Looks like the ball’s in my court now?” I asked myself, shaking my head. “Really? That’s the best I could come up with?”

“Holy shit, he just killed Brother Maximus!” a man shouted. I looked up at the gaggle of gangers standing there, who’d clearly been watching our fight instead of helping.

I knelt down, popped open the scattergun’s breach, grabbed two shells from the corpse’s bandolier, and loaded them in. At this range, a spread of pellets seemed to liquefy the men, rendering their steel armor beyond worthless. The range of the scattergun was considerable, given the evident spread of its shot.

With some gore, it was impossible not to throw your head back and laugh maniacally as you reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired. “I’m bad at recalling strange people, even though you faceless outlaws all look vaguely familiar, so I’m sorry to say that I dismember you!” I yelled at one wave. “Wait, no, that’s a terrible pun and I apologize. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer concerning how I can make up for this grievously atrocious pun.” The idiots kept on coming, being blown apart by the scattergun; it was as if they’d been specific bred to forget a little thing called ‘self-preservation’ was.

I felt, rather than heard, a block of concrete from the wall of rubble behind me falling over and onto the floor. “There!” the Warden’s Hand panted just as I’d gone through the twelve shells in the bandolier. She was covered in splotches of chalky dust like she’d just spent the worst day ever teaching voracious kindergarteners not to play in the meat-processing factory. Judging by how much more I could now see of her cleavage, I presumed she’d taken off her red bandana for whatever reason. “Fucking finally got it out of the way, so c’mon!”

Tossing the now-useless scattergun to the side, I scrambled around for the revolvers that’d been knocked out of my hands earlier. They were a bit more important than the girl was, after all. When I squeezed through the gap in the rubble she’d made for me, she grabbed me and nearly pushed me down as she tried to speed me up.

When I looked down at the end of the causeway, I could see why. A huge pile of rubble lay further up ahead, easy to climb up, being composed of the upper floor and bits of the roof. At the top of the debris was a hole in the wall, and a way outside. With her practically dragging me along, we sprinted for it.

I found myself thinking about how hellish it must have been trying to get through that wall of rubble behind us. It was a miracle that the girl was still in one piece and had everything. A part of me could easily see myself losing my hat after doing that, not noticing until now, and then demanding we go back and get it. Of course, nobody was that dumb, and—

“Oh fuck, we gotta go back! My bandana!” she shouted, grabbing me and dragging me to a halt.

I stood corrected. Goddammit, I hated when that happened. Why did I always have to be wrong about everything? Let me guess: her bandana was some sort of priceless heirloom or precious memory-related treasure, and there was no way that she’d go on without it, and so I had no choice, so I might as well just agree and go back now.

“You don’t understand, Gunslinger!” she pleaded. “It-it means more to me than anything!”

Goddammit, why did I always have to be right?

Without asking, I spun around and sprinted back the other way, trying not to cough, the once-pierced lung still as fussy as a cat soaked in barbeque sauce. I could see a strand of red in the little slit wherethrough my companion had slipped under the wall of debris. The only way to get it would likely be to hop around to the other side of the wall and fish around for it. I’d say something here about the universe hating me, but, to quote a local saying, that would just be beating a dead horse.

She was at my heels as I jumped through the gap in the rubble wall, which meant she got a first-class view when someone hiding behind the wall reached out and grabbed me. This wasn’t any sort of normal grab, either, no; the robed man’s fingers went into my eyeless socket, curling around and digging into the wall of my eye cavity with two fingers, a third pressing into the deep gash beneath my eye. The sudden eruption of pain combined with the force of his tug and speedy maneuvering knocked me to the ground.

My companion might have done something about it had not a warhammer from some other bloke hiding behind the wall smashed into her breastplate, clotheslining her to the ground. Before she could even choke out a scream, he had a boot pressing down on her throat.

Quicker than greased lightning, the robed man with his fingers in my eye reached down to my belt, and I was convinced that this man was somehow, like, Cherry Berry’s father or something. Because that wouldn’t actually surprise me at this point. But instead, mercifully, he only grabbed one of my guns—the one with actual bullets therein, no less.

With a smile on his face revealing black teeth, because black was black was black was black to these people, he cocked back the hammer of the gun as shoved the pointed into my eye until it reached and pressed into the back of the socket. He whispered to me in a warm, friendly voice that was a dead ringer for Cherry Berry with a penis:

“Do you feel lucky, friend?”

|— ☩ —|

With all the grace of a fat man in water wings, I was thrown to the ground. As I rolled to a stop, I heard the sound of my revolver being manually decocked, and felt it thrown at me. From here at the floor of the atrium, the ceiling looked like it was about ready to fall down and bury me. The farthest edges of my peripheral vision were taken up by the boots of the Blackguard.

When I looked down at the revolver that’d been tossed back at me, the robed man said, “You came to the wrong neighborhood, pup.”

Whereto I replied, “Yes, well, I’m a member of the local homeowner’s association, and I’ll lobby the local government to create laws that will mildly inconvenience you.”

He barked a coarse species of laughter at about the same time as I realized that I had my guns and could use them. Grabbing both guns, I leapt to my feet, mindful of the agony my shoulder was in. I was pretty sure that slamming your shoulder into the wall was not how any sane doctor would recommend fixing dislocated limbs, and I was pretty sure it was reattached incorrectly. The inside of the socket felt like it was made of sandpaper.

Holding a gun in each hand, I realized just how stupid this was. How the hell could I aim with two guns at once? And for that matter, I still had to reload one of the guns. But, it didn’t really matter to me. I’d chewn my arm off to get out of bad situations before; I was sure I’d find a way out of this. Still, and though I’d never pretend to know much math, but assuming every single bullet of mine that the Blue-Eyed Lady had given me hit and killed a man here, I wouldn’t have nearly enough ammunition to kill them all.

Why did there have to be so many of them surrounding me? Why couldn’t I have been attacked by, like, an army of toddlers whom I could just walk across, but then angst about later because I’d’ve inevitably ended up hurting those kids? That would have been fine.

Looking over, I saw the man with a warhammer slung over his back holding onto the Warden’s Hand. Her eyes seemed gaunt, her pale skin ghostly, and there was still sweat on her brow. The man who held her was pretty much fondling her bosom, the way he was holding her, and the girl looked about ready to vomit again from the way he touched her. But, at least the brute had been nice enough to fetch her bandana and put it back around her neck, so even though he was probably a rapist, he wasn’t all that bad. Still had to die horribly, though.

“Oh, what are you gonna do?” the robed man asked me, smiling as I turned my attention back to him.

“Well, I’m not going to lie: the thought did cross my mind.”

“And?”

“And it’s a pretty terrible plan, I admit.” I gestured my guns to the crowd of Blackguard forming a large circle around me. “The moment I open fire, about a few hundred morons are going to rush me from all angles.” With a shrug, I pointed my guns back at the man. “How many people are here? Mayhap two-hundred?”

“Two-hundred-twenty-four,” he assured me. “It was about two-hundred-fifty, but you seemed to have taken a weed whacker to the ranks of our chapterhouse. I doubt that the Blood Knights chapter of the Blackguard will ever fully recover. You even killed our leader, Brother Maximus, and his scattergun will be missed, now that there is no more ammo.”

I smiled at him as I reloaded my empty gun with just the one hand, eliciting few startled responses from the so-called Blood Knights Blackguard. “So, it’s just one little old me versus a full two-twenty-four of you? Well now, that just seems like an unfair fight.” I cocked my revolvers. “For you.”

A woman laughed from behind me, and I spun to face her. The Blood Knights of that side of the circle had pulled back, creating a little alley between me and the white tree whereto the naked girl was tied. “Spoken like a true gunslinger of yore,” the woman in the plague mask said, holding a burning torch up in one hand. “More belike nar a rhonin.”

“I don’t understand a thing you just said, witch,” I spat, “but I’m pretty sure you were hitting on me. And while I appreciate the thought, I’m not exactly in the market right now for dames that are keen on setting other dames aflame.”

She let out another laugh. “You are an amusing sort, are we not? Sadly for you, your cards have been dealt, and you have been chosen, ye Fool.”

A stern look on my face, I said to her plainly, “You had me at hello.”

“But… I never said ‘hello’.”

“Which explains why you don’t have me at all,” I replied in a terse voice.

She stared at me through her plague mask as she slowly walked towards me, the light of her torch flicking off her black robes. The woman never flinched as I kept my aim on her head; in fact, when she approached me, she willingly stepped up and pressed her eye into my gun. “You are going to put your guns away. You are going to take this torch. And you are going to set fire to our sacrificial lamb upon the tree.”

“I’m not partial to lamb meat. Mayhap if she were some kind of deer, I’d consent, because venison is kind of tasty, but lamb? Not a chance.”

“Joke as you will, the cards picked you. Fate chooses you for this; there can be no disagreement. You have no choice.”

“We Teutsche don’t believe in fate and destiny; they are the false musings of those too weak to see the world on their own. There’s always a choice, witch.”

She said nothing, just held the torch up for me.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” I said.

The witch tilted her head, and the Warden’s Hand suddenly cried out. Holding onto her, the man was squeezing and fondling her hard. “Gunslinger, I’m sorry! This is all my fault!”

“Simple,” the witch went on in a plain tone: “consent and burn our lamb of your own volition, or see your companion violated, then watch it happen to yourself, followed by getting to die horribly together. I understand there’s a woman here who’s always wanted to fuck a man in the eye, and your lack of one would surely please her.”

I held eye contact with her, or as best I could, seeing as how her eyes were covered by that mask. There was always choice: I could shoot her dead and try to kill as many Blackguard as possible before I died, or I could take the torch and burn to death a girl I didn’t know. Those were the obvious first choices, but there are always third, fourth, and often fifth choices, such as taking the torch and using it to set the witch aflame, or shooting my companion in the head so that they couldn’t harm her before going for a last stand myself. Although, in truth, I wondered what they’d do if I stripped naked and screamed a lot while rolling around the floor. That actually seemed like a good option now.

“Don’t you touch me there, you fuck!” my companion yelled, and I could hear her struggling.

“And if you play nice,” the woman before me said, “I promise you, you both shall live this day, absolved of your sins against the one truth faith. It shall be worth your while, for we couldn’t do away with those given unto us by destiny.”

“You just used the passive voice, which is inherently less powerful than the active voice,” I said. “You bitch.”

She never stopped looking into me.

Under her gaze, and with the sounds of my companion struggling and fighting in vain behind me, I holstered my guns. I swore that I felt her smile as I snatched the torch from her hand.

It felt dirty to hold, its heat washing over me as I walked towards the tree. I ended up standing by the ruined popcorn cart near the tree’s base as I looked up at the girl. Weakly, she turned her head to look at me, her eyes cried out as she muttered a dull whimper.

“Sóc una perdrera…” I heard her whisper.

The robed man from earlier came up beside me with an odd little bucket. He reached into the popcorn cart and gathered up a bunch of rather fresh-looking popcorn. “You can have some when she’s burning,” he said, and shoveled the food into his maw.

Looking behind me, I caught my companion’s eye. She bit her lip, then hung her head limply, not offering any protest to either me or the man holding her. So that brought me back to the sacrificial lamb.

“Es tut mir leid,” I said to the girl, and I set the torch forwards. The tree’s base and then the tree itself caught fire almost immediately.

The girl screamed bloody murder as the flames licked her feet, and she kept screaming when the fire consumed her whole body, screams which pierced my very soul and rang in my very core even when she paused to breathe in more air for another scream. Her roasting flesh split and crackled open like a hotdog over a fire, and it gave off a sickly-sweet aroma as the white flesh went to pink to red to black, as layer after layer was charred off, revealing new layers for the inferno to burn off until I was watching her very muscles undulate and sizzle as they seared. Her eyes became like hard-boiled eggs before they popped under the immense heat. She never stopped screaming, not until her internal organs had lost their muscle and her open wounds had wept out all her internal fluids into the fire, wherein they sizzled and turned to steam.

All of it was my fault, I kept thinking, watching it all with a blank look on my face. Every single second of her agony was because of me, because that was the choice I’d made. Arms crossed, I made eye contact with her until she had no more eyes, just thinking that over and over. A pang of regret gripped me in that moment, but then again, I got a lot of those these days; where was the harm in just one more little regret? Just another to toss onto the pile and burn with others, just like the girl herself.

Really, the one good thing about this was that the popcorn my neighbor offered me was actually pretty good. Totally worth going for seconds as the girl screamed herself to death.

When it was almost over, I didn’t know how long of a time it was, I turned around to see all the Blackguard down on one knee, hands clasps before their foreheads in prayer. My neighbor was amongst them.

I heard a person coming up from beside me. And before I could turn around, I heard the witch’s voice whispering calmly into my ear fourteen words that changed everything.

“I know who you are, Marked of Kane, and the angel sends his regards.”

Author's Note

Footnote: level up!

New skill unlocked: Guns

New Perk: Gunslinger — Do you know what’s cooler than one badass revolvers? Two badass revolvers! Do you know what’s pretty much impossible? Accurately using two revolvers at once! With this perk, however, you can say “screw you, reality” and accurately wield a revolver in each hand like a true gunslinger. Requires 50 in Guns or 30 with the Bladeslinger/Spellslinger/Sherwood Archer perk.

Companion Perk Added: Hand in Hand — Even after having her already broken life destroyed and dealing with alcoholism, the Warden’s Hand is probably one of the two brightest minds serving under the Warden, which isn’t exactly saying much when the other brightest mind belongs to a twelve-year-old girl. Her keen eye for telling when the Warden’s gone off on a tangent and for finding ways to make him stop rambling about the Squirrel Knights gives you a +1 to perception. Also, her only friend may be that aforementioned small girl, who taught the Hand much. This somehow gives you both +10% critical hit damage. Hooray for small children being raised by terrible adoptive parents who murdered their original parents!

30% to next level.

[Well, here’s a chapter that took two weeks to write. I’d like to say here that, despite this story’s emphasis on comedy and being funny about rather grim things, I hope this chapter does show one truth about our narrator himself, who is still just a normal bloke for the most part: that he is still an unrepentant badass, and don’t you forget that.]

Chapter 29 — Black

Chapter 29: Black

“I would stroll through the gala, and everyone would wonder, ‘Who is that mysterious mare?’”

Stitches.

“Y’know,” the owl-like man with the off-white surgical mask said to me, “most folker seem to get like babies when they need shots or get threaded.”

I only looked at the man with my one eye, gritting my teeth as he worked. “I’m not like most folks,” I said to him. “Most folks would probably cringe at the idea of a doctor working for a bunch of murderers and rapists and wearing dirty scrubs sewing up their eye with a doubtlessly dirty needle. I’m only half sure you’re sewing the correct eye up, really. Also, I’m pretty sure that you never went to an accredited medical school.”

The doctor finished his work, not being gentle as he finished the stitches. “Well, I’m sorry we don’t have access to much medical alcohol.”

“And I’m going to be sorry when I get lockjaw,” I said dryly, my ass feeling sore from sitting on this rusty examination table.

He put his hands on his hip. “Hey, you trying doing your best in my shoes; I’m a damn dentist.”

“Great,” I replied, looking around at the faded baby-shit-green walls of this dimly lit square room, “and I suppose you’re also all for open-heart dentistry?”

“Well, there was that one time I did something like that,” he said a bit sheepishly. “There was kind of a reason they took my license away before Olympia fell.” The owl-looking man adjusted his glasses. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for some of those mystical medicines from the Rike, back where you must be from.”

“Meaning the extract of the Doktorkäfer and the Balsam von Gilead.”

He twirled around. “Yes, yes, that. The Balm of Gilead. What I wouldn’t do for a super healing drug that wouldn’t kill you nar as soon as save you. Ah, I once saw it in action, the Balm of Gilead; man’s leg was nearly cut off, and nar a bit of that stuff had him right as rain. Of course, this was erstwhile, when I served under General Black Jack Parishioner.”

I cocked a brow as I stood up, putting my shirt back on. I’d taken it off because the doctor here had no anesthesia or painkillers—feeling pain, it seemed, was currently highly in-season around Blackgard—and getting blood on my shirt was not on my agenda. Nor was burning a woman alive and then getting taken to a back-alley dentist-come-surgeon, for that matter, but the universe seemed keen on giving me tetanus today.

“You were a Carolean?” I asked, putting on my eyepatch. “How’d you end up here, then?”

The doctor gave me a weird grin. “Well, let’s nar say that there’s a reason the good general only has one eye now instead of the two he woke up with that fateful morning.”

“Riiight,” I replied, slipping on my holsters and gunbelts. “And just when can I see that witch? She told me she wanted to see me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be too eager over her,” the doctor said. “Between you and me, I hate that way she looks at me; it’s the look of particularly ambitious proctologist with obsessive compulsive disorder.”

“I was literally just thinking that exact phrase,” I said, crossing my arms. “Stop reading my mind, you damn dirty psyker.”

He snorted. “Dude, it’s common reaction to her when folker see her. I swear to the Founding Fathers, one moment she has these demure little womanly fingers, the next moment she’s wringing her hands together with the world’s longest fingers, and that’s always when she has that obsessive-compulsive proctologist look about her, like she wants to stick her world’s longest fingers up your ass and check for drugs.”

I was struck with the mental image of a butterfly’s wound-up tongue, and before that thought could get any further, someone knocked on the door. Thank God. That last thing I wanted to do was to think about was a butterfly’s tongue in my—oh goddammit, I thought about it!

The doctor motioned his head to the door, and I dutifully went with it, walking slightly stiff-legged, still reeling from that horrific thought. The Warden’s Hand was on the other side of the door, the hallway beyond her the off-baby-blue color of a pediatrician’s office, if that pediatrician was a pedophile who positively lived for the old “turn your head and cough” routine, which explained why it looked so decrepit.

“Um, hi,” she said. “Been wandering where they’ve let me wander after I got patched up.” She tugged at her bandana. “Turns out they’ve built a literal blood fountain, even saw a few kids splashing around in it. Can’t imagine how much hepatitis they must have.”

“Faith keeps the illness away,” came a gruff voice to her side. I leaned to the side to see a bulky Blackguard standing there, warhammer slung across his back. “Through faith, we are strong, kept righteous. The contrary opinion is the prattle of profligatory heathens.”

“Yes, and with the power of miracle prayer,” I said in a voice like a deranged mother trying to drown her kids in a soup can, “you too can banish the demons that infect you and cure all wounds, mayhap even rid yourself of that rod so firmly lodged in your ass.”

The man grunted. “I’ll be sure to ask the Old Ones about that when I reach High Haven. As for now, you are healed. You will follow me. Deviate from this course and you will die. Painfully.”

A strange urge gripped me. I raised a hand and opened and closed it in a manner that pantomimed a talking mouth. “Ooh, look at me. I’m a big strong man with a hammer who enjoys groping females smaller than him.” Dropping the hand, I stepped up to the man. This close to him, he had to look up to meet my gaze. “Rest assured, for I will thee kill.”

He looked back up at me, unflinching. “You may offer to fight me like a man in honorable combat after this day, for the priestess wishes your presence. When that day comes, we may duel over who goes to High Haven first.”

I snorted. “Such a thing do I doubt. Best outcome for you is that my mortal coil is ended and I end up feasting in the halls of Walhalla with my forefathers. Although, I doubt that there is any Heaven for the likes of me”

The man rolled his eyes and he walked past me, gesturing for us to follow like cattle stuck in a frat house. The Warden’s Hand and I followed him in silence, my eye never touching her. I was becoming slowly surer and surer that this had actually been some sort of school at one point, especially when we came across the lockers. In one of them, there was a skeleton with glasses and a poindexter shirt stuffed thereinto.

When I saw that poindexter dead, I went off the path and up to the body. “Nerd!” I hissed quietly, taking his glasses and throwing them down the hall. After that, I went back to following the man. “This place seems fairly intact, compared to everything else,” I observed.

“It should,” the man said in a tone like a warthog trying to copulate with a rusty can with jagged edges. “House Skybane, descendants of Geremiah the Great and the true heirs to Evesland, placed a high priority on public education and the safety of our children. All schools were built as if they were shelters, and most all schools still stand because of that. When the sky fell that day, many people crowded into schools, and those many people often survived with only minor injuries.”

Were I a commander, like General Eisenhauer or Falkenhausen, the knowledge that people were crowding in schools would have simply meant that the artillery, die Haubitze, should be told to concentrate nerve gas attacks on the schools for maximum civilian casualties. If the enemy didn’t have any civilians to operate the factories and provide new troopers, the enemy war machine collapsed. Nothing wrong with mass nerve gas attacks on populated civilian centers, therefore.

As we passed through a set of doors and into an outdoor courtyard with a hugely overgrown oak tree, the Warden’s hand spoke up. “I’m sorry, Gunslinger. This is all my fault.”

I merely put a hand on her shoulder, saying nothing. Honestly, though, her phrasing was more pleasant than mine. And I sure wasn’t going to try to disagree with her and attempt to convince her it was all my fault.

“You’re… handing this much better than me, too.” She tilted her head slightly. “I’m a bit jealous, y’know?”

“Well,” I said slowly, calmly, “it wasn’t the first time I burned a girl at the stake.” The Hand said nothing, just looked at me. “But, I will admit, this was the first time the hoo—er, the hand that lit the flame was mine and mine alone.” When I saw the question bubble frothily to her eyes and then move to her lips, I answered before she could ask. “Back in the Reich, I worked for the Reichskriminalamt. I worked alternatively on investigating supernatural incidents and hunting down the worst of the worst, such as serial killers, serial rapists, and witches.”

I flashed her a distant smile. “You know, I still fondly recall the time that my then-girlfriend knocked on my door and wanted to stay the night—she was having some sort of trouble at home—and when I let her in, she saw what I’d been doing. That is to say… well… imagine just walking into the house of your lover, probably expecting to be welcomed open-armed and probably intercourse, and instead you find him half-naked surrounded by pictures of brutally mutilated dead girls whose murders he’s trying to solve.” With a chuckle, I shook my head. “I was fairly adroit at getting into the mind of a serial killer, they said.”

“I… I’d heard that Toitschers burned witches and stuff, and I’d just assumed that it was nar a myth. Even when the Confessionist converts in the coastal cities tried to burn that girl the other week, I figured that they had bought so much into the myths that they’d made fiction into fact.”

“Nope,” I chirped, looking up at the greatly overgrown tree as we passed under its canopy. “We’re all for burning witches. As the prophet said: ‘The way of the spell is dangerous. Only through the mind can one hold holy the world. He who has forgotten this has forgotten this truth the face of his Father.’” I adjusted my hat. “This is the zweite Säule des Konfessionismus, the second Pillar of Confessionism, as a the M—as the Woman Laurentia said. We interpret her words to mean we have to kill those who used magic, instead of, say, simply using it with caution.” I shrugged. “I once read a book that suggested that the Woman Laurentia had preached cautious control over magic and was herself a powerful mage, and so I was just making fun of… eh… never mind.”

“Right, right,” she said as we went through a set of doors and back into the school. In this part of the school, there were actual people wandering about. Blackguards moving around from classes, even one class filled with children being taught what I could only presume was math, since math was the most evil of studies. After a Blackguard woman holding a small child in her arms walked by us, the Warden’s Hand swallowed.

“It was my mother’s,” she let slip.

I glanced over at her, watching a toddling little thing flail around at a rubber ball nearly as big as it. “Your bandana, I take it?” The toddling thing fell onto the rubber ball with weirdly stiff articulation, like a porcelain baby ball. It made my skin crawl to watch.

She nodded. “It’s all I have left of her. I couldn’t leave it back there.” She looked around with a slight grimace on her face. “A few years ago, the Blackguard raided a part of New Pegasus—this was nar before the Warden showed up. They…” She took a long, hard breath. “They took my mother away from me and nearly killed me. I managed to get away only because I stabbed one of them in the neck and ran.”

“And so your dear mammy is dead, I take it.”

She jerked to her to me. “Mammy? How did you…?”

“Is this not how she sometimes referred to herself in her dialect?”

“It is, but—”

“In any case, she’s dead, correct?”

“No, not dead. Worse. She’s a ‘divine helper’ of the Blackguard. A slave. Forced labor. Honestly… I only tagged along because… I dunno. Something about you feels kinda familiar, you know? I just have this feeling like I can trust you, that you’re the only one who can save my mother. It’s stupid, it doesn’t make any sense, it’s illogical, but, well, so is a legendary gunslinger straight out of the storybooks my mother read to me practically falling into my lap and willing to be the chivalrous hero all little girls dream of.”

After a moment, she said in a softer voice, “At this point in my life, when a knight in dusty coat comes along, I’m just desperate enough to think he can right what went wrong and get her back.” She sighed, looking away from me. “After Dad died when Olympia fell, she’s the only family I have left. I… I just wanted to be right there to embrace her and be embraced by her when you inevitably free the slaves.”

The man ahead of us snorted. “Divine helpers work and die for the legacy of the Old Ones. We should all be so lucky to die building something.”

“Bullshit!” she spat.

“Were your mother lucky, she would be dead and ascended into High Haven. The Old Ones were kind like that. Imagine, being sent to High Haven for the one good thing she did in life, for she clearly did no good raising you.”

The woman’s eyes erupted with fire. “Oh, you son of a whore!” she barked, raising a fist to the man. “You do not talk about about my mother like that!”

Before she could hit him, I grabbed her wrist. She struggled uselessly against my unrelenting grip, like a seagull caught in the mouth of a very hungry pelican. The woman grunted and ordered, “Let me go! Dammit! Let me go!” Struggling for her right fist, her eyes darted around before her left fist made best friends with my cheek.

As my head twisted from the blow, she suddenly stopped struggling, becoming as still as the weird toddling child who was still lying on the ground by his ball and who I was pretty sure was dead.

Slowly—purely for dramatic effect, I admit—I turned my head back to and the horrified expression she now wore. “Do you feel better now, girl?” I asked in a calm voice, and she failed to respond. “He just wishes to invoke your ire. Indulge him not; you only satiate his will.”

“Your man is much smarter than you are,” the Blackguard said with a lopsided grin that just made me want to jam my thumbs into his eyes and give him a scar on his cheek in the shape of a banana.

“The Gunslinger speaks true, at least,” came the voice of the witch. We all turned to see the woman in black and her plague mask. “Brother Boethias, let them alone. They are now under my watch.”

Boethias, as I supposed was his name, briefly knelt down and said “Yes, ma’am” before walking off to wherever girl-groping guys with giant gavels slung over their back went off. Probably to do something manly to prove that his warhammer wasn’t just there for overcompensation. That kind of overcompensation was the exact reason why I always preferred smaller weapons to bigger ones.

The witch gestured to the door behind her. “If you would step into my office, lady and gentleman.” After a moment’s hesitation, the Warden’s Hand walked into the office. When I didn’t move, just stood there with fists balled, the witch chuckled warmly. “Come then, Gunslinger, let us hold palaver within. Don’t tarry. I will at least be brief.”

“Yes,” I said with a hint of sarcastic smarminess, “let us hold palaver—whatever that means—with a dark lady in a post-apocalyptic high school principal’s office in a world whose Ragnarök, I am starting to suspect, was caused either by cupholders, mimes, or French maids.”

“More like our end was when Elkington took out all the members of the royal house of Olympia, brought them before Olympia's citizens, and brutally had each royal family member beaten to death. All members of the ancient Skybane family died that day,” she replied evenly. “They saved the King for last. Elkington put a burning cigar out in the king’s eye before the dear King Elkington personally beat him to death for all to see that he was superior. Some say it was with his own fists. Others claim Elkington beat King Hawke to death with his own rubber ducky just to prove some obscure point.”

Doing some ridiculous to prove an obscure point? Yep. Totally sounds like the Elkington I know and love. Not so much the “to death” part, though, but whatever.

“Ah, and there’s no asking for a plea bargain when the crime is regicide, I take it?” I shook my head. “No, I think this whole world’s problem runs deeper.”

“And therefore did the angel mark you as his own, Gunslinger,” she remarked.

Sighing, I stepped into the dingy room, found a chair in front of the desk, and sat down. The Hand had the chair next to mine, and it looked more comfortable. Dammit, the witch was right when she told me I shouldn’t have tarried!

“You know,” I said as the witch took a chair on the far side of the desk, “I can’t help but get the weird feeling that this entire future conversation would be much easier if we all stripped down to our undergarments and discussed it as we had a pillow fight.”

“I’ve never had a pillow fight,” the Warden’s Hand said, and I flinched back from her.

“You’ve never had a pillow fight? Egads! Quickly, witch, let us shun her, forever leaving her to dwell in the shame of having never gotten mostly naked and beat someone else with a soft object.” I relaxed my posture as I put a finger to my chin. “Only, my pillows were always filled with spoons and knives, so I’m not sure my pillow fights counted as pillow fights proper or as attempted murder.”

“Right,” the witch said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “So, I said I would be brief, and so shall I be.”

“She said,” I added under my breath, “before launching into a three-hour rant about her disdain for the rising prices of dairy products.”

“I want you to help me kill the Black Man.”

I blinked. “Well, talk about an unforeseen plot twist. What’s the catch? You want to put his eviler, rapey-er son in charge?”

“No. I solely wish to be rid of that crazy bastard, as would the rest of the Blood Knights and a fair few other chapterhouses. Not enough to form the majority, even though the Blood Knights are biggest chapter.” She leaned back, folding her hands together, fingers interlocking. “The Black Man is mad if he thinks that detonating the Cœur is the way into High Haven. We let the gift be destroyed; there is no way they would reward the Skyborn’s failure to protect this gift from Elkington. So, we want you to help me take over the Blackguard, bringing peace to this war-ravaged city for once.”

“Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting to transpire here at all,” I said.

“And what did you expect?” she asked coolly.

I shrugged. “Honestly, I expected something to the effect of, ‘I wish for you to visit the shrine of the patron saint of dodecahedrons, pray to him for guidance on how to attach a Flammenwerfer to a knife, challenge the dwarven king to a game of basketball, and then bring me the secrets on how to acquire and use a pair of boobs +1.’ You know, standard affairs.” If something is important to a culture, they tend to have many words to describe. And it seemed as if I was learning a new slang term for those sacks of fat on a woman’s chest every hour, so many that I had to start keeping a cheat sheet in a pocket listing all the accepted slang terms for them for ease of reference. Honestly, it was like everyone here was literally obsessed with them.

Honestly, if I thought about it, it wouldn’t have been hard to kill the Black Man. At least, it would’ve been if I hadn’t lost my ace in the hole. That is to say, my Plan A was to just send C into Blackgard and wait outside until the screams stopped. Although, on the other hand, knowing C as I did know, he’d probably go in there and teach them all the invaluable RPG character feat of Improved Tax Evasion—which was totally a thing, no matter how much my Spielmeister told me otherwise.

“Well,” the witch said, “I assure you that this is what I need you to do, why the angel sent you unto me.”

And so she launched onto an outline of the plan, a few maps, some timing, and other details that could have been much easier summed up in a single, if lengthy, sentence. Sneak into the heart of Blackgard, provide deathly distraction, help get the the rebels into Blackgard, then take out the Black Man myself. When I explained to her that her plan could have been summed up as thus, she dismissed my version as stupidly up to chance.

For no reason I could grasp as I sat there, eyes glazing over as I thought about how great some pancakes would be right about now, the witch excused herself, insisting that the Warden’s Hand leave the room with her, but for me to remain.

“Alright, girls, you two have fun,” I said in a distant voice. “But if my companion gets harmed, witch, I’ll bring all of you to a brutal death. Individually. And make you all watch as I do so one-by-one. Drowning, perhaps. Seems like a plan.” After some bickering on their parts, I was on my own, still rather phased out. I was at least pretty sure that the Hand would be fine.

As I was wondering about the witch, what her game was, and whether or not she was actually the Blue-Eyed Lady who haunted my visions, a voice from behind me said, “You know, she’s not me, right?”

I didn’t need to turn around to recognize the speaker. “What a coincidence. I was just thinking about you, Blue-Eyed Mare.”

“Well, in this world, it’s become disadvantageous to me to be here as a mare,” she said.

Slowly, I turned around. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, wearing a navy blue jacket belted at the waist above her faded denim trousers. Her blue eyes shone like sparklers set alit in the middle of a pile of nerve gas-killed children. “Howdy, Gunslinger, as people are calling you now.”

“Yay,” I said flatly. “Even my hallucinations call me that silly-sounding title. I don’t suppose you’re here for a reason, are you? I mean, I’d love to chat, but you’ve got business on your mind—I can see it in your eyes.”

“Oh, you can, can you?” she asked, raising a brow.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. When last I saw you, you were helping me up after that one crystal stallion nearly ripped my testicles off. Before that, you pushed me off a castle ledge into the sea on some imaginary word. Before that, you and the bedside in Caval and the swamp near Caval. By the bedside and in that castle, there seemed to be… personal interest in your eyes, not business.”

She poked her tongue into her cheek. “True, but can you blame a girl for keeping track of her investments?”

“I’m an investment? What kind?”

The woman waggled a finger at me. “Nuh-uh-uh—spoilers.”

“Yes, because my life is just a comicbook where knowing the upcoming plot ruins all the twists.”

She smiled in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was the kind of smile that many, many had seen last before they died, somehow I just knew that. And knowing it only made me want to stare into the smile longer. “Oh, no. If you know how it ends, there’s a fair chance you might hurt what’s in your best interests to leave unmolested. So, come on, have a heart and let it alone.”

“Ha,” I let ooze dryly from my mouth. “Me having a heart is like Cards having a shot at actually getting laid—things which belong in the realm of fantasy.”

She shrugged as she walked towards me, her steps slow, methodical, with purpose, like the flops of a walrus on the hunt for a penguin to eat. “Well, suffice it to say that you should really consider the witch’s quest and go slay the Black Man.”

“Oh? Who are you, my conscience?” I scoffed. “In case you forget, O conscience, when last we spoke, I beat you over the head with a rubber chicken named Bungles the Whiffled One. Do you forget? So, you get back in that coffin I buried you alive in, and you stay there, touching yourself and not bothering me.”

“Conscience?” She shook her head, putting a cold hand on my shoulder. The sensation said that hers were hands that had killed before, or mayhap hooves that had killed before. “I’m just the little voice egging you on today, mostly because I’m curious and want to see where this all goes, but also because I’m fairly certain there are a bunch of goodies to find up in Blackgard.”

“Hmm,” I grunted. “Honestly, I was probably going to go up there anyways. If I don’t kill enough bad guys every so often, I start getting the shakes.”

Except that you don’t.

Silence, heathen!

“So,” I went on, “I need to keep up killing evil-doers that I may keep hold onto my sanity. Besides, I still need to fully find a way to repair the Code. It’s held together by tape and colorful bits of string I stole from a seagull. Only by sacrificing unto it monsters may I stave back the monster within.”

She cocked her head as she sat down in the witch’s hair. “Oddly poetic of you.”

“I know. God, it sounds pretentious. I mean, wow. Now that I think about it, am I brooding?” I grabbed a potted plant on the witch’s desk and tossed it onto the ground. “There. No one can brood with a dying plant in the room. That’s a science fact.” I look up from the plant to the the woman as she fiddled with her belt. “Are you still here? Usually, the voices in my head vanish the moment something actually interesting happens.”

“Oh, I’m a voice in your head?” She unbuckled her belt. “Ah, dammit,” she murmured, and tried to fix it up to make it tighter than it had been.

“You know, unless this is about to turn into one of those really uncomfortable porn magazines with those hackneyed plots, I think you should go.” I glanced around. “I mean, you said the thing that my subconsciousness wanted to say, and if you loaf around here any longer, you’re probably going to end up living on my couch and eating all my potato chips. And the last thing I need is some good-for-nothing deadbeat hallucination eating all my potato chips again.”

“Good-for-nothing, huh?” she asked, stopping all work her belt. She punched the side of her fist into one the desk drawers before she opened it. And then she tossed some weird, gray-with-red-highlights—

“Is that some kind of Voixson?” I asked, leaning towards the woman.

“Well, I couldn’t say. Some good-for-nothing dead hallucination eating all your potato chips couldn’t ever likely find something so worthwhile as a Voixson, could she?”

Years of life with my old girlfriend had prepared me for this one moment. “I’m sorry I insulted you, I humbly request your forgiveness, and will buy you expensive flowers at some point in order to display my culture’s traditional token of apology and romance. Now, give me it.”

I reached forwards, but the Blue-Eyed Lady snatched it away, hugging it to her breast. “Nuh-uh-uh,” she said with a little pendular movement of the finger. With a pout, she went on with, “Your words were oh so mean, Fool, I don’t know if I could ever forgive you for them and give this to you.”

Signing, I facepalmed. “Look, I apologized. What more do you want, for me to get down on my knees and give you oral sex?” I leaned forwards even further. “You think I’m kidding? For these damn things that somehow get people to reveal their innermost thoughts where just anybody could reach them, I’d totally do it. I’m a slut for Voixsons. A dirty, dirty girl willing to prostitute himself for working Voixsons.”

She leaned back in the chair, a look of grave consideration on her face. It reminded me of the look of a stallion trying to decide whether or not she should spend his remaining week’s paycheck on food for his hungry children or to spend it on beer, and the beer was winning. Which was the exact moment when said stallion realizes that this money could also buy him a giant novelty rubber chicken he could use to finally beat his wife with again. Things hadn’t been the same for him ever since those anti-wifebeating laws had been passed.

“Wait, a dirty girl willing to prostitute himself?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Voixsons turn me into hermaphrodites as well. It’s a very terrible, terribly veritable disease. Now, are we going to have to do this the hard way as I cry all the way through while knowing I get my Voixson, or no?” I paused to think. “Although to be fair, I have no idea how the reproductive organs on werekindred even work, like if they can even perform and receive oral sex. I mean, yes, I think I overheard one bloke order me to blow him at one point, but for all I know, werekindred get off to people with bad breath blowing into their noses. And given that werekind females have those huge sacks of unpleasant fat upon their chests, I wouldn’t be surprised if the nose thing was the preferred form of quick intercourse to them. Sadly for you, I believe in oral hygiene, and pride myself on good, kissable breath at all hours.”

“You know, I might be willing to part with it on one condition that doesn’t involve you on your knees. A favor, yes, just not in the same vein as what you’re getting at.”

“I’m listening, ma’am.”

She set the Voixson down before me and told me what she wished of me before she vanished into the dark recesses of my mind.

|— ☩ —|

“The hour is come,” the witch’s voice crackled through the amusingly bad audio quality of the Voixson that I’d come to lust after so. “The angel spoke to me. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it: I just found little origami animals on my desk that, upon further inspection, turned out to be folded letters. Slowly, they encouraged me to write back, and so I left a letter. Now… now I know much, know how the Black Man is mad and unstable, know of the angel’s plan, and know that I wish to be a part of it. He will send to me the Marked One, and I will play my part with the Marked One. He told me of how to tell who the Marked One is, how he looks, how he shall come as a gunslinger. But until then, I will play my role as priestess of the Blood Knights. And on the day we sacrifice a virgin to the Old Ones, then come will he, the Marked of Kane.”

The recording crackled, and then she spoke again. “The newest letter states that no matter where I put this recording, the Marked One will find it. I have decided that since I can’t fight fate, I might as well just keep it here, then leave the Marked One alone in here to listen to for his pleasure. So, um… Salutations to you, Marked One. I presume that it was… will be… is… good to meet you.”

Once again it clicked. Now, I could hear distant violin music as she spoke. “Update. It’s been three months since the angel wrote to me, and I start to worry. The Black Man trusts me fully, and so long as I don’t look into the inky black wells of his eyes, I don’t think he’ll ever find out. He’s thankfully dense to what I have been doing these months. He told me he thinks that he will finally get the Cœur to go ‘supernova critical’ either today or tomorrow. The holiday virginal burning is a month away, but I’m going to jump the gun and burn the chosen girl today. Hopefully, I’ve not screwing this all up. Marked One, since you’re listening to this, I want you to know that I… I may have…” The recording crackled “…touched myself thinking of the day we’d meet, so I’ll probably be thinking of that when we do meet.”

A sudden wave of discomfort rose and fell under my skin, erupting into blooms of weird. Something about the idea of a girl thinking about the time she was fantasizing about me as she watched me burn a girl at the stake just did not sound pleasant. Like, as pleasant as using a live cobra for a condom.

Crackle and click. Yay me. Even more of this creepy thing. There came from the speaker a little giggle. “He came! He came! Oh, I, um—my, I’m nar so—ha! Everything worked perfectly!” The witch gave a girlish little squee. “Hey, so, um… Marked One—no, no, no, Gunslinger— just so you know for when you save the world and all, I… um, I’m totally single.”

It ended. There was only one problem. It had ended after “Everything worked perfectly”.

“Hello,” I squeaked up at the witch as she stood there on the far side of the room.

She smiled at me. My God, I could finally see her face as she held her plague mask in her hands. What’s worse, I had no idea how to arbitrarily judge her depending on whether or not she conformed to my rigid standards of beauty.

“Hello yourself, Gunslinger,” she purred back at me.

“Hello, Gunslinger.” After a second, I said, “See? He never responds to me, the jerk.”

She giggled. “Yhar, I can so see it.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “Oh, look, an audio device. I’ll just put this back where I found it before I bumped into your desk and it magically ended up on top of the desk where I listened thereto. There we go. Stay safe, strange device.” I stepped around the desk, the witch holding eye contact with me the whole while.

“Just remember what I said,” the witch encouraged with a wink.

I swallowed. “Right, so. I’ll just go down into the scary sewers underneath the streets on this flying city, sewers wherein I’m sure to catch dysentery and probably leprosy, then I’ll do the thing with the whatnot and kill the Black Man, okay?”

“Gotcha, Gunslinger.”

“Okay, then. I’m just going to scoot on past you and out the door. Have a nice day. Or night. Or whatever time of day it is. I can’t seem to remember.”

“Well, I’ll be thinking about you,” she purred as I slid past her. “Especially now that we finally got hot water once again running in the showers.”

Oh God, I did not want to know that!

The worst part of that wasn’t the mental image per se, no, but just what the mental image would look like. The worst part was that the more I looked at her, the more and more the look in her eyes reminded me of Cherry Berry. Either I got out of there right now, or she’d cuff me to a radiator, probably touch my genitals with her cold, feely hands, force me to look at her hall of horrors, then walk away with promises of returning soon with romantic candles or something.

I bowed my head slightly to her. “My lady, I regret to inform thee that I cannot engage in coitus. Cannot, not will not.” Before she could ask, and I could see the question on her face, I held up a hand to silence her. The image of my sword hacking a filly near in two filled my visions, as did the image of me killing all those other children, their parents… even that baby in its mother’s arms. “Would if I could, for thou art a lovely Frau, but I cannot. Because I’m so… unclean, my soul is ugly, covered in black growths and cancers from my sins.”

“In truth, dear Frau,” I spoke softly, “I serve the angel because I am a monster, and this is my penance. In accordance with the third Pillar of Confessionism, true penance is earned only through the shedding of blood and flesh freely for others.” I looked down at my boots. “I am a filthy, unclean sinner, dear lady, and I would not subject anything to the monster that I am unless I can wash away the innocent blood on my hands. I am no good man, ma’am, but I am the best that I can be. And if I am never redeemed for my sins… then I will never let it be said that I didn’t fight as hard as I could for redemption until that fight ground me back into the dust whence I came, until the days whens when it is my flesh consumed.”

Stiffening my muscles, I watched as the witch extended a hand, softly grabbed my chin, and pulled it down. I allowed my head to fall closer to her, and smiled. “Truly, I know now why you are the gunslinger, such chivalry and nobility to your twisted soul. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve the eyes of a corpse that’s too ferocious to ever acknowledge that it has died.” She closed her eyes. “And no matter what you do on your quest for penance, you only commit more sins, is that right?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “And I do so because I believe that maybe, just maybe, I can save the world and my soul. But if I can’t save my twisted soul, then I will at least know that for all my evil, for all the horrors I committed to protect the world, I will have martyred myself, content in the knowledge that my evil allowed the innocent to remain innocent, and made the wicked suffer.”

She smiled, opening her eyes. “That… I can see that too. You are kept alive and going purely by a sense of dark romance, the romantic notion that you can save people.”

“Yes.”

The witch reached her neck up and kissed my chin. “There is no man as noble as you in this world or any other, Gunslinger. Never forget that. Never forget that no matter what you do, whom you kill, you are still a good man, a better man that any who have come before you.”

She let my chin go, and demurely put her hands together, staring at me. Then she politely nodded for me to leave. But before I moved, she still said with a wink, “I’ll still be thinking of you in the shower.”

Hastily, I stepped around the corner, found the door, opened and ducked through it, and was finally outside in the commons. Taking a breath, I wiped the sweat off my brow. Well, aside from her still doing… that, that plan actually worked.

And how much of it did you honestly believe?

Enough so that I didn’t technically spew out pure bullshit.

Just a frothy mixture containing both bullshit and truth, then?

Over in a corner of the large commons, in a place that appeared to be a raised cafeteria partially in its own room, I saw the Warden’s Hand wave to me.

Like a beaver eager to exploit his underpaid sweatshop slave children, I trotted over to her, thinking of the request the Blue-Eyed Lady had spoken to me of because it was anything but thinking about the witch taking a shower. As I stepped up the few steps and into the large cafeteria, everything became quiet. There had been mothers with children, lovers together, folks attempting to find mates, people arguing and loudly ordering food, glasses clattering, and forks and knives clanking upon plates. Hell, there’d even been a crying baby who was now silently leering at me. Now that I stood here, everyone seemed to forget what they’d been doing and were looking at me as if I could all remind them how eating food was generally good to one’s wellbeing.

Slowly, I raised a hand to my hat’s visor, tugged thereon with that wanderer’s greeting, and said, “Servus, Männer und Frauen dieses Platzes.” I looked over to the Hand. “Lady, we are to leave this place and prepare for what the witch asked of us.” I glanced around. “Actually, what are you doing over here?”

The Hand pointed over to an empty table with a tray of food thereupon. “You were in so long that I decided to have a bite to eat. I even picked you up something, and as soon as I sit down to eat, I spy you slinking out of the witch’s office. Seriously, what were you doing in there?”

“Offering the voices in my head oral sex in exchange for a Voixson,” I said at a mile a minute.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” I replied, shrugging. God, shrugging with these shoulder was totally different than the old ones I’d had as a pony. Then it occurred to me that eating food was probably a good thing, since I did sort of need it in order to use healing items without dying. The only thing was that everyone was still staring at me. “Stop leering creepily at me—God curse your fathers’ faces!”

And they did, for what it was worth, all pretending not to stare at me as they tried to eat. I grabbed my companion by the hand and dragged her over to her table, saying, “I should eat lest I die out there.”

As we ate, I could hear a livebox somewhere that was playing music. The song died out as I shoveled an unappealing, duck-tasting, sludge-like vegetable into my mouth. Soon, off in the distance, I could hear the voice of Big Bag-a-Wolf from that hidden livebox. “A little bird came to me today from the city of New Pegasus, where folks are saying a storybook character’s been seen, a living legend straight from Geremiah’s court come to save the world: a real-life gunslinger, dual revolvers and all. They say he’s taller than a tree, scarier than sin, and’s a Toitscher of all things. Now, I don’t know if those rumors are true, but I hope they are. With all the terrible shit that’s been going on these days, what the world really needs is just one last gunslinger to set things right.

“This has been a Livebox Free Evesland news update with me, your host, Big Bag-a-Wolf. And now, back to the music!”

Well, I thought, that’s the story of how I saved the holidays, started my heroic legend, and ruined a family all in the same day. After that thought, I finished eating and readied myself for killing the Black Man.

|— ☩ —|

I curled into a ball on the cobblestone road as I crawled out of the manhole. “Oh God, tentacles don’t belong on a goat,” I whimpered as the Warden’s Hand covered the manhole back up.

“Why did that witch ever think,” my companion said through pantings, “that was a good idea?”

“Probably for the same reason she’s touching herself to me in the shower right now,” I replied, looking around at the ruinous piles of concrete surrounded the manhole. It was like we were sitting in the center of a tiny coliseum, only instead of being cool, it was utter shite. And there were no tiny gladiators to watch.

“Wait, what?” she asked, the bleating of the goat barely audible through the heavy steel manhole cover. Then she sniffed herself. “Oh, Founding Fathers, I smell like pee.”

“We just crawled through a sewer, dear girl,” I replied, scooting up to a large slab of stone. “Pray that you don’t catch at least seven disease that result in you becoming utterly unfornicatable for the rest of your life.”

“I don’t like that idea at all!”

I fiddled with my visor. Looking around, I was pretty sure that this was the super secret back entrance to Blackgard. Or maybe it was the local pharmacy. How the hell was I supposed to know? Everything in this city looked the same. Then I burst out with, “And I don’t like the prospect of a tentacle goat fondling my genitals, but that didn’t stop it, now did it?!” Rubbing my arms, I said quietly, “That didn’t follow the normal monster routine at all. When a monster has tentacles, it has to attack and almost rape the girl, and the guy is supposed to save her—not the entirely other way around.”

The Warden’s Hand, who’d been dusting herself off, paused. “Wait, are you saying that you wanted me to get violated by that thing back there?”

I looked up at her. “Um. Would you be willing to take a raincheck on that answer?”

“Oh, Fiddler play thee,” she spat, crossing her arms and glaring at me.

“Well, excuse me for not wanted to be sexed up against my will for the second time this week!”

“What?”

“And by God, if you tell me that all men are inherently slutty and can’t say no, I will throw my boot at you.” Groaning, I stood. “Now, can we get out of this bowl-like thing of concrete surrounding this manhole? I don’t want some giant to come by and pour his milk and sugar-frosted cereal all over me. I do not go well with sugar-frosted cereals.”

We made our way up the concrete embankment, me taking lead. I felt like a monkey, the way I made to move my body to climb up. Now, all I needed to do was eat ticks out of my companion’s hair and I’d be a proper ape. But, alas, werekindred probably had no more in common with apes than ponies did, so no climbing trees and crazy lesbian monkey sex for me.

When we reached the top, the Warden’s Hand gasped. “Oh my Fathers, we’re actually in Blackgard—look, there’s the slave quarters!”

I looked out. This place, it seemed, had once been a massive castle complex centered around a fat sort of tower with a fortress at its base. From the top to the tall tower shot up a weak blue beam of light. The Hand was pointing to a large series of barracks connected to each other in an area of the castle surrounded by tall steel fences. At this late but not entirely night hour, I could see enough, but that was hardly what I wanted. If only heat vision were thing.

“How can you tell it’s the slave quarters?” I asked.

“The sign says so.”

“Huh,” I said, looking at the large sign that read ‘Slave Quarters: A family friendly working environment—negative one days since last triple-homicide!’ I presumed that ‘negative ones days’ meant that someone was planning a triple-homicide for tomorrow. Nothing more family friendly that a premeditated triple murder. “By what crazy cliché did I possibly miss that? And, for that matter—hey, wait, where are you going?” I asked, watching her half-slide, half gallop down the hill of debris and towards the quarters.

“That’s where Mom is!” she called back.

“Stupid girl, this is not the plan!” I hiss, following down the embankment until she reached the backside of the nearest building. “We can rescue Mammy after we shoot and kill anyone who would doubtlessly shoot her dead, okay? If you save her now, the fact is that the world will deign to kill her now, whereas afterwards it would be cool with her freedom. Do you not know this, mare?!” I blinked.

Wrong word, stupid!

Before I could correct my final word, she spun around, her back against a wall, and stared slack-jawed at me. “Geremiah’s blood, Gunslinger, where did that come from?”

“Why are you looking at me like that? I was just chastising you for…” I tilted my head. “Is mare a terrible insult in your language?”

She blinked. “Yes!”

“Keep low your voice,” I hissed. “I have no idea who’s around here, and around this building is a road where there are probably Lords-only-knows how many Blackguard.” Then I said, “I am deeply sorry, ma’am. I did not know it was an insult.” In fact, I’m surprised it’s even a word at all in this world.

“Then why did you call me it?”

“Because, in reality, I’m not a man; I’m actually a very tiny, much cuter horse from another world,” I said with utter seriousness.

“What, like a pony?”

“Well, yes, pretty much,” I replied, pretty sure that her definition of the word was not at all like mine.

“I always wanted a pony,” the Warden’s Hand added with a shrug.

Pointing at her with a jabby finger, I said, “We can deal with the slavery of my tiny pony people later.”

“Because that makes sense,” she spoke dryly.

“Exactly. That’s why I called you a mare; I misspoke and used my own terminology.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “Did I also mention that I always wanted a unicorn?”

I rubbed my forehead. “Hey, after that bomb blew my horn off, I’ve been trying to become a unicorn again.”

“Oh.”

“Hmm.”

She leaned back against the wall and laughed like a banshee. “Oh man, that is the stupidest excuse for cussing a girl out that I have ever heard in all my years!”

I smirked. Sometimes the best lie was the truth. My hands went near my guns as I looked around to make sure no one was watching me or the laughing woman. Between the anthill-like debris wall leading to the tentacle goat’s manhole and me wasn’t much space. Further down, the rows of ruined-but-patched-up buildings went on, the windows on some of the building spewing out light like popping zits on a fat whale’s hairy back. Yes. A whale.

In that moment, I became aware of a distant sound of voices. Not in the sense of people speaking as they walked, but more akin to the sounds of people I’d heard back in the Blood Knights’ cafeteria. It seemed to be coming from down the rows of buildings. This in mind, I decided it was best to try to find a way to do the first thing the witch had wanted me to do, besides getting nearly raped by a tentacle goat: create a really big distraction by blowing some shit up so that the witch and her allies could quickly take everything over and defeat the loyalists before the loyalists even knew they were supposed to be the loyalists. I informed the Hand of the plan, and I was prepared. There was, according to the witch, only one place that would explode enough to cause a distraction and double as the signal, which was Blackgard’s armory. Of course, why the witch assumed that people would run towards an explosion was beyond me.

To get to the armory, we had to creep down this little back alley between a wall of broken concrete hill and these buildings, getting nearer and nearer to the sound of voices. The armory, which apparently had an entirely unreasonable amount of explosives therein, was off in that direction.

Creeping that way made the voices steadily grow louder and louder, loud enough that I could actually make out what they were saying and the context. According to the voices, the three-story building they were coming from was apparently Blackgard’s biggest, only(est) tavern which served cheap the best hooch in all Evesland. Of course, there was also a matter of the random song the entire tavern broke into as we passed.

“There is a bomb in Gilead

To make the wounded whole;

There is a bomb in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul.”

I reminded myself that this tavern would need to see a bomb itself; clearing out so many Blackguard at once over here with a bomb would be just dandy, like the feeling of burying several small animals up to their necks in beach sand and letting the tide come in and drown them. That was, for the record, the reason why the local zoo soon thereafter forbade me from ever again “borrowing” their elephants. Ah, early childhood.

“Damn Blackguard heathens,” the Hand muttered as we walked around past the back of the tavern. “Nothing ever good came from people who worshipped the Old Ones, and now look what those bastards have become. It’s sickening, y’know?”

“This cult isn’t new?” I asked, pausing to glance at her.

“No, of course not. Really old cult. Older than the worship of the great Founding Fathers.” She shook her head. “Thank the Fathers for Geremiah; if he hadn’t come around with the gunslingers of yore, the cult of the Old Ones might’ve come to dominate Evesland.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “According to the Glaubensbekenntnis des Konfessionismus, the first Pillar of Confessionism: ‘There is no God but God, His agent is the Machine Spirit, and His messenger is the Woman Laurentia.’ That is the Creed of Confessionism.”

“You mention your faith a lot,” she said as he passed another small alley between buildings, catches glimpses of the dimly light street through it. “I take it you’re a rather religious man, then?”

At this point, the wall of concrete ruin around the goat’s manhole was no longer creating a space between the back of the buildings. Here, there were only grassy lawns with some trees. I liked trees. Trees were nice. I had a pet tree once, but then I cut it down and turned it into a stake to kill a vampire.

“Mayhap in some regards,” I said, glancing around the trees here. More of the buildings around here than back whence we’d come were dilapidated, in ruinous states. In fact, the building here was one such structure, and it had three stories. And the window was clearly unlocked, which is why I had to break it open with a rock, reach my hand inside, and then lock it. I was a very compassionate, neighborly sort of guy like that. “I merely find the tenets of faith to be… a good backbone for trying to be normal. And although the fourth Pillar may preach tolerance, we shouldn’t dwell too much upon faith, lest I look like a zealot, which I’m not. I’m just well-versed in the reasons why my culture has the moral values it has.”

I jumped up and squeezed into the window, offering my companion a hand. We went up to the broken third floor, where I found a ladder to the roof. It was messy up here, but I could see things I hadn’t been able to see from the top of the concrete pile. Namely, the big sign illuminated by firelight which read, “Armory!” And then, under that: “Great steel to help you steal your meal from those under your heel! Ask us about our Wholesome Family Values discount package for the family looking to start their career in the Blackguard! Weapons and armor now available for boys and girls age three and up!”

“Well,” I said, “at least I now know where we’re going.”

|— ☩ —|

“Welcome, welcome!” the man with pink irises called out from behind his counter. The walls were covered in sets of armor, shields, and all manners of weapons meant to kill a man dead. Display racks forming aisles only added to the super assortment of all things deathly or to protect a body from meeting a deathly end.

“I told you this was a terrible idea,” the Hand said quietly to me. “Why the hell did we come in through the front door?”

But I ignored her. “Ah, hello, good fine gentleman sir fellow man.” I put a hand on my companion’s upper back and nudged her forwards to get her to walk through the store and up to the pink-eyed man’s counter.

The man looked us over, pausing at the Hand’s red bandana. “Hmm. Yinz must be new here to the Blackguard, right? Lookin’ to pick up some of our customary black bandanas, yhar?”

“Amongst a few other things,” I said with a smile. “We were looking into your Wholesome Family Values discount package.”

“Ah, you’re parents?”

I gave the Hand a knowing glance. “No, not yet. Expecting. We only just found out.” As I put a hand on her exposed stomach—stupid chainmail bikini!—the Hand gasped quietly, but she seemed to calm herself as I rubbed the exposed flesh. That calm seemed to completely die when I asked, “Would you like to feel?”

“Nah, but I thank ya,” he replied in a jaunty tone, even bouncing once or twice.

Putting my arm around my companion’s shoulder, I said, “So, since the missus and I are looking to start out a family in the Blackguard, we figured we should start here.”

The man paused, cocking a brow. “So, let me get this straight: fresh out of the vagina, you want to basically teach your little ones about wearing armor and killing folker?”

“Yep. Pretty much.”

“Why,” he exclaimed, his eyes downright sparkling and glittering like so many starts, “I’ve never seen such a commitment to wholesome family values before in all my years!” He pointed a bony finger at the Hand. “You, madam, have a superb taste in men! A man so unlike any I’ve ever seen, so tall and handsome and committed to raising his children as no man before him has been! Why, it’s enough to make me—oh, by the Old Ones, I am crying!” With a sniffle, he rubbed his eyes. “By all that is good, such beautiful and compassionate souls as yourself will surely have babies more beautiful than any child before—such a union of love as I have never seen, a commitment to all that is good in the world as nobody has before them!”

The man spun around like a ballerina before slamming his hands on the counter. “Why, for such folker as you, it would be a travesty—nay! A sin most depraved for me to charge you money for the things you need for your wholesome family-to-be! Take whatever you like, please, please!” He crouched down, then came back up with three black bandanas. “Here, for you, your gorgeous missus, and the baby-to-be.” He winked. “Armor, swords, axes, pikes, sharp bits of rock—anything at all, you nar name it and I’ll scrounge you up.”

“Do you have bullets?” I asked, and the man paused.

“Bullets? Now, there’s a request ya don’t get most any of all days.” He tilted his head. “What kind of bullets we talkin’ about here?”

“The kind for this,” I said, hitting a hand on my hip. The act pushed back part of my duster, revealing the revolver on my hip.

“Sonofa… That’s a real proper rapecannon, it is!”

“A… what now?”

“Yhar, y’know,” he said, staring and marveling at it, “a big ol’ gun of doom and destruction. A rapecannon, as ’twere.” He pulled out a pair of glasses and asked to see the weapon up close. After a moments hesitation, I unloaded the gun and handed it to him. The Warden’s Hand elbowed me, and I responded with an even harder elbow back at her.

“Yes, yes,” the man said, his pink eyes seeming to drink the gun in as he turned it over in his hands. “The craftsmanship in this weapon is beyond that of any firearms left by the elder Union,” he said. He poked his tongue into his cheek, a pensive look on his face. “It’s as if it’s directly of elder build. I’ve never quite seen its like.” He quinted, looking at the bullets in my bandolier. “You must be… royalty.”

“Beg your pardon,” I said dryly.

“Yes, yes. Such ornately respectable weaponry would only be found in the possession of royalty of the highest caliber, much like the legendary shattergun rifle hight Skybane, which the Black Man now wields, both a weapon of extreme potency and the symbolic crown of a kingdom.” His eyes narrowed. “Your skin, so brown. You are a Toitscher, no doubt. And with your wife, you’ll have lovingly interracial children. Yes, and you’ve a weapon more fit for a king than I have ever see. Hmm…” He tilted his head. “Thus, all this together, you must be… the Prince of Teutschland.”

“The day I ever wear a crown,” I scoffed.

“I admit, I know little of the Teutonic monarchy but for the legends of their enormous power, the comeliness of their line of kings, and the madness that runs in them which makes them as great as they are. “He gestured a pinkie finger at me. “And you have proud, noble features if ever I saw on a man’s countenance.”

“I have come to service the Old Ones and, by extension, the Blackguard,” I said in a calm, firm voice. “Ask not more of me than as much as I have offered. Now, the bullets.”

He set the down down on the counter. “I shall see what I have for you, Prince Gunslinger,” he said, and then vanished off into a back room whose only door was a black curtain.

“Is that true?” the Warden’s Hand asked. “I never noticed it until now, but… it all does kinda make sense. You’re a prince?”

I offered her a half-sneer, half-laugh. “Right, a prince of the most powerful state on this earth spends his days traveling the world, shooting bad guys, saving the day, and before that was a national agent for the Reichskriminalamt. Gee, if that’s all it takes to be a prince, sign me up.”

She gave her a vaguely harsh look. “You’re pointedly not denying it. Even I can see that.”

“Of course that’s what I’m doing; the entire notion is ridiculous. And last I checked, Pendergast wasn’t the last name I identified with,” I shot back.

“What even is your name?” she asked. “As your newly pregnant wife, don’t I at least get to know whose name replaced my maiden name?”

“Ah, yes, the classic marital symbol representing the ancient patriarchal roots of marriage—the changing of the last name to indicate property.” I smiled. “Although, in my personal opinion, females who don’t want to change their name fully when getting married are bitchy and unwilling to comply with social norms, but that’s their choice to make. It shouldn’t matter what your name is so long as you love each other.”

“That’s kinda sweet in a weird way,” she replied, glancing nervously between me and the curtain wherebehind was the pink-eyed arms dealer. “But just tell me your damn name already. Why are you trying to hide so much shit from me all of the sudden?”

“If you keep up that tone with me, woman—” I shook a fist at her “—I will punch you straight in the baby.”

“Well, fuck you too,” she spat.

“You’re pregnant; we already did that together.”

“In your dreams,” she scoffed.

“More like in yours,” I replied. The Hand seemed to fluster slightly as she stumbled for a counter; before she could, I explained, “Because I, for one, take care never to dream. It’s only a good night’s sleep for me if I do not dream.”

“Ah, here I come!” exclaimed the pink-eyed arms dealer, as he half-skipped out of the backroom, a small box in a hand. He set the box down on the counter. “Here, this came in today from the Drawers.”

If I had my pony ears still, they’d’ve perked up. According to the map King Elkington had given me, through the Drawers was the quickest way from the ruins of Olympia to Sleepy Oaks, and thus to where Stronghold was. Also, Cards was there, so there was that. Apparently, as the Tin Mare of Hoofington—assuming that epiphany I had earlier was correct—she wasn’t doing too good. Probably had caught an adorable case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder like a bitch.

“How many bullets?” I asked, but he just smiled at me like a bear smiles at a pile of salmon. “There’s more thereto, I take it?”

“Yhar, there are,” he said, probably in that way just so he could rhyme. “See this here?” he asked, pulling out a bullet from the box. There was something off about the tip of the bullet, a different color than the ones I had. These ones were orange-red with tiny off-white arrows on them. “These ’ns ain’t normal bullets. No, see the color and the arrows? That means they’re javelins bullets. Pinnacle of the Union’s gunmaking millennia ago, these things hit another thing, explode inwardly, letting the rest of the bullet into the wound. Oh, and that rest of the bullet, once inside the wound, explodes.”

I just stood there. “So, you’re telling me that it explodes.”

“Yhar.”

“And then explodes again.”

“Yhar.”

“Can it do that? Can it really explode twice?” I asked, standing nearly on the tips of my toes as I leaned forwards.

He nodded. “That is what I am saying,”

“Oh my goodness,” I said woozily, knees feeling weak, “that’s just such a great idea—I mean, I just-just-just… Just thinking about the prospect of that gives me, like, an erection.”

The Warden’s Hand shot me a glance, but the arms dealer said in a sultry voice, “A wholesome family erection?”

I pointed a finger at the Warden’s Hand, jabbing her in her whorishly exposed stomach. “Hey, there is a baby in the room!”

He put the bullet in his hand back into the box with a smile. “Hey, the kid’s gotta learn someday.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, stroking my chin. “You have a point there. Best start ol’ Junior here young, right?”

“See?” he laughed. “This is why you’re clearly going to be the best, sexiest father ever! Why, if all men were half as dedicated to you, we’d probably have far less sex in our media corrupting our youth.”

What.

I grabbed the box of bullets and peaked inside. Shit, thirty-six of these sonsabitches. I was a happy man trying not to get a wholesome family erection just thinking about all the chaos I could reap with this crop of javelins.

“Don’t suppose there’s more bullets like this, are there?” I asked with an air of hope. Maybe he’d have bullets that turned people into other people? Aw, if I could get bullets that turned people here into pony Cards, I’d take them all, tie them together into a big raft, and use her as a boat! And what if I shot Cards with that bullet, what then?

“Nah, sir,” he said. “We had a few paralyzing stun bullets at about your caliber size—also from the Drawers—but about an hour ago, some short broad with huge titties came in and bought ’em all. Dunno why, but I didn’t care to ask. She was kinda cute, though, in that way that only a short gal who could totally tear your balls off can look.”

He glanced away for a moment as if in deep thought, and when he looked back, he had a revolver pointed at him. I thumbed back the hammer and said, “Sorry, mate, but—”

His pin eyes suddenly burned with such radiance that I wanted to shield my eye and squint. “An armed robbery?!” he shouted with what did not at all sound like anger. In fact, it sounded more he… no, wait. He did just totally squee. “Why, what a great day today is! A wholesome man with family values tied to him where-so-ever he may go.”

“What,” I intoned.

“Why, this is a wholesome family armed robbery!” he yelled, jumping up and down. His smile was far brighter than it should have rationally been. Where the hell did he get his toothpaste from? Because I sure as hell wanted some. “You’re teaching the little fetus to commit his or her atrocities before he’s or she’s even been born! Truly, you are the greatest of—”

“She’s not pregnant,” I said flatly, and he just deflated. And I mean, just deflated. Even his hair seemed to flatten.

“What?” he asked in a voice that was almost heartwrenching.

“Hell, we’re not even married,” the Hand added helpfully, and the guy acted like he’d just been punched in the stomach by a particularly tenacious penguin.

“I… oh. By the greatest of the eldest of the Old Ones, I have been lied to,” he whimpered. Then taking a breath, his crossed his arms behind his back and tried standing up a little taller. “The look in your eye says it all: you’re gonna kill me.” He swallowed, facing down the barrel of my gun. “So be it. At least I get to die by the bullet of such a kickass gun.”

“Actually,” I said, holstering my revolver, “no, I’m going to stab you to death!” In a flash, I pulled out my sword and vaulted over the counter. The man jumped back enough so that I didn’t tackle him.

“You are an evil, evil man!” he shouted. “You don’t have any wholesome family values!”

“Yeah, well, when you get to Hell, tell them that I send you there.” I swung my sword, carving a lowercase j into his body. “You’ll get a group discount!” With a final flourish, I made the lowercase letter in a properly stylish J by adding the top cross thereto, and pretty much decapitated him.

After wiping the blood from my sword using the black bandana meant for our not-real baby, I clasped the blade with both hands and held it out in front of me. Then I moved it all over the place, not swinging it but just playing therewith, moving it to all sorts of odd places, testing the flexibility of my hands as I chanted in a monotone, “Sword, sword, sword, sword, sword, sword.” I even pronounced the W on the word just because I could.

“What are you doing?” the Hand asked, her fingers digging into the countertop.

I blinked and stopped. “Sorry, it feels neat to hold a sword in your hands.”

“As opposed to in your mouth?” she scoffed.

I considered this. “Yes, actually. How oddly fitting. Indeed as opposed to a mouth.” Sheathing the sword, I looked down at the corpse and the slowly growing pool of blood thereabout. “You know, ma’am, even though all you’ve really done is tell me neat background details and put me in an awkward position where I had to burn a girl alive—oh, and you also saved me from the tentacle goat—I feel as though this has been a very good first date.”

“A first date?” she asked in a rather surprised voice.

“Well, since you’re still my cover wife, I figure I might as well fake date you, buy you a fake dinner, and then fake sleep with you to keep up appearances.” I pounded a fist into a palm. “Even though this entire relationship may be entirely based upon a lie, it’s probably still a more functional one than my last real long-lasting relationship.”

The Hand cocked her head, focusing her dusty eyes upon me. “It is?”

“I think so, at least.” I hopped over the counter. “Sometimes, my ex—Maiya was her name. Very weird name because it had a Y therein, not a J. Our J makes the sound of your Y, and apparently her name was French, so she had a Y spelling. Anyways, sometimes Maiya would walk around my house angry, and I wouldn’t know why.”

I walked over to a stand and grabbed up a piece of black combat armor. It had a label which read “Security”. It looked to be rather small, and a part of me wanted to keep it in case it was in Cards’ size—a little tag identified it as the “My First Combat Armor—ages 10 and up!”—but I didn’t keep it because I was lazy.

“Anyways, when she wouldn’t tell me, I would just trip her, you know?”

“Wait, what? Why would you do that?” The Hand glanced at the corpse. “And shouldn’t we be blowing this place up?”

“Ja, ja, das werd ich,” I sighed, and went back over the counter. As it happened to be, there was a really neat box labeled ‘Explosive: Keep Away from Children!’ which had been crossed out and replaced with ‘Box of Concentrated Wholesome Family Values’. Opening it, I found the box full of explosives—err, of ‘wholesome family values’ of a kind which I recognized from the Reich. So, I went about taking the explosives therein out and scattering them around for maximum carnage.

“Anyways,” I went on as I worked, the Hand taking sticks of it herself and helping me, “I’d trip Maiya so that I could say, ‘Well, I don’t know what you were angry about before, but I know what you’re angry about now. Why don’t you tell me about as you put a bag of ice on your knee? Mayhap this will make you a little more pliable with telling me about why you’re angry in the first place, hmm? Because, I don’t know about you, but I’m over here trying to solve this and bring a serial killer to justice!’ And that was why our relationship lasted so long.”

“Because you were abusive?” she asked dryly.

“No, because we had excellent communications skills, like I just told you about. Plus, I’m pretty sure I was the chick in that relationship.” I grabbed her hand and led her outside, a stick of wholesome family values in my free hand. “On the count of seven, run.”

“Seven?” she asked. “Why seven? That’s a weird number.”

“Because multiples of seven are my lucky numbers,’ I replied. I got out a match and lit it, preparing to light the explosive’s fuse. “Okay—one, ten, fourteen, eight, Thursday, Viktor Hugo, seven!” And I threw the fuse-lit stick of wholesome family values into the store. “Now run like an inept wizard in a fantasy world!”

When I was far enough from the explosion, I stopped running. Instead, I walked very slowly, calmly, making sure not to look at the explosion for maximum coolness. As the Hand turned around to ask me, likely, “What the shit are you doing?”, the armory exploded. Several times. First the stick I threw, then in succession for the rest of the wholesome family values, and then several more massive explosions from boxes or something that I hadn’t seen.

At this distance from not facing the explosions, I could see light from a fireball turning the dusky twilight into broad daylight. A wave of heat and shockwave washed over me, both coming from too distant a source to burn me or rupture my organs, although I did feel a slight headache. The Hand flinched at the sight, but I only laughed at how ludicrously cool I—and then a flying, burning box hit me, sending me tumbling around the ground.

Finally, when I stopped rolling on the ground, a fresh cut of my cheek, I groaned. The Hand almost casually walked up to me, squatted before me, and said, “Let me guess: you meant to do that.”

“No,” I grunted. “What am I, stupid?”

She offered me her hand. “Well, I was trying to say it gently, but if that’s the conclusion you draw, I won’t correct you.”

I could hear the shouts of men and woman accompanied by distant marching towards us as the Hand helped me up. “Now,” I said, “the rest over here is up to the witch and her renegade chapter houses. For us, we need to storm the central castle of Blackgard, take that tower, and shut down the Cœur. Are you game?”

“Man, I’m so sick at this game that I’m coughing,” she said with a laugh, and I had no real idea what that meant. I took it as a yes, though.

|— ☩ —|

From inside the dark interior of the building, we watched through the windows as a troop of Blackguard storm by. The men and women out there had swords, axes, shields, and all manner of black cloth around their patchwork armor. We’d take refuge in this building in order to avoid having an oncoming troop of Blackguard see us. That was when it occurred to me that if we’d taken those black bandanas from the pink-eyed arms dealer, we probably could have just walked around like it was nobody’s business without being stopped. Hindsight was a bitch like that. Just think of all the horrible tiny mistakes I would solve if I had a time machine…

“Oooh, come to momma!” the Hand purred, and I turned around to look at her. Now that I looked, this place seemed like a store, and the Hand was scrounging around back behind the countertop.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “The castle is right there.”

“Hmm?” she hummed, poking her up up from behind the counter, a large syringe thing in her mouth. She spat it out into her hand and said, “Gunslinger, check it! We jumped into a pharmacy or something. Look, see?” The Hand held up the big syringe. “It’s a stimpack. And-and look here!” She put up a big, scary-looking syringe which had been taped together with two small glass bottles filled with an off-orange ichor. Little tubes ran from the bottles into the syringe. Just looking at it all made me strangely itchy. “It’s a thing of schotl! With this baby in your system, you’ll just regrow limbs faster than the axolotls it was named after.”

She laughed. “Ah, look—a dose of kamikaze! Healing and combat drugs, Gunslinger. Do you know how useful these things are?”

I remember exactly what I’d told that one Juggernog vendor in Songnam. So, like with him, I flashed the Hand a winning smile and a thumbs up and said proudly, “Winners don’t do drugs.”

“Well, then I’m a loser,” she said, and stuffed handfuls of strange things into her bags. I watched her ransack as much as she could before she went over to the back door. “Dammit, it’s locked. Gunslinger, can you open me this door? I’m sure that back here’s where the good stuff is.”

I stood there, still giving her that winning smile and thumbs up.

“Oh, c’mon,” she whined. “Even Elkington’s Caroleans use some of these combat drugs from time to time. I guarantee you that many of the Blackguard here use them. Plus, what we don’t need to use, we can sell for a damn pretty penny back in New Pegasus.”

“Which is why we, the forces who don’t use drugs, will always prevail!” God, did I ever wish right now that I had whatever that super shiny toothpaste was that the pink-eyed arms dealer had been using. Had my teeth been sparkling, ooh, I would have looked so much cooler. Plus, I had to make up more cool points after getting hit with that flying box.

“Oh, you’re honestly willing to risk yourself over some silly moral issue?” she scoffed.

“Yes,” I said, “yes I am. Now can we stop wasting time? Apparently, the Black Man is about to blow the Cœur up any day now, and if he does, then I’ll die, and I’ll never get to do that thing I came here for. So I might as well save the world before I go off to save the world from some other entirely random thing. Stupid Korweit, always sticking his insectoid bits into all the pies.” I sighed. “Let’s go, dammit. I don’t wish to stick around here long enough for the Black Man to get any explosive ideas, okay?”

I walked up and crept out the window, the Hand reluctantly following behind me. The tower with the castle for a base was straight down this fairly well-maintained cobblestone road. At the heart of the castle was the Cœur, I knew. Really, this seemed fairly simple. Get in, find the Cœur, probably catch cancer from the Cœur, deactivate the Cœur, and then get out.

It being simple was exactly why, as we walked up the stairs to get to the castle’s big front doors, I knew I was probably going to get hurt. A lot. And probably get a bruises somewhere in my anal canal, if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, well… the Cœur would simple be a werekind Cherry Berry sitting in a chair, eating popcorn until she sees me and instantly falls in love with me. God, I was never getting over the mare, was I?

As we opened the doors—which were totally unguarded, a sign that yes, whatever was beyond the doors was so scary that it didn’t need guards—I kept thinking about how I needed to have no fear. Fear was my greatest enemy. My second greatest enemy was my bladder. Of course, this wasn’t for any practical reason, just that I was trying to think of something really cool to say to the Black Man when I shot him in the mouth.

This first room was large with several trees and other plants in it, as well as a koi pond. Yay, koi fish. There were a few doors around here, but only one would have led closer to the Cœur. Oh, and speaking of the bladder, I asked the Hand to looked away for a short while—you have no idea how hard it was to extrapolate your unit from your pants with hands for the sole purpose of pissing in a koi pond just to be spiteful, and because screw the Blackguard and their living feng shui-friendly sense of design. I’m pretty sure one of the fish died right then and there.

With that accursed thing out of the way, we went through the doors taking us closer to the heart of the castle. It did dawn on me then, as I looked out into the massive throneroom we were now in, that I was going to have one hell of a time trying to figure out how to even take a shit with this body. These were important questions! The last thing I needed was to suffer from constipation pains because I couldn’t figure out how this body was supposed to use a toilet.

Gazing at the great columns that helped to hold up this room’s massive vaulted ceiling, a thought popped into my mind. Suffice it to say, I had to kill the thought; no matter how nicely I asked, I was pretty sure the Warden’s Hand wouldn’t let me watch and take detailed notes as she went to the bathroom. And for some reason, that thought left a weirdly salty taste in my mouth.

At the end of the room was, of course, the great big throne whereupon the Skybane line of kings had once sat. Now, it was empty. Gilded and fancy, yes, but empty. And then came the ringing. It was like a jaunty tune of a bell rapidly being struck, the sound dying out before the bell could truly play, but the sound of that ring ring repeating over and over for whole seconds before experiencing another whole second of silence.

The Hand and I exchanged glances, before she pointed up to a strange pedestal in the middle of the room and said, “It’s coming from there.”

I squinted at the pedestal whereupon there was… a thing. It looked sort of like a very flat bell shape with a pair of bullhorns atop it, only the bull horns almost ended in little bell shapes, but the bells were different from the main body of the thing. With a cautious slowness, I crept up to the thing, the Hand lagging slightly behind. It kept ringing.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she replied. “Pick it up; maybe it’s important.”

I grabbed the base of the bell and picked the thing up. It kept ringing. “Well, this isn’t working.” But then I noticed that the horns seemed like they’d come off, like they were only just resting there, unattached. I set the maid thing down and picked up the horns mid-ring, and the ringing stopped. “Well, that worked,” I said, and put the horns back on the bell.

“It did,” the Hand added as I put the horns back on and went to walk away. But then—ring ring ring. “We stand corrected.”

Frowning, I picked up the horns and said, “Stop ringing.”

“No,” came a weak little voice from the horns. The Hand jumped back at this, but I held fast.

“Listen here!” I yelled at the horizontally held horns. “I am the Gunslinger, King of the Intergalactic House of Pancakes—watch your tongue, or I’ll have it cut from your head!”

“Put your mouth up to the lower part of the device, and the other bulb up to your ear,” it said, and after a moment, I figured out what it was trying to ask me. “Ah, yes, much better,” oozed the voice from the device, straight into my ear. It sounded like the sound of grinding bones but from beneath a barrel, a barrel which was also on fire and filled with sad clowns.

I quickly explained to the Hand what was going on, as I saw it, and she remarked, “Well, there’s something you don’t see every day. Like that tentacle goat.”

“Which,” I said, “was exactly why I quit my summer job at the petting zoo.”

“Now then,” the voice from the horns said, “I have seen your coming to this place, Gunslinger.” The way he—the voice was certainly masculine—said my title made me want to take a sponge bath. Only instead of water, the bath would involve lots of sharp rocks covered in maple syrup. “Behind the throne there is a door. It is behind the blue wall curtains. This door leads to the Cœur. And come, Gunslinger, I want you to come to it, want you to gaze into it, and I want you to see what it has to tell you. It told me that you would kill me, but that I might survive long enough to kill you too if I am strong enough. What secrets holds it for thee?”

The horns clicked, and when no more creepy voices came through them, I put them back onto the bell.

“So, do you know who that was?” she asked.

I shrugged as we walked for the throne. “Wrong number.” It took me a second to realize that remark made no sense, that I’d meant to say address instead of number, but what was said was said.

We found our way to the throne and the curtain therebehind. The door there led to a steep spiral staircase that I practically had to crouch there—they were not built with tall men in mind. After what seemed like forever, we came to a door at the end of the stairs and opened it.

Whatever I had been expecting, this wasn’t it.

This metal room was giant and circular, a rotunda-like thing built around a giant water-blue sphere of light. This sphere was encased away from the accessible parts of the rotunda by a series of claw-like apparati and some sort of glass tube. Tubes, like those strings in the livebox but in all shapes and sizes, ran all across the room from the sphere’s container. From where I stood, the only way real way to the sphere was through a heavily armored sort of decontamination chamber. Around the whole room were boxes of all shapes and sizes, plus little safely walls scattered about that easily could have been vaulted over.

Of course, there were also the three goats in the room. They turned their heads up to me, bleated like beavers in heat, then went back to ambling about. Even though I didn’t see any tentacles on them, I whipped out my revolvers and proceeded shoot them all dead, giving each a badass one-liner. “There is no tin can—Bleat this—Your living privileges have just been revoked!”

Reloading the gun, I stepped into the room proper. This one place looked like it had been directly lifted from a science-fiction comic book that I had somewhere in my bags. Was it the one where Kapitän Teutschland has to go fight the alien menace using nothing but his hooves, some wit, and the hobo he gutted and turned into a hang glider? Because it was a well-known fact that when the alien menace eventually comes to take away all our babes, it would be up to the Reich to save the day and win back our chicks.

“You see that being glowy thing?” I asked, pointing at the sphere, which I was sure was the Cœur.

“Uh-huh,” the Hand said.

“It’s just so big and shiny and bright and I must kill it!” I looked around the room. There were a few door-looking things around the elevated parts of the floor, elevated bits with chairs around odd devices I had no words for. I figured they were scientific instruments for the betterment of exploding yon doomsday device. “And I think I have to go into it.”

The Hand hesitated before saying, “Dad used to mention that the Cœur was hazardous, which is why the Old Ones put it in that container, to keep it from poisoning the world.”

“Well, enervation didn’t bother me back in Chausiku’s lab in Songnam, nor did it bother me in Sleepy Oaks,” I said. “So, I’m sure that whatever’s in there… will probably cause me to grow an eyeball on the tip of my penis, allowing me to finally spy upon the secret world of the mouse.” When she gave me an odd look, I explained, “It’s a running joke I have, a penis with an eyeball on its tip, which I can then use to poke into mouseholes and spy on mice.”

“What.”

“I know, right?” Approaching the edge of the Cœur’s container, I could see there was a little lip around the Cœur inside its container, likely so people could walk directly around it for something. Directly past the hugely thick doors into the Cœur’s chamber, I could see, a little stand with all sorts of sliders and levers and button—oh God, a big red button! Must press!

I nearly galloped over to the door into the Cœur. A big lever got the first door to open with a hiss of stagnant, ancient air. The Hand called for me to stop, but by that time, I was inside the decontamination chamber, and the first door was closed. A white cloud shot out of the walls and washed me over, lingering there for what felt like a minute before sucked away. And then the door into the Cœur proper made itself ajar.

As I walked up to touch the big red button, I heard a crackle and a pop from above, from what looked like the horn-speaker of a Voixson. “Ah, Gunslinger. So you’ve finally come.”

I blinked. That was the same voice as the one that’d spoken to me from those horns. “Okay, look,” I said reasonably, “if the next words out of your mouth are something to the effect of ‘I masturbated whilst thinking of finally meeting you’, I’m out of here. Just out.” I groaned. “Because I am just done. I’m a one-eyed man covered in scars who takes good care of his teeth—would strangers please stop touching themselves to me before they’ve even met me!”

“Then I think you’ll be happy to know that I’m a eunuch, Gunslinger,” the voice said in a tone like a mare trying to seduce her love interest with nothing but a pair of socks and hoofcuffs. “I cut it off because agents of the Gods, the Old Ones, need not gender, and they needn’t allow sex get in the way of the universal plan. The Wheel of Time must turn, after all.”

“Well, all that means is that…” I began, and froze as I saw something in the Cœur’s watery surface. The sphere was floating above the ground perfectly, suspended by its own means, and there was something inside the Cœur, moving, as if alive. As crazy as it was, I was pretty sure it was a horse. When I squinted and looked closer, feeling a vague heat on my face, I called out, “C? C, is that you? How the hell did you… You know what, I’m not surprised. Remind me again why I decided to leave you alone back by the hospital, not take you with me?”

Insane as it was, my right arm suddenly really wanted to touch the glowing sphere of very likely death. Or, well, I wanted to touch it, but my right arm was sort of expendable. I pulled back my sleeve and gasped at all the tattoos. Had I really been accumulating so many of them? Looking at them all made my stomach crawl. Wait, no. My stomach didn’t crawl. Looking at the arm made something crawl on my stomach from within.

Suddenly, I recalled the feeling from when I’d been gnawing my hoof off to escape Cherry Berry, that sensation of C’s arm burrowing roots into my body. And, though this was less painful than that, the feeling was not dissimilar. What was it that C’s letter had said to me, the one I read back in Hoofington?

My flesh is stronger than yours. My flesh attached to you will kill you, given time.

Yes, those words exactly. Pausing, I mulled those words over, mulling them. Then it dawned on me. C’s arm was slowly taking over my body, wasn’t it? Those roots there extending from the arm and wrapping around my organs. That was how I would die if Snechta’s healing spell in the Calêrhos book couldn’t give my horn, eye, and make me a new arm. They would suck the life out of me like roots suck water out of the ground

At this thought, I laughed. Maybe the witch was right about me having a sense of dark romance. After all, were I anypony else, I didn’t suspect I’d go through life with so many different right arms. So, I looked at the first tattoos the arm had.

“शान्ति शान्ति शान्ति Shantih Shantih Shantih ” and the Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata in “दत्त दयध्वम् दम्यत”.

Peace! Peace! Peace! Give. Sympathize. Control, I thought. And if C’s arm was killing me as it was, where was the harm in killing myself another way by reaching my right arm into the Cœur?

|— ☩ —|

While I’d been expecting something horrible, this wasn’t exactly it. I could feel my body where it was, as it was, but my eye didn’t quite agree. Before me was an alien sight and locale, a view of something strange and probably seizure-inducing.

It was a throne, of course, and in that throne was a unicorn stallion. The stallion was wearing what looked like a cross between a military uniform and a formal dress outfit, white gloves on his forehooves, a red sash running from shoulder to hip, a crown of thorns on his head, and eyes closed but a menacing little smirk of his face. He looked like a teutscher king of old, before King Viktor destroyed the actual crown and throne, declaring such objects to be the tools of tyrants. Only, he was sitting sort of sideways, one leg thrown up over the chair’s armrest, the other of the ground as he gripped in his hoof the hilt of his majestic sword, its tip burying into the ground. It was cool, but would totally dull the blade’s tip to death. I could see, slung over the tall back of the throne, two massive revolvers in their holsters with a bandolier of ammo.

The stallion in the throne opened his eyes, and only then did I notice that his left eye was a different color than his right; it was a milky silver-white in color, a deep little white scar running vertically down from the eye. So too was his right arm a different color, darker in hue than the rest of his body.

In a moment, I realized that this damn buck was me, but not me, like The King card that Felicitat’s oracle had drawn me, the same one the witch had drawn. And in the distance, I heard dark voices singing slowly to dramatic and scary sound of a twisted orchestra.

“Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein—

Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein—

Fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein!

Fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein!”

Or, in Equestrian:

“Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine—

Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine—

Firm and True stands the Watch, the Watch at the Rhein!

Firm and True stands the Watch, the Watch at the Rhein!”

The scene before me flickered, and suddenly I was gazing at a great wasteland. Only… no, it wasn’t a wasteland, not like the great Wasteland to the east of the Titanberge, the mountains that divided the Reich from the rest of its continent. This was once a great city, likely the greatest of cities. The wasteland couldn’t erase the city of Zentrum. But now, here in the Reich’s capital, it was hardly more than rust and stardust.

Again flickered the scene, and now I was the stallion sitting in the throne, my body just as I had seen it. Before me now was what had once been the Zitadelle, the massive fortress at the heart of the Reich whence the Pendergast line of kings had ruled Teutschland for nearly a thousand years. It was in ruins, and I could see out from holes in the wall.

“On the other side of this castle there is… was a city… the greatest in this world,” the Blue-Eyed Mare’s words rang out from the back of mine, the words she’d spoken to me when first we met properly, after I’d cut my infected right arm off. “And then the Good Stallion came.” Indeed, the Blue-Eyed Mare had said this was what happened to her world, and even though she was a figment of my imagination—albeit a very persistent one—her words made me feel uneasy at this moment.

I sighed. “Okay, so, let me get this all straight. This deathly Cœur of pure magical murder is basically telling me ‘Hey, do you know what would be a cool alternate universe? This!’ I mean, is the Cœur that lonely? Because I’d be more than willing to play a game of Dunkelheit und Drachen therewith. I can be the battleship and you can be the shoe.” I paused, then added, “And Cards can be hooked up to a milking machine to provide us with valuable, energy-refueling milk.”

Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I saw myself standing there with sunglasses and biting my bottom lip as I held up a glass bottle of “Cards Milk—the only milk made with real tears!” Cards was standing behind me, hooked up to one of those milkers, and crying. “New and coming soon,” a random sign read: “Cards Yogurt! Now with even more shame and penis envy in every bite!”

With that in mind, I made a mental note to order for Cards a milker. Knowing her and her socks, she’d find it a fun distraction until she learns of my master plan. But then that begged the question, “Where do I find a mail-order dairy farm catalog at this hour?”

A sudden voice snapped me out of my awesome thought. It was strong, masculine, and seethed with boundless kindness and mercy. “I must apologize for being so late. When last we spoke, I said we’d speak next in the flesh, not through origami cranes. I suppose it was my error not to mention that the flesh wouldn’t necessarily be yours. Nor particularly mine, for that matter.”

I looked around the ruined throneroom. A part of me knew that voice and knew it well. My jaw muscles clenched as I saw something move out of the corners of my eye—God, it felt so good to have eyes in the plural again! Keeping to the shadows, the figure of a stallion stepped out from behind a large, broken column.

Figuring that there was no place like in a psychedelic vision to speak in a jive, I called out, “Yo!”

The figure stood still in the oppressive shadow of the broken column. “Greetings indeed.”

I took a breath. “You know, it has been a long time since I heard your voice.”

He didn’t move; and in the shadow, I could make out no definite features, not even if he were unicorn, pegasus, or earther. Hell, he could have been an alicorn with bat wings and a forked tongue for all the difference it made. The only thing I was sure about him were his eyes; no, not the color or even the shape, but there was something within them which glittered with unfathomable intelligence and unshakable faith and generosity, the kind of eyes so instantly trustworthy that the very last thing you ever wanted to do was trust in those eyes.

“Has that long time been too long or not long enough?” he asked as if discussing the weather, unaware that the weather forecast for the next three days was just the word ‘LAVA!’ in big, scary capital letters.

“For you, is there a difference?” I replied. “You appear from the shadows and give me a vague suggestions, and that suggestion bears fruit a short number of months later as I enter the town of Ponyville, Equestria. Then, as I try to figure out why, exactly, I came to this godforsaken hellhole, guess who gives me a little origami crane?”

“I?” he offered, and I nodded.

“And then, after I lost a good deal of my face—horn and eye, really—some Blue-Eyed Mare shows up, hands me a bag of bullets for the guns I cannot use, and claims they’re a gift from you.”

He shrugged. “My idea of a joke—give you something you’d kill for in a context wherein it had no immediate use, knowing full well that it’d come in great use later along the metaphorical road.”

A wide grin spread across my face, equal parts eager and ‘angry Cards on her period’. “So, why have you been messing with that witch? What have you here been up to, hmm?” I tilted my head, leaning a bit on my sword like a walking stick, if that walking stick was made of pure steel murder. “Wait, no. I know you. You’ll never tell me, will you? You’ll give me some roundabout answer, since you won’t bother explaining me your master plan.”

The stallion looked around with what seemed like bored disinterest. “Gee, and here I had hoped to hold palaver with the Gunslinger.”

Yawning, I lurched up and out of the throne. My bones all felt old, almost achey; it wasn’t just with a feeling of having not moved, but more like… like what I’d imagined arthritis would feel like. “Then let us hold palaver, but speak true and quick—I’m pretty sure this is all some psychedelic hallucination and I’m going to wake up in a hospital, but with Cherry Berry firmly grasping my cock.”

The stallion stepped forwards, out of the shadows. Only, he didn’t. The shadows followed him, as if light itself feared him. That was probably a bad sign, really. “I wish to say to thee two things.” Despite the shadows, I was sure that he cocked a brow. “But first, allow me to ask if you would like these two things stated simply or in ludicrously obtuse terms.”

“Simply, please.”

He smiled in a way that could have probably instantly seduced Celestia, thereby allowing him to face the horrors of the clittorcock. “See? If I were a bad guy, I’d speak in nothing but annoying riddles and half-truths that no one can understand save for myself and the kids at home.”

I shimmied my shoulders around. God, they were sore. “Er, hold that thought as I dance in place over here for a moment.” There, that pleasant sound of popping joints. “I’m sorry; as you were.”

“Point one: you should really wash and scrub heavily your right arm when this vision ends. Trust me,” he said in a friendly tone. Then, the amiable demeanor seemed to collapse in an authoritarian but unhostile air of power. “And whatever you may think, whatever you may want to believe in him, know that I have known him longer than you could possibly comprehend. And though I honestly doubt it will help, I’m willing to say it here regardless.”

I frowned. “I don’t quite follow.”

“The fact is that I am only here to keep tabs on this one, and be that as it may, he’s found you, and that is no minor concern for me.” He took several hard steps towards me. “Whatever you do, always remember one thing: that C is a liar!”

Without any real semblance to a warning, the vision before me vanished.

|— ☩ —|

I was back in the Cœur’s room, and my arm was out of the blue sphere of trippy visions. “Worst psychedelic vision ever,” I moaned.

My right arm stung mildly, and I figured that, as he had told me, I should probably wash it. There was no telling what kind of quirky germs were in giant glowing blue spheres capable of blowing up the world. I looked into the distant glass of the Cœur’s container and saw a reflection. Quickly, I gasped and spun around.

“Did you enjoy the vision the Cœur showed you?” that same voice from the speaker asked. But beyond the glass windows I could see several figures in dark clothings, with swords and axes and shields. The only one without such a weapon was the tall man in black.

His hat was a beltbuckle black hat, his shoulder-length hair neat and black; the man was clad in an open black trenchcoat, his black scarf, black shirt, numerous black bandoliers filled with bullets, black gloves, black pants, and black boots thereby visible. He even had his extra black sunglasses, beside it being indoors and technically at night—the douchebag! Really, the only thing that wasn’t black about him was the pale, deathly complex of his skin, in the very few places it was visible, and the off-white color of the teeth in his wide grin.

Holding it just so it rested on his shoulder, the Black Man held a long gun with a small lever around the trigger, a hardy-looking stock to keep it steady. I searched for words to understand just what kind of weapon it was, and I thought back to how the pink-eyed arms dealer had called the Black Man’s weapon a shattergun, a rifle. Specifically, he’d called it “Skybane”, which, now that I thought about, was the same name as the royal house of Olympia’s had been. So, did that mean that House Skybane was named after that rather cool-looking gun? If so, then House Skybane was actually pretty metal.

“Ah, so you like my shattergun?” he asked, his voice coming in through the speakers. “Don’t act like you weren’t; I saw you eyeing it.”

“Well, if it were a lady,” I said, “I’d treat it to a nice dinner, engage it in passionate intercourse, and then never talk to it again.” Of course, as I spoke, I noticed the Warden’s Hand. She was on the ground before the Black Man, slowly scrambling backwards across the floor and away from him. The other warriors alongside the Black Man looked eager to pounce and violate the Hand, but they seemed unwilling to make the first move.

With all the care of a mother hen trying to hide her chicks from the farmer’s secret police, the Black Man pulled out a big and almost glowing-green bullet. I watched how he loaded it into the weapon and readied it to fire, and I watched and studied how he held the weapon when he went to fire it, and I watched with interest as four wisp of green-black fire coalesced around the edge of the barrel, looking like exceedingly taught bowstrings—and I did nothing as he fired straight into the Hand’s chest.

The bullet left a visible green contrail as it exploded out the other side of her chest, her screaming echoing up through the speakers overhead. But she didn’t die, oh God no. She thrashed out on the floor, screaming and bleeding like an epileptic fish out of water. With horror, I realized that the bullet’s entry and exit wounds were giving off a green-black light, and that I could hear her screams through the massively thick glass around the Cœur.

“Catch me if you can, Gunslinger,” the Black Man said in a calm voice, and briskly walked off through a door in one of the elevated portions of the room. The rest of the men stayed behind, jaunting and jeering at the Hand as she screamed and thrashed.

My right hand felt wrong as I looked at the big red button. Presuming the builders of this place weren’t literally drop-dead retarded, that big red button wasn’t the “Blow Up The World” button. I hit the bottom like a hammer, and a distant humming sound I hadn’t even noticed until now slowly died down. The glowing sphere slowly descended downwards, but then a panel next to the big red bottom opened up, revealing a pad of numbers from 0–9 and a little paper note.

The note was a picture of a man pulling down his eyelid and sticking his tongue out, the words next to it reading “Thank you for pressing the Blow Up The World button for me, Gunslinger! Unless you enter the proper code soon, the Cœur will explode!”

Oh, Goddammit—so the Old Ones were drop-dead retarded.

Very, very calmly, I looked at the door nearest me. A sudden feeling of having my organs clamped in a vice rose in my chest and gut, but I paid it no mind as I entered the decontamination chamber. When I keeled over and vomited out a mixture of luncheon and blood into the chamber, I paid it no mind. And when I realized that most of my right arm was now burning, covered in burn marks that resembled lunar craters more than any burn I’d ever seen before and which did not heal, I paid it also no mind.

When the decontamination finished, I stepped out. There was a man standing right there, waiting for me. “You shoulda stayed home, Gunslinger!” he shouted. Or at least, that was what I was pretty sure he was going to shout if I hadn’t thrust my sword through his jaw and into his brain without so much as a cocked brow. My hand was closer to the sword than my guns, you see.

“For the Grapist chapterhouse!” some bastard shouted at me, and when he got close enough, I sighed, rolled my eye, and stabbed him in the stomach.

“Really?” I asked. “You’re the Grapists?”

When another Grapist came at me, I parried, kicked him in the shin, and stabbed him through the eyes while the pain distracted him. That was three down, and about four more to go. “Come on, gents,” I said, “I’ve only had hands for two days tops. How am I so much better than you?” That got the other four on my case. “Oh wait, I forgot why I’m so much better than you all—I cheat”—and I whipped out a revolver, cocked it back, and fired, killing one instantly. I fanned my left hand over the revolver in order to quickly cock the gun and fire it three more times. When it was over, I said, “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you never charge at a man known as the Gunslinger. Odds are, he’ll just shoot you.”

God, did my right arm and hand hurt. It felt like I was being blistered and burnt under the hateful eye of the sun; in fact, there were blisters like a particularly nasty, nasty sunburn. Always use sunblock, kids! And now… hang on, now that I looked at it, I was pretty sure that this arm was supposed to have some hair on it. Not at all like the arm I had as pony, but some. Now? Not so much.

“This is probably bad,” I said with a sigh.

Then I heard the Hand groan. It had probably been meant to be another scream, but her voice just oozed that she was nigh dead. Quickly, I rushed over to the woman and knelt down beside her in the pool of her own blood. The hole in her chest was indeed glowing; really, there was absolutely no way she was even possibly alive with a wound that massive, but the fact was that she was alive, and I could ask why later.

So, I did the first, most irrational thing that came to mind: I decided that sometimes winners really did do drugs, and dug into her bags. And there! The thing of schotl. Of course, the problem was that, as shitty as her armor was, it did a good job of making it very hard to find somewhere to stick the broad a needle.

“This is going to look very weird, but I promise you: it’s for your own good,” I said, and went about remove her top. Straps and laces were the only thing that kept the chainmail bikini on, and once those were removed, off came her breastplate. Ah, and of course, those annoying sacks of fat on a female’s chest. The bullet wound was just between them, likely having broken her sternum, but, against literally every odd, hadn’t killed her.

“I am a total sellout to our consumerist, drug-loving culture,” I groused as grabbed one of her breasts, pushed it out of the way, and injected the drug directly into her chest. A part of me remarked on how soft breasts where, since I’d been expecting them to sort of feel like sandbags for whatever reason. Within three seconds, I saw the flesh of her breast grow back, which was a lot faster that I would have thought, but I wasn’t complaining.

More and more of her flesh healed before my eye. Then she shuddered and spasmed, no small amount of saliva oozing from her mouth. I found a stimpack and injected her therewith, followed by me reluctantly pulling out one of my last few healing potions and pretty much dump it into her wound and straight into her heart.

“Okay, so if you die on me,” I warned, “I will be very cross with you! I might just have to bend you over my knee and spank you!”

The Hand actually sputtered out a deathly species of laughter. “Y’know,” she said quietly, “I’m pretty sure that’s an enticement, not… not a threat, Gunslinger.” She snorted. “Especially since… ’specially since ya did take my top off.”

“Hey, that was for a good reason and you know it!”

With a little smile on her trembling lips, she said, “Didn’t stop you from leering at and touching them.”

“Now, hold on just a—!” The sudden sensation of lead speeding by my head faster than sound followed immediately by the thunderous roar of a really big gun made me dive away from the Hand, landing behind a wooden crate.

I looked up to where the sound had come from, and there was the Black Man on one of the elevated parts of the room, cocking back the lever on his gun and expending a spent round. “Okay, so I got bored of waiting.” He vaulted over a guard rail and onto the floor proper. “Hey, and how are you liking that thing I did to your girlfriend, eh?”

“Well, I’ll be honest here,” I called out to him: “I don’t very much appreciate it. Also, I’d say ‘she’s not my girlfriend’, but I’m old enough not to care about such schoolyard bullshit. And also because saying ‘she’s not my girlfriend’ is just begging the universe to force you into a relationship.”

“It’s a magic bullet of decay,” he spoke. “Whatever it hits, it rots slowly, painfully, but does not kill instantly. Oh no. If you’re taking me down this day, I’ll make killing me absolute hell on you and your friends.”

I pulled out a gun, remember the face of my father, and peeked out again to fire. Of course, he wasn’t there. I sighed hard. “You’re behind me, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Shit.”

I spun around, only to get bashed upside the head with his riflebutt. “That was for pissing in my koi pond!” he spat. Staggering back, I realized I’d dropped my gun, but by then, he’d kicked it away. When I reached for my other gun, the Black Man slugged me straight in the throat and just tackled me to the ground. And because the universe hated me, that gun went flying off somewhere. Probably into another dimension, the same place where all dropped pencils went.

“Gotcha, Gunslinger,” he cackled, pulling out a knife that was probably ninety-five percent tetanus. When I moved to try to grab my own knife, he grabbed my reaching hand and brought his knife down. Down and down and, apparently, used it to cut my shirt in half.

“Hey!” I coaked. “I don’t know how many shirts I have!”

“Oh, and look at all the shits I give,” he replied as I tried punching him in the face, twisting and writhing to try to get an angle. “Hey, how about something symbolic before I really kill you?”

“I thought you said I was bound to kill you this day.”

He shrugged. “I won’t lie: sometimes the future the Cœur gives is just utter bullshit. Very likely bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.”

Suddenly I felt cold steel in the flesh of my right breast. I screamed as I felt the Black Man sawing at the flesh around the nipple, and he laughed. The feeling of cold, jagged metal severing muscle and flesh and veins and nerves and then a wet schloschk sound as he grabbed with his hand and tore off what the knife didn’t cut. Smiling, he held it up for me to see. It wasn’t just my nipple, nor the off-color area around it, but all the skin in a jagged two-inch radius around the nipple, plus the nipple.

So, great. There was now a giant, gaping wound in my chest that, while not very deep, hurt like shit!

I punched his face again, but he failed to react. That’s when I thought mayhap I could gouge the bastard’s goddamn eyes out! On the next fist-to-face love affair, I jabbed my fingers under his sunglasses and into his—oh by Laurentia’s permanently blueballed-by-virginity vagina while the Archangel Thor tries to randomly seduce her, what the shit was that?

It wasn’t an eye, that was for damn sure. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I could feel my fingers curling and digging into the inner lining of his eyesocket, but not eye. Instead there was this cold, almost smoke-like feeling and… something inside his eye just licked me.

Still smiling, the Black Man carefully removed his sunglasses, putting them into a pocket. The Black Man didn’t have eyes, no. They were black holes of smoke wherefrom waved little tendrils of shadows and blackness and evil and probably Neighponease porn.

“You know,” he said, his voice as smooth as liquid silk, “there’s a reason why they call me the Black Man, and it wasn’t originally my sense of fashion, no.”

With a roar, I gripped the inner wall of his eye as hard as I could and threw him off me. He tumbled, but that was enough for me to scramble to me feet and pull my sword out. When I swung, he held up Skybane, and the weapon utterly blocked my blow without so much as a scratch. I felt blood leaking down from my severed breast down my naked stomach, soaking into my pants. And when I swung my blade again, I felt blood spit out of the wound when he sidestepped the blow with ease.

He laughed as he sidestepped the swing, the force of missing knocking me of balance. Taking all the care of a rhino in heat, he stepped up to me before I could right myself and jammed two fingers into the bloody wound on my chest. The bastard smiled as I yelped in pain, and he smiled even more as he kneed me in the stomach so hard that I dropped my sword.

Were it not for the fact that I was now struggling to breathe, I would have said something to the effect of, “Stop knocking weapons out of my hand—now I’ll never get the sword’s security deposit back!”

Really, though, all I did was gasp as he hooked his fingers and pulled them out of my breast, tearing out stringy chunks of red. But, it wasn’t the flesh-rending agony that prompted me to gasp, no. It was his eyes, how the black tendrils slithered and reached out for me. I had to look down to see his eyes due to my height, but I… I couldn’t look away.

“All things are born in blood, sweet mockingbird,” he hissed with a maniacal grin. “In blood there is pain. From pain comes beauty. Stare into the gifts the Cœur gave me when it rotted out my eye.” The tendrils reached further and further out to me until I was sure they were going to caress me. “Yes, I can see it now, sweet mockingbird. There is great pain in your soul…” The maniacal grin slowly died. “No… no… that’s not possible.” His lips curved down into a deep frown. “You-you are no man! You are not of this world! You are a demon in the flesh of a man, and that demon hight J—”

A great crash nearly knocked us both to the ground. He only barely kept on his feet as he spun around to face the Cœur. I, however, dove away behind one of those tiny little walls that decorated the room. When I peaked over it, however, I saw whence the crashing had come.

The apparati around the Cœur had sprung into action, and now, almost like massive mechanical arms, they moved around, grabbing strange glass canisters that were sticking out of the ceiling. They moved the canisters into slots all around the Cœur’s container. Several strange T-shaped pedestals shot out jets of steam, gears sticking out of the walls cracked and turned with a terrible grinding sound, and sideways pillars throughout the room suddenly began moving and thumping at the ground hard over and over again like chisels being smashed with hammers. Everything felt hotter as steam rushed out from pipes, far more consistently than those four pedestals.

The Cœur was coming to life.

Suddenly, the little wall I was hiding behind quaked and rose slowly into the air. I rolled off and watched as what I’d thought was a small wall became the top of a mechanical mess that looked like a steel weeping willow, only with blue-striped tubes of metal instead of leaves. Before my eye, the blue stripes pulsed with light at a slow, rhythmic beat. From what I could see, the rest of the little walls were now the tops of other kinds of mechanical trees.

Remembering that I could gawk when the world wasn’t about to explode and that good God did my breast hurt, I reached into my pack and pulled out a glass bottle made red from the liquid within. With a quick motion, I popped the cap open and brought the bottle to my mouth. I swallowed, already feeling the psychosomatic effects of the healing tonic.

Then the bottle exploded. Because the universe hated me.

I flinched back from the shattered glass, spitting out what more of the tonic I had in my mouth. Someone pulled back on a lever to a satisfying clicking sound, and the sound of a bullet casing hitting the ground. Jerking my head around, I saw the Black Man holding a glowing red bullet and loading it into his rifle.

“Miss me?” he asked.

My breast felt hotter than hot. Feverish, really, not so much sexy. I hoped it was the effects of the tonic; there was no way I’d swallowed enough to actually heal myself. “You know,” I said, “yours was the bullet that failed to hit me; I should be asking you that.”

“I wasn’t aiming for you.” He held the shattergun up. “But I am now.”

Shit.

Tendrils of white flames like taut bowstrings whipped around the gunbarrel, just like with that bullet of decay. But like hell if I was going to get hit by that thing.

Like a particularly fat porpoise, I dove behind the metal tree and flopped onto the ground in the moment before he pulled the trigger. The sound wasn’t like a gunshot; it was more as if someone had loaded a particularly miffed eagle into a cannon and then fired the cannon. I watched as a giant phoenix-shaped ball of white fire flew straight through where I’d just been standing, so hot and bright that I had to shield my eye from the damn bird.

“Ha!” I shouted. “You missed again!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, sweet mockingbird,” the Black Man said calmly, and pointed to where his shot had gone.

“Huh,” I said flatly. “Well, that’s probably the antithesis of good.”

There, on the far, far end of the room, the massive screaming phoenix had hit the wall and bounced itself off the wall and back towards me, murder in its burning eyes.

I did the first, most logical thing a buck in my position could do: I got naked.

Well, it was only my top—quick as I could, I removed my duster and ruined shirt. The shirt could go sodomize itself for all I cared as I let it fall it the ground. “Toro! Toro!” I shouted, because it was the sane thing to do.

Crouching down nearly into a ball and feeling the bird’s heat already drying my eyeball, I draped my body with the duster as best I could, covering more of myself than the duster normally could have, more akin now to a blanket than the coat it was.

I closed my eye, gritted my teeth, and felt the bird ram into me with the force of a thousand angry bees carrying a thousand angry sledgehammers. Already burning and blistering, I felt the skin of my right eye split open and crackle until it went numb, my left arm only now blistering as the fire washed over me. My back got singed and burned too, but nobody cared about my back. Stupid back.

It was over fast, and just as it had from the fire I’d started in Songnam, the duster’s flame retardant abilities had… Well, I was alive, at least. Probably cooked enough to be served as “Well-Done Ponyburger”, but alive. By the Archangel Thor, I swore that the blood on my chest was boiling, burning as it literally gave off steam.

I stood up, feeling bits of that healing potions work their metaphorical magic on my back and arm, reducing the burning itch to a dull pain. Bits of the materials I’d used on it to patch it up over the years were now literally ash and char, the leather itself blackened and smelling faintly of steak, but I wasted no time in putting it back on. Oddly, my hat was fine.

“Most impressive, little mockingbird,” the Black Man called out. I saw now that he was standing up on one of the elevated parts of the room.

“How the hell did you get up over there so fast?” I asked, ignoring the hot red blood running down from my breast.

He shrugged. “Oh, it’s a habit of mine. When folker aren’t looking, I quietly sprint really fast around the room to make it look like I can teleport and be anywhere.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “So is that how bad guys do it?”

“Yhar,” he said. “But it requires good cardio—you need be running all around without having to pant, else folker will wise up.” The Black Man smiled wide as he pulled out his shattergun and loaded bullets into it. “For the record, Skybane holds twelve shots in it. I just like loading singles of the magic bullets into this here shouldershooter for extra dramatic effect. You have several seconds before I’m reloaded.”

Ave Laurentia, just how many words do these people have for just that one type of weapon? Rifle, shattergun, and now shouldershooter.

I glanced around and spotted something. The Warden’s Hand was crawling across the floor, a trail of blood leading from her to where she’d once been shot, where there was a glowing green-black chunk of something on the ground—something to do with the bullet of decay, I supposed. By the Hand was a little pedestal that gave off a burst of quick steam, then fell steamless, the air above it wavy from extreme heat.

My eye took a peek at my naked, wounded breast, then looked back at the topless Hand, her naked breasts dragging under her as she crawled. I sprinted as fast as I could towards her, trying find another Trank der Genesung.

“Girl!” I shouted, sliding down next to her.

Weakly, she looked up at me, pointing off in the distance. “G-gun…”

“Shh, it’s okay,” I cooed. “I know the Black Man is loading his gun—now drink. You need this more than I.” I popped the top off the pink Equestrian healing potion and brought the bottle to her lips. She drank greedily. “If you die here, it’ll look bad on my record. I can’t lose any more companions. Were you to die, I’m pretty sure the companions’ union would organize a strike against me.” My eye fell upon her still-bleeding wounds as I wondered why the healing things before hadn’t healed her, and why said healing poultices hadn’t at least clotted the wound.

When the Hand took the bottle in her own hands, I let go thereof and went over to the steaming pedestal just next to her. It was tall, hot, and thick. Easily thick enough, I hoped, to stop bullets. Taking a deep breath, I once again proved that the best, most logical option in every situation was a full-on mid-battle strip tease by shedding my bandoliers and duster onto the ground, my bags following suite.

The pedestal rumbled, and I could feel a wave of heat wafting out from the vent thereatop. “Hey, ma’am.”

“G-gun,” the Hand muttered, pointing off away from me.

“I just want you to know that if I scream like a bitch here, it’s because this is probably going to hurt like shit.” The top of the pedestal now glew red, and according to the sound, here came the steam. I exhaled all air from my lungs, grit my teeth, and bent forwards, putting my bleeding right breast on the vent. At first, it only hurt like that phoenix had. Then came the steam.

In mere seconds, I had cauterized the wound.

It had sizzled and popped until it was more steamed than well-cooked broccoli, until the blood itself had turned to steam, until I burnt the opened flesh to the point where all the bleeding bits were roasted shut. Oh, and I had screamed like a tiny little bitch so hard that even Cards would have probably called me a pussy, beaten me up, and stolen my lunch money.

My legs practically gave way as I slid to the ground, my back against the pedestal. A bullet whizzed up past my head, but my attention was on my chest. It looked like a severely burnt chicken breast, black and charred where it should have been red and bleeding. Of course, the steam’s heat had mostly just supercooked the metal which had, in turn roasted me, so there was that. Taking a breath, I knew that I wasn’t yet done; the wound wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it was still open to the air, easy to infect. So, trying not to wonder if I’d go good with a side of mashed potatoes, I grabbed my ruined shirt and fastened it to myself, particularly atop the open wound. Hands, it turned out, were very good at manually tying knots, more so than any hoof, and within moments I had my chest wound covered, albeit poorly.

As I sat there, I didn’t hear any more gunshots. Why? I didn’t know, but I’d bet money that it was because the Black Man was just practicing being dramatically slow. Or mayhap he figured I’d cauterize the wound and he couldn’t get an erection unless someone was screaming. Either option seemed just as likely.

A part of me hoped he wasn’t taking aim at the Warden’s Hand, but then it dawned on me that while he couldn’t hit me back here—then a bullet hit the floor next to me with a spark. Then another and another, to either side of me. When I watched the hit, I noticed something. The bullets were hitting at angles, and they bounced off the metal floor. There was a chance they could bounce up and hit me.

“O mockingbird,” the Black Man called out, “you may hide, but you cannot escape me! You are not of this world, and such as you belong not in my world!”

Great! a thought angrily cogitated. He hates you so much now that you’ve inspired him to new levels of creativity!

“Shut up, me!” I hissed, unwilling to expose myself to the man by reaching for my duster or bags. Readying my body to spring and sprint, I waited for a bullet to hit the ground to my right. This bullet bounced and I could feel it just graze my ankle. With all my might, I jumped up and ran to the right where I knew he wouldn’t be aiming.

A bullet flew right on past my head as I ducked behind a mechanical tree. I’d been counting his shots. He’d fired now eight shots. Four more and he’d have to reload his shouldershooter/shattergun/rifle whatever. So, if I was here and safe from his bullets now, would he fire at me? A few moments later and I got my answer in the negatory. Now, my problem regarded how I’d find a way to make him shoot four more bullets. Of course, that was assuming he didn’t stop to reload right now. And when you assume… Wait, if I was the one assuming with myself, did that make and ass out of me and me? Double ass? Hmm.

Sitting there, I noticed blood on the floor near me. My nipple and the flesh around it was just sitting there on the ground. Anyone could have come along, taken it, and used my flesh for some sort of dark ritual. Also, there was a part of my body just sitting there, which was freaky. Really freaky. The nipple was stare staring at me—nipply!

I blinked, and realized something else. Off to the side, still behind the tree’s cover from the Black Man’s shattergun, was a very dead goat, its head a few feet away from its body thanks to the magic of bullets. The head bounced and rolled around as the angled pillar near it thumped the ground. As I watched the mechanical arms around the Cœur grabbing glass canisters from the ceiling, so too did they take out other cannisters from the Cœur—ones now filled with a glowing teal liquid—and set them into slots in the ceiling, I had a sudden idea. Under the hiss of all the steam and machinery, all I had to do was—

“I admit, I have no patience.”

My head jerked on its own. There was the Black Man and his shattergun, his eye tendrils slithering in the blackness of his eyes as if with eager anticipation. “Hi,” I said weakly.

He aimed the gun at my gut. “Low, actually.”

“That’s what you think,” I growled darkly. Looking directly at him, I smiled and pointed over his shoulder. “Now!”

“What the—?” he demanded, spinning around.

As I leapt up and tackled him, I shouted, “No one, bitch!” He didn’t spin around fast enough this time.

The Black Man grunted hard as we crashed together on the ground, me riding his back like I rode C—and the thought of how horribly sexual that word-choice sounded was was almost enough to make me pause. When he tried to get his gun up to me, I grabbed his arm, bent it backwards towards me, and bit a chunk out of his wrist.

“You taste like nothing in particular!” I barked as I spat out a chunk of manflesh. He, however, just screamed and dropped his gun, which I kicked away. Then I realized that if I’d picked the shattergun up, I could have shot him dead with it right then and there. Good going, me.

I wonder if this world has good strawberry banana smoothies.

That isn’t helping, me.

I grabbed the Black Man by the hair and repeatedly slammed his face into the ground, not entirely sure what I was accomplishing but feeling good about myself for doing it. He clawed and jerked around, grabbing the air as if something could save him. Now, though, I needed to find some suitably poetic way to kill him. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the Warden’s Hand still crawling around for no good reason, although a mental image did cross my mind of her being chased by a pack of invisible goats dead-set on violating her so as to restore the natural order of things wherein tentacles monsters only molested females and not males.

Then a goat head hit me square in the face.

“No, no—my anus is exit only!” I shrieked, flailing backwards. “My pen is not nor shall it ever be in a goat!” I realized that it was only the head of a goat, and not a goat itself, only when the Black Man rammed into me and pinned me on my back. Again. Because I was an idiot.

“You know what?!” the Black Man spat. “I’ve had it with your shit, mockingbird!”

“I only mock to cover up my spectacular insecurities!” I retorted, and he slugged me in the eyepatch.

“And I am done with your cocky bullshit!”

“Hey, if all you want is my cock, I’ll be happy to sleep with you here and now if it means I get to shut off the Cœur—as all the ladies say, I’m very talented with my mouth.”

He pulled out his knife. “Enough of you, Gunslinger, you abominable freak from another world!”

“Well, I’ll give you part of that,” came the voice of the Warden’s Hand. I heard the sound of my revolver being cocked. “His ass is outta this world.”

“What,” the Black Man and I stammered.

The Black Man’s head exploded. Twice. First his face just sort of evaporated, and then his brains just sort of turned into a fine slurry of mist and gray matter which painted the metal green behind him, each with its own unique explosions of wholesome family values.

“And, unfortunately for you,” she went on, “I kind of need that ass to shut down the Cœur and save my mother.”

I scrambled back from the now-limp corpse. Propping myself up, I looked over whence the Hand’s voice had come. She herself was sitting up, back against some sort of pedestal, a maniacal grin on her face as she held my gun in her hand. Now that I thought about it, she was sitting pretty much exactly where she’d been pointing to.

Oooh, so that’s what she’d meant by “gun”. Huh.

I cocked a brow at her. “That was the line you used?”

Panting, she set the gun on the ground. “Well, I needed a one-liner fast. It was the only thing I could think of.”

“To clarify, my ass was the only thing you could think of?”

“I… I’m only making this worse on myself, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” I replied, “pretty much.” Then, betwixt her bare, blood-covered breasts, I saw that her bullet wound was still open, still bleeding. “Are you okay?”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Fuck no—do you know how fucking much this fucking hurts?” Tightening my lips, I poked at my cauterized chest wound. “Oh, right. Well. Yhar, I could see how that could hurt more.

Standing up, I asked, “Hey, did you unload my gun and reload it with javelin rounds? Because I’m pretty sure his head exploded a few too many times for normal bullets.”

She shrugged, then winced. “Yes and no. I put a javelin in it, but this… this was that gun you fired earlier. You know, so it wasn’t fully loaded and… stuff.” The Hand broke out into a coughing fit as I searched the Black Man’s body for bullets.

I took the man’s bandoliers and rifled through his pockets for my bullets. All in all, I had netted myself some fifty-eight bullets for Skybane, which was now mine. It was mine by right of picking it up first, and it was also mine because it was now slung over my back. Sadly, though, I couldn’t find any more of those magic bullets on the Black Man’s body.

With my shiny new shattergun, I went over and got my gear back from the steam pedestal, but stopped at my bloody nipple. The damn thing, with its areola and brown flesh thereabout, looked so lonely. Worse yet, this was a a lot of flesh, the metaphorical and somewhat literal pound of flesh that a great many mares and stallions would have done anything to have had—even unattached, it was still a part of my body. To have that was to hold power over me; to have it would be to be able to subject me to black magic. There was, as per usual today, only one option.

I bent down, picked up my nipple, and looked it over. Steeling myself, I gave the nipple a silent goodbye before opening my mouth and consuming my flesh. The texture was okay, a bit chewy, a bit unchewy, and it it was cold. Within moments, it was done, and I’d had my flesh consumed.

I took out an Equestrian healing poultice and drank half and poured the other half into my cauterized wound. I was never going to repair my breast and get that nipple back, but mayhap if I was lucky, I could at least get a badass scar out of this deal, and not a nasty, infected burn wound forever more. When I was dressed and had my gear on, I trotted casually around the room until I had my weapons back, and then I went over to the Hand to retrieve my final revolver.

The Hand groaned when I knelt before her. “You know, I’m trying to stay awake, but it’s not working. Help?”

I looked around. “Can you walk?”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s why I dragged my fathersdamned tits around here till I got fucking tit burn!” She looked at my arms and blinked. “Shit, the fuck happened to your fucking arms?”

“When we get out of here, I’m going to have to buy you a dictionary.”

She coughed. “Ugh, why’s that?”

I offered her a little smile. “Because I’d like to teach you that there are other words out there besides ‘fuck’.” I reached my left hand out and put it on her forehead. “Well, I’ll be honest. I have no idea how hot or cold a werekind’s forehead should be, but I’m pretty sure you’re running a fever.” I gestured to several patches of reddened skin on her cheeks, breasts, and stomach. “It’s mostly concentrated around your breasts, since that’s where you got shot, and probably where that magic bullet’s, er, magic hit you hardest.”

The Hand bit her lip. “I… I don’t wanna fuckin’ die here. Not here. If I die, I wanna see Mom at least one last time. I-I-I—”

I gently pressed two fingers against her lips. “Shh, shh, shh, worry not thereabout. Just stay awake, stay alert, and stay golden while I go shut down the Cœur, okay?” I took my fingers from her lips. “I wish to hear an affirmation.”

“I… I gotcha.”

“That a girl!” I checked my revolver and loaded it back up to six bullets. “I’ll be back for you, but first I’ve to turn off the Cœur.” Which I have no idea how to do.

I went to stand, but she grabbed my arm. “Wait!” she said, her voice quiet. “I-I never even… I never told you my name.”

Looking into her dusty orange eyes, I offered her a soft smile. “I already know your name, Lightning Dust.”

The stunned look on her face was priceless as her hand went limp, letting free my arm. With a nod of my head, I stood. It was a short walk from there to the decontamination chamber with all the bloody vomit thereinside. A minute spent in the chamber later and once again I found myself in the Cœur’s little container room. There was this weird little beeping voice that probably meant that shit was about to explode, which made sense, given that it was going to explode.

I took a deep breath as I looked at the Black Man’s mocking little note. “Yes, well, who’s laughing now? It is me, for I live and you were killed by a topless woman.”

The little keypad next to the note looked worn out and used. Beneath numbers two through nine were three faded letters, starting with “ABC” and ending with, on nine, “WXY”, with no Q or Z anywhere to be found. Touching a number at random made a pleasant little beeping noise, and when I kept pressing, they made more such sounds. On the seven push, it made an angry cackling noise. I tried it again, and on the seventh number it crackled angrily. Somehow, I got it in my head that this meant that I had to enter a seven-digit sequence of numbers correctly before the Cœur shutdown on me.

Overall, that meant that there were… uh… shit, I didn’t know math, but there were probably more possible combinations than I could have possibly entered in one lifetime—and I probably had less than ten minutes, tops. An arbitrary assumption, yes, but since my ass was apparently ‘outta this world’, where was the harm is making myself into two of these asses? Of course, that assumed that the act of making myself into two asses would make those two asses copies of the one I already had, so… uh… did this now name me a quadruple ass?

“So,” I said to myself, “a seven-digit code and I’ve only got ten minutes before the world blows up. Let’s get to cracking! Zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero.” It crackled angrily. “Well, at least we learned that it actually was a seven digit combination. How’s about one-zero-three-five-six-eight-nine-one? Nada. Hmm… Then it must clearly be three-five-eight-nine-seven-zero-five. Nope.” I entered several more codes to no different effect. A sudden and very strong sense of déjà vu body checked me so hard that I had to take a step back, putting a hand to my head.

“I think,” someone started to say, and I leapt straight up into the air with a pathetically girlish shriek.

Trying to gather myself back together, I spun around. There, standing inside the open decontamination chamber was my friendly and only occasionally man-and-pony-eating steed. “C!” I exclaimed.

“Howdy, mate. What’s up?”

“Whence came you?”

He looked around and flicked his tail. “Quicksave.”

“What?”

“As I was trying to say, I think that those numbers actually stand for something. A word, I think.”

Heart still pounding from that startling, I looked down at the keypad. First, I was struck with the fact that I had no idea what a keypad actually was, nor had I ever heard the word until my brain had just pulled it up mere moments ago. Second, I had noticed the faded letters under the numbers before, but hadn’t thought much thereof. “Yes, I see it. What’s the keypad?”

“It’s that thing with the numbers and the buttons and it does stuff.” He pointed a hoof at the keypad. “See? How many times do I have to explain it to you?”

“You’ve never…” I shook my head, looking back at the keypad. “You think it’s a word, the code?”

“Or words, possibly.” He whinnied. “I’d offer a hand, but, well…” He struck out a leg and slammed a hoof into the ground. “I am a horse.”

As I looked back at C, I felt a chill run down my spine. The Cœur’s vision had told me to be wary of C, and, really, he was kind of a face-eating monster—not being wary of him, even treating him as a friend, was probably stupid.

My vision again fell upon the keypad. Seven letters. A word combination. And a random leap in logic made my pretty sure that each number correlated to one of the three letters therebeneath. So, knowing that, I could spell out words. I asked C, and he basically told me that yeah, I was right in my leap of logic.

Still, I needed a word. Maybe it was… Olympia? “Six-five-nine-six-seven-four-two.” It crackled in that same harsh way. “Any suggestions?”

C hummed. “Zyzzyva,” he offered, and spelt it out for me.

“This thing has no Z’s,” I said.

“Oh yeah. I forgot. Hm…” He tapped his chin in a way that I was pretty sure his body wasn’t designed to be able to do at all, his arm twisting and bending and stretching unnaturally. “Judging?”

Five-eight-three-four-four-six-four. “Nope.”

“Jazzies?”

I gave him a flat look. “This thing has no Z’s, C. Do you even know what you’re doing?”

He scoffed. “Of course I do! You can also trust me, for I am C!” He lowered his voice. “And yes, I did just say that to rhyme. So, what about we try…”

But I was no longer listening. I was too busy being thunderstruck. “You can trust me, for I am C”, he’d said. That’s what he’d said, and it was just bouncing around in my head. Back in the Cœur vision, my angel—or, at least how I perceived my angel—had said not to trust C, for “C is a liar”. I couldn’t trust C, but here I was, taking his words here. So I looked back at the keypad. “C is a liar, C is a liar” kept running through my head. “C is a liar! C is a liar!”

I reached out and typed in a code. “Two-seven-two-five-four-two-seven.”

The keypad beeped happily, the alarm-sounds dying down, and the machines outside the room suddenly slowing down to a crawl before finally stopping. It was over. The code had worked. The Cœur was shut down, and the great heart of Olympia was no more. At least, I made sure it’d be no more when I drew my guns and shot the panel with all the buttons into oblivion. The debris fell into the glowing sphere of the Cœur, and that was that.

Somewhere, I could feel the angel’s dark smile slithering into my brain, shining down on me from wherever it was that angels who told you to murder bad people hung out.

I watched as the Cœur lifted itself back up above its little pit in the ground. From behind me, C said, “Hey, that code worked? Honestly, I was just guessing with ‘quiggly’, but, hey, whatever works, right? Now all we have to do is actually shut it down.”

My heart sunk. “Wait. That wasn’t shutting it down?”

I turned around to see C frowning. “Didn’t you read the note? You pressed the ‘Blow Up The World’ button, not the off button. In fact, you sort of shot the control panel where the off button was. So, now we gotta do it manually.”

“What?”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t always resort to violence to solve your problems.”

“Oh, sod off,” I groused. “Just tell me how to turn it off.”

He shrugged, yet again in a way that I was pretty sure his body wasn’t meant to bend. “Well, since you destroyed the control panel, the only way to turn it off would be to forever shut it off by reaching into the Cœur and, er… basically, there’s a tiny thing at the center of the Cœur that you must pull out.”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted. “And how do you know this?”

“I read the walkthrough,” he said, and there was a moment of silence.

“Are you screwing with me?”

“Yes, yes I am screwing with you.” He smiled. “But my point stands.”

Sighing, I gesturing to the floating sphere of doom. “Well, go on, then. Hop on into the Cœur and get the whatchamajigger.”

C stepped out of the decontamination chamber and onto the little lip surrounding the Cœur, the blue light reflecting in his eyes as if his eyes were perfect mirrors. “Yes, that would be the logical thing to do, since I pretty much would be unfazed by the horror of the Cœur. But no, fuck you; I don’t wanna do it.”

“What?” I exclaimed, stamping a foot. “Why not?”

He shook his head like a dog trying to dry itself of sulfuric acid. “You have to do it all on your own, Gunslinger—because that’s just the more dramatic thing to do.”

“Oh, you utter cocksmothering bastard! I’m probably going to get cancer and die horribly from this and… Huh.” I shifted my weight. “Well, now that I think thereabout, I can’t fault you on that logic—it’s about as airtight as anything can possibly be.” I took a breath. “So, do I just… what, reach in and feel around like I’m trying to grope a girl in the dark?”

“Essentially, yes,” he said with a nod.

I moved to reach into the core as I had before. “If this kills or seriously and forever injures me, I’m going to come back from the dead and haunt the shit out of you.”

He smiled wide, so wide that it ripped his cheeks open, exposing the sides of his teeth. “Don’t worry,” he spoke in a dark tone that sounded perfectly honest, “if this ends badly for you, I’ll free the slaves outside—maybe eat alive one or three of the evil-looking ones—and then bring you and your lady to the localmost hospital. You’ll be fine, alright?”

“Right, right,” I muttered, and I reached into the watery blue glowing sphere of murder world-ending horror, because it was the only, most dramatic option.

And then everything went to shit in a handbasket.

The very last thing I recalled thinking about was what the angel had told me, what I had entered as the code to the Cœur. Two-seven-two-five-four-two-seven.

“C’s a liar.”

Author's Note

Footnote: level up!

New Perk: Wholesome Family Values — You are a model upon which all men/stallions should look and aspire to! Because of this, you know do +25% damage with all explosives! This bonus also affects damage from explosive rounds. Make sure to teach Junior how to accidentally shoot his sister from an early age!

[This chapter is long is long is long and took two+ weeks to write. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.]

[Oh, and next chapter, we have a very special guest star, and some of us might know her from a certain fic in the fandom; we’re picking her up because she’s amusing and because I’m a friend of the author. Yes, I know you (you know who you are) think I have too many characters, but I’ve learned nothing from my mistakes.

[Ach, and one last thing. Siffer drew this amateur Lyra, which he would like to dedicate to you, Myriad of Failure. And also to you, pawndidater2 Keep being awesome, Myriad! And keep being mad enough to doodle about stuff, pawndidater2! (And stop blueballing us with that promise of a fancy Gunslinger Werekind!Jericho~). Cheers to all people mad enough to be inspired by this weird little thing I write to draw something!]

[On last thing. I write on Google Drive, and I encourage my editors to leave snarky comments that are funny to read as they edit. What would you say if I released the Google Drive version of Jericho with all those comments available for you to read/add your own?]

Chapter 31 — Victory...

Chapter 31: Victory…

“Nnngh, no! Tuesday morning, the disaster! Incoming!”

Friends.

Be they mere acquaintances or long-known partners, they were important. My people would rarely use our word for friend, for that was simply our way. Still, Frosty Winds had nigh called me as such on the train before I destroyed her life. Lighting Dust had called me no dissimilar, stating I had been something akin to her only friend, which was why that mare was willing to do so much for me. Even Octavia Melody had said to me “anything for a friend” when we met last in Canterlot.

But I did not have friends. At best, I had confederates. At worst I had tools.

Once, I had friends, even a best friend. Mr. Welch was his name, a bastard spawn of a failed breed of changeling, as sex-obsessed as he was handsome and charming and clever. When last we met, he sacrificed his old self that I may live, but it wasn’t the last time I saw him, no. The last time I saw him was after that, when I murdered him. It was the fate of all my friends, for I had never possessed a friend whom I haven’t ending up murdering, either by mistakes, sacrifice, or because sometimes people just were tools in the end. Welcome to my team, mate! But if you want to be my friend, I’ve got to end up killing you! Deal? Cool!

As I trudged through Doc Holiday’s hospital, my duster bloody from Frosty, I supposed then that by that logic, Frosty had been upgraded to “honorary friend”, for though she lived yet, I had still killed her. I’d taken her from the New Pegasus train depot to this place because C was nowhere to be found, which is why the bastard hadn’t really helped me get aboard the Terror Train. With all my new medical “donations” and a few gold coins to the hospital, I assured that Frosty would be well taken care of.

That train of thought ended with a slight smile on my face. With that smile, I broke out into a gallop. Thinking about how I now had the medicine to save Lighting Dust made me a hit like that, I supposed. Soon I was sprinting forwards, down the hall, and finally into the room.

“I’m here!” I shouted giddily. “I have the medicine! We can save her life!”

As I looked to Dust’s bed, my giddy smile went to a warm, cozy smile. Both Dust and her mother were asleep, all nestled up and cute. Dust’s mom had her head laid forwards on her daughter’s breast. Lighting Dust, however pale she was, looked like a little angel. I could imagine her with wings once more, but attached to her current body. Looking at the scene made me sigh with pleasure. A job well done, some inconsequential broad sacrificed, but I had saved the day.

Of course, I didn’t want to wake the two out of little familiar nap, but I did sort of have to. Quietly, I closed the door, took out my box of medicine, and crept over to the bed. “Hey, Dust, Dust’s mother. I’m here,” I whispered. Her mother stirred but Dust herself remained motionless. A part of me really wanted to draw penises on her face for when she woke up, but, well…

“Mrs. Lightning Dust’s mother,” I said, reaching out a hand to the old dame. When I touched her shoulder, the woman suddenly jerked, slapping my hands away.

“Ma’am, ma’am,” I said as reassuringly as possible, and even offering therethrough a soft chuckle, “it’s okay, it’s just me. And look!” I rattled the box. “I’ve got the medicine! Your daughter’s going to pull through!”

She looked up at with with a confused, lost expression, her eyes red, like from crying. “G-Gunslinger?” the woman asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” I said with a chuckle. “You need not cry, for I have come with what your daughter needs.”

“My… my daughter?” she questioned, as if the entire word were foreign. Her eyes twitched and got moist. In that one look, all feelings of hope within me died a black, raped-by-clowns death. She dropped her head down and just cried.

“Ma’am?” I asked, her tears soaking her face. I swallowed as I watched her ball her hands into fists. Dust’s red bandana around my neck felt rather tight all of the sudden.

She looked at me with gritted teeth. As our eyes met, she slowly gave in and lost all traces of fire in her eyes, all traces of life. As she laid her head back upon Dust’s breast, I heard a whisper-like voice: “She’s dead, Gunslinger.”

I took a deep breath, and she continued. “She has gone from us. She’s left to meet with the Founding Fathers in the Heavenly City. She is… dead, Gunslinger…”

As I let the breath out, I nearly fell back against the wall as the horror washed over me. In my bags I had the kinds of medicines now that would have kept her alive, even cured her of the schotl-borne illness. I had murdered a comrade for this medicine! I had deemed Dust’s life worth more than Frosty’s, and so sacrificed her to Jayne the Terror Train! And… and was it all for nothing. Literally for nothing? For the only thing I really wanted to to save Dust’s life as my kind of a thank-you present.

“How long?” I asked, my voice sounding far firmer than I would have it’d be. Almost cold. Harsh.

“Long enough,” Dust’s mother said with a tone of dead resoluteness that left no room for argument. She had no hope that her daughter could even have been saved, not even by the darkest of black magics. Lighting Dust was dead, and I have sacrificed Frosty for nothing, because I… I…

“All her life,” she went on, “I had protected her. I had been there for her. I stood between her and her father; I took the punches and beatings from him so that she wouldn’t have to deal with then. I… I still have the scars on my back for the one he tried to… her… and he tried to…” She broke out into a tiny, mewling sob of memorial horror.

“She was my all, my sun and moon.” Dust’s mother caressed her daughter’s cheek so softly, with so much motherly passion that, for a moment, I regretted that I had never had a mother. “I sacrificed everything I had for her. And when Olympia fell, it was only us. She was a beautiful, grown woman now, and I thought that I… I had finally created something good. My daughter… the only good thing I’d given the world, and by the Fathers was it a good thing.”

“Mrs. Lighting Dust’s mother,” I said weakly.

“Taran,” she said. “My name is Taran.”

I nodded. Dust had said that her mother was from somewhere up north, so I supposed that the name Taran was a northern name. “Miss Taran.” I froze. “I… I cry your pardon—”

“Save it,” she said in a dark, empty tone. “I know you did all that you could, Gunslinger. I think that’s why she liked you. Do you know what her last words were, even? They were, ‘Don’t cry, Ma. I’m sure the Gunslinger will be here any moment now.’ A-and then…”

My lips tightened as I forced back a grimace. There had been so many things I did aboard Jayne that could have cut down on time, and then I could have gone and saved Dust. Dammit all, why did I insist on drinking tea and letting Frosty enjoy eating snack cakes!? Stupid… stupid…

“When the Blackguard forced me to work for them,” she slowly went on, “the only thing that kept me going was the thought that my daughter was out there, was still alive, and that my death would only make her cry. A-and I hated to see her in pain.” She sniffed. “Those fuckers did everything to break me, but I had Lighting Dust in my heart.” She grit her teeth and said, “When those fuckers raped me, I took it, because I knew that Lighting Dust was still out there, I would stay alive for her.” I took a step back at this, which basically meant my ass hit the wall; there was no running away from this. “And now… and now… without her, I…” She broke out crying again.

My eye was like steel, my gaze long, as I simply stared, waiting for her to stop crying. But she never truly did. Not until, that is, she looked up at me with tears in her tired old eyes and asked, “May I have your gun?”

I didn’t have to ask her why, but I also couldn’t move.

“Please, Gunslinger… No mother should have to outlive her own daughter…”

It took me a moment to ever gather myself and forth my mind out of its thunderstruck status. When I finally did, I slowly shook my head no. “I won’t be the instrument to further death this day, not to good folks like you.”

She clasped her hands together; to me, she looked like a dog begging for food. “Look, I don’t know how it is in the Rike, but here in Evesland, it is honorable to kill yourself with a gun. And such rare, masterful weapons of war such as yours… please, Gunslinger. Just give me this!”

I gave her a hard look. “No, Taran. You’re better than this. do you think this is what Lightning Dust would have wanted?” At her daughter’s name, Taran flinched back. “Do you think she would have wanted you to die like this, like a dog? As you fought and lived for her sake, so did Dust fight and live and work for your sake. She accomplished much with the ends of finally freeing you, of finally having you back.” My every word oozing venom, I went on with: “And I won’t let a bullet be wasted on some tired old maid.”

Taran hung her head. “I… I… Oh Fathers, I don’t know what to do without her!”

“You can start by living,” I said. “If you had died, would not you have wanted her to continue living?” She nodded. “Then do as for her as you would have her do.”

She continued to hang her head and sob. Gritting my teeth, I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Miss Taran.”

She looked up at me. “Gunslinger, I… I…” She swallowed, looking back at her caught. “You know, they say that some things we cannot change, that some events are simply fixed, that there is no room for choice or chance.”

“You speak of Fatalism,” I said in a solemn voice.

“Yhar, I guess I do.” She leaned over to her daughter and kissed her with that same kind of motherly tenderness that made me wish, for but a moment, that I’d known a mother instead of the father I’d had. “I love you, Lightning Dust. Mama loves you…” She sniffed, then slowly, shakily, got to her feet. “I need… I need some air…” When she moved to walk, she tripped and fell. I caught her, holding her up. She was lighter than I had expected, her and her rounded hourglass form. Now in my arms, she looked up at me and cried.

I didn’t let her go, only held her tightly. It was what she likely wanted, and she didn’t try to pull out. And then she wrapped her arms around me, holding me in kind. With a sigh, I said, “Taran, I am so sorry.”

She sniffled, trying to control her weeping. “Don’t be, Gunslinger. You did everything possible.”

“But it wasn’t good enough.” My lips tightened till they were naught but a thin scar under my nose.

“You… you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it.” She blinked hard, trying to get the tears off her face. I reached for my… for Dust’s bandana, the one she’d said had once belonged to Taran, and used it to wipe away her tears. She smiled weakly at the gesture. “She spoke so highly of you, a-and I… I can see why, Gunslinger.”

“One shouldn’t speak highly of those who fail as I do,” I replied.

She put a hand on my cheek. “Please, don’t blame yourself. Not for her or for me.” And before I could say anything, she brought her head forwards and kissed me upon the lips. I didn’t kiss back. Couldn’t, no matter how passionate she was trying to be. For God’s sake, Dust was right there and this was kind of creepy therebecause.

But by the time I realized what she’d meant, my gunbelts felt lighter, and then came the ear-shattering bang. I tasted Taran’s blood in my mouth as her body went limp. And in my shock, I actually swallowed it.

The pattern of brains and blood on the wall behind her, and to an extent upon her daughter, were almost beautiful. An intricate spiderweb of liquidly crimson and gray matter made more awing for the sight therewithin. It may have just been pareidolia, but I swore I saw the word “Love” outlined by blood upon the wall.

I took a step back in horror, then looked down at the thing which had been Taran’s head. My eye twitched. I could have been faster, could have stopped it, but I had been too damn slow… Or maybe, some deep part of me simply hadn’t wished to stop her, had known that to live meant for her to suffer, and was just cruel enough to let her end it all here.

Whatever the case, I collected my gun and reloaded it, then just… froze. I just stood there up until Doc Holiday ran into the room and demanded to know what had happened. As calm as I could make my shaky voice sound, I explained to him what had happened and left the room. I needed some air—just some goddamn air! And also to brush my teeth. Because they felt dirty whence Taran’s blood had touched them. So very dirty…

|— ☩ —|

Failure. That’s all there was for me today, wasn’t there? I couldn’t save Lighting Dust, and I couldn’t save Taran, and all it’d cost to learn that was to brutally grind a girl’s arm into oblivion. I was unclean. I’d said it as a lie to the witch, but the more and more I thought thereabout, the more I came to believe mine own lies. And if one believes one’s own lies, don’t they become true?

I shook the angsty mumbo-jumbo from my head with grunt, and made sure to keep them away by downing a shot of whiskey. I didn’t swallow it, you understand, I merely used it in lieu of water to brush away the coppery taste of Taran’s blood. I brushed hard, harder than need be, and made sure I’d gone on for the recommended minimum of two minutes. Brushie, brushie, brushie—let alcohol burn me clean of the sins of bloodsie. After the recommended two minutes, I threw my head back and gurgled the whiskey.

“What are you doing?” the surly bartender woman of Double D’s asked me from behind the counter before me.

I blinked, swallowing the whiskey, letting it burn down my gullet and into my gut. “Um. In my country, one brushes teeth in public,” I lied. “’Tis a show of good dental hygiene. Very important. Is this not what Eveslanders do?”

“No, not really,” she replied in a hesitant voice.

The livebox in the background’s music petered off. Then came the latest news report from Big Bag-a-Wolf. “Hot damn, friends of mine!” he exclaimed with laughter. I grit my teeth and tightened my grip on my bottle’s neck. “Y’all remember that gunslinger what appeared out of the blue just the other day and saved the whole fathersdamned world from the Black Man? Well, guess what he’s just done today! Well, most of you know about the poor, starving town of New Pegasus—the place what’s left of Olympia perpetually plagued by raiders and outlaws, occasionally reaved through by Caroleans to weed out dissidents, but protected by friend-of-the-show, the Warden.

“Well, today, we get word that King Elkington’s massive train got hit and went down. By whom, you ask? Well, I dunno, friends. Was it… the Gunslinger?! Yeah, it totes was! All by himself, the Gunslinger boarded the moving train, fought through, killed Black Jack Parishioner, hijacked the engine, and then just freely gave all those tons of food and medicine to the starving, dying folks of New Pegasus!

“Now, I know many of your out there like Elkington—so do I, though not as much as my competition, Bitchin’ Betty—but the folken of New Pegasus really needed a break, and the Gunslinger—champion of the people!—was there and pulled through for those hungry, poor people. And now, the Wardens are helping to distribute freely all of this food and medicine. So, three cheers to the Gunslinger! Hile thee! Hile thee! And, for luck: Hile thee!”

I grit my teeth as someone said, “Wait, shit. Fuck, that’s him! That’s the Gunslinger!”

And the entire population of Double D’s, strippers and waitresses and bartender included, broke out into cheers like those of Big Bag-a-Wolf.

Quickly, I put my bottle of whiskey into my bag, gave the bar a curt wave, but found that I couldn’t leave with all the people trying to cheer me on, pat me on the back, and even a few girls and boys attempting to peck me on the cheeks. After one man kissed my lips, I’d had it.

“Stop it, all of you Olympians!” I yelled, and to their credit, they stopped. “Thank me not for what I did. Hit me, nail me, kill me, fear me—but for the sake of the mothers who bore you and the fathers who smiled upon you, do not thank me!” I realized my err the moment I’d finished: humility. It looked as if I was being humble, not… whatever the hell I was trying to be. Who was gaining a personal hero cult? This guy.

On the plus side, I was able to slip outside on this attempt. I didn’t know whereto I wanted to go, and I couldn’t go to Jayne since they were still unloading all the supplies, so I just… went.

|— ☩ —|

I looked at the bottle of whiskey, contemplating it. Here in this dandy place, some kind of sauna I had all to myself, there was nothing but the bottle and I. Oh, and also C the horse wearing several towels.

“Do you feel bad for what you did to Frosty?” C asked, rolling around on his back in this steamy room.

I grunted. “Should I?”

“A normal man would be.”

“I cry thy pardon, but I no man am.” I cracked a smile. “I’m a pony, recall? Just a tiny horse, as these folker see it.”

C gave a horsey kind of grunt. “But ye have the flesh of a man. And man is but one N off from Mann.”

“Is this true?” I kicked my legs idly from the little sauna bench whereupon I sat.

“To say true, it depends on your spelling. Official Songnam spelling word is Em-Ash-En-En. Mænn. Demotic is Em-Ay-En. Man.”

“Funny,” I said with a grunt. “Mann has nought to do with these werekindred. Mann just refers to an adult male, regardless of species.”

C whinnied. “Abscond not with our topic. If you don’t feel bad over that with Frosty, what then?”

I sighed, leaning back. “Because I harmed the innocent to save a life already gone. Because that is not what good people, what heroes, do. Because… because I failed. Because I’m an idiot. Because I…” I shook my head. “Because I can’t find a way to articulate another ‘Because I’ argument.

“Now, you tell me, C: what are you doing here?”

“I like steam. Also saunas. And because I am a horse.”

“In Calêrhos, I mean.”

“I…” C looked at me and smiled with that terrifying grin only a Calêrhos horse could muster. “I am down here because it is the fallen angel’s time to rise, and I am nothing if not an agent of the just and good.”

“Aside from the part where you eat folks.”

“No, especially including when I eat folks. Ponyfolk, manfolk, griffonfolk, zebrafolk—all are equal under the ever watchful eyes of Oz. You, pony, are simply of an inferior race, biologically speaking, of course. It’s not racism, it’s literally just a biological fact. Werekindred, though…” He grit his teeth. “I loathe werekindred. That Dust and her mother here are dead only does me joy, for werekindred deserve nothing less.”

If I had my guns on hand, I would have shot C’s head off, if only to watch it grow back. “Why do you say this?”

He puffed air harshly out of his nostrils, scatting steam. “They dare hold such great arrogance of themselves. They profane everything that I stand for, everything wherefor my kind had stood, and they call me a monster for being the universe’s oldest mortal. They would aspire to greatness, yet they don’t even know just how false their entire existence is.” Suddenly, C jumped up to his hooves and ran out of the room.

Perplexed, I stood up, either to go after him or close the sauna door, but then my towel fell off. And then a little girl, naked but for a towel, stepped into the doorway. She took one looked at me, shrugged, and stepped into the sauna, closing the door behind her.

“Um,” I droned, and then recognized her as the Warden’s ward. That snarky girl-child. Then I remembered I was naked, and scrambled for my towel.

She looked straight at it and said in an offhanded manner, “I’ve see bigger and blacker; yours doesn’t scare me.” The girl took a seat on the bench opposite me as I finally got my towel back in order. “If you’re asking why I’m not with the Warden, it’s because I just explained to him the…” She bit her tongue, sighed hard, and rolled her eyes. “I just explained to him the cats and the squirrels, and he’s been in his room crying with horror ever since.” Before I could ask, I and was going to ask, she said, “I told him about four hours ago. He still can’t believe men penetrate women every day all around him.”

I blinked. “Aren’t you, like, twelve?”

“Yhar, and I can bet you that I’m smarter than most everybody in New Pegasus but for you and… and for Lighting Dust.” She sighed. “I came to talk about her. I knew you were here, and I figured that waiting might finally give the Warden time to come to terms with the fleeting penisness of his existence, and then come find me. Plus, I’ve never been to a sauna before.”

“She’s dead,” I said, fidgeting with my thumbs.

“You don’t say. Why, as if I came here to ask you how she was going when I could have just gone up to her and asked her herself—oh wait, that entire bit of the hospital is cordoned off because Dust’s mother shot herself in the face.”

“Uh, technically she put the gun nigh to mouth and then fired,” I offered helpfully. “I watched.”

“And I once walked in on my father trying to shave his pubic hair off with a rabbit’s paw, just before the Warden burst in and killed him and my mother. Big whoop. Wanna join the ‘I’ve seen some fucked up shit in my day’ club? We’ve got jackets and I’m acting cute mascot.”

“Huh.” I pressed my tongue into my lip. “Again, you’re supposed to be twelve? Because I don’t believe you’re twelve at all, not by a longshot. And also, how come I can’t be the cute mascot?”

“Because your penis isn’t big or black enough to be our cute mascot.”

I blinked. “What.”

She stared back at me with a perfectly blank face.

“I… I feel as though I should question this point, but I’m doubly afraid you’ll drop your towel and display for me a monster.”

“Funny,” she said in her weirdly toneless voice, cocking a brow. “That was literally what I was going to propose doing.”

I shrank back against the sauna wall. “I… I feel like I’m being hit on, and the thought of being hit on by a mostly naked twelve-year-old girl while we’re both in the sauna fills me with the overwhelming urge to vomit.”

For the briefest of moments, she flashed a smirk. “Hitting on you? Quite the opposite, Gunslinger. Here’s the deal: as soon as we finish unloading the train of goods, you get out of my town, and you never come back. That’s it.”

“What?”

“Look, you’re a hero, right?”

I bit my lip, then reluctantly shook my head. “I… I am no such hero today.”

“No shit; I can see it in your eyes. You’re a killer. A hunter. But you’re the kind of person who does care about being seen as a hero, nevertheless.” She paused for a moment. “I spoke with Frosty Winds in the hospital after she woke up, and I don’t think what happened to her was an accident.” I blinked, staring at this little cretin. “I think you knew that little floor-grinder would screw her over, and that you let it happen. And then Frosty spaced out, and in that daze she told me something: when you laugh, your eye doesn’t laugh alongside you. Then she mumbled something about General Parishioner calling you the ‘Marked of Kane’.”

I nodded slowly. “Though I know not what that means, King Elkington seems to think it bad.”

“It is,” she said flatly. “The Marked of Kane will bring nothing but death, ruin, and destruction—as foretold in the prophecy Black Erelith gave before she was burned at the stake nearly a thousand years ago. And when your towel fell to the ground, I saw the mark myself. While I don’t care much for the ravings of a mad witch, I get the gut feeling that you’re a very bad man, Gunslinger. A very bad man.”

She gestured a thumb to the wall behind her. “Train’ll be unloaded in an hour. Now, I don’t know all the details, not even half, but my gut also tells me to distrust absolutely everything you say and do, Gunslinger. And you are the fool if you think you can convince me otherwise.”

The Fool, my patron tarot card.

“So, when that hour’s up, you are to leave his town, because if you stick around, I just know you’ll end up being the death of the Warden. Now, I may loathe him to his very core, but he is the one willingly feeding me with no expectations of anything in return, so I at least owe him enough to keep his ass alive. So you will leave after the hour, and if not, well… a little girl can get much more sympathy than some tall, dark foreigner, no?” She smiled and said in a voice actually befitting of a little girl her age, “So, mister, why don’t you take you and your far-too-pale penis out of here before I scream that there’s some pervert in my sauna?”

“You are an evil little girl,” I said, and smiled. “God, how I wish you were mine own daughter.”

“And how I think I would have enjoyed you over the father who actually sired me into the witch I am.” She shook her head. “But, no, really, if you don’t get out now, I’ll throw away my towel, flail around on the floor, and scream ‘Help, help! That’s too big! Please, mister, don’t break me in half with it’ and so forth.” She blinked. “Oh, wait. Can I ask you something?”

“Um, sure…?”

“Why the hell were you in the sauna with a horse, and why did it run out terrified?”

|— ☩ —|

As the day wound on, I still couldn’t find it in me to actually drink my whiskey. Use it for mouthwash, yes. Imbibe it to help me forget my sins? No; the actual will to drink would have to come elsewhence. And as I stood there in the dark room, leaning against the wall and creepily watching as my one-armed Olympian lay in her hospital bed, I wondered if I was close to finding that elsewhence.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” I said softly. “I heard the change in the breathing pattern. You sleep no longer, and that is the truth.”

Frosty groaned, then wobbled her nub-arm around. “Ugh, five more minutes, Daddy.”

“Well, I suppose you can call me ‘Daddy’ if you want to make this unnecessarily kinky.”

She grunted again, then stopped waving her stub around, instead covering her face with her right arm. “Well, sorry if I want to sleep. That little brat refused to let me rest earlier.”

I said nothing, simply letting Frosty wake herself up. When she sat up in her bed, her covers fell down, and I saw all the bandages around her chest, forehead and stump-arm. Frosty yawned, stretching herself out like she was preparing for a race. “Ya look like shit, Gunslinger.”

At that, I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re one to talk. You lost an arm. I merely lost a… a friend.”

“Lighting Dust girl you mentioned?” she asked, and I nodded. “Hmm. Well, sounds like you got the shit end of that.”

“I cry your pardon, but I follow you not.”

Frosty smiled and made a motion like she were trying to cross her arms, which failed. “Look at it this way—the only remaining purpose I had left was a vendetta, and now that that’s nicely tied up, I’m going on vacation. Maybe somewhere sunny. With handicap access.”

I shook my head, then walked over to her bedside and took a place in the little chair there. “Hmm. And I presume your dreams of being a tight-rope walker are thoroughly crushed?”

“A lot of things are, but at least I’ll finally get the respect I deserve by being a helplessly sexy cripple. Bright side of life, right?”

I sniggered. It was the only thing I could do, and the alternative was to break down. I looked at her, and found myself confronted with the weight of my sins and failure. Heroes weren’t supposed to ever fail, but today I had. And, shit, this little werekind was taking it all better than I was! “Well, I guess so. I suppose a lot of guys are in the market for a one-armed handjob… I think. I really wouldn’t know.”

Frosty smiled. “Well, of course a buncha guys are into that kinda thing.”

Cocking a brow, I leaned back in my chair. “And I shan’t disagree, just that I myself see not the appeal therein.”

“Oh, stop speaking like you’re a fancy sonofabitch,” she scoffed.

“I cry your pardon, ma’am,” I said. “When I get a bit nervous, or go through one of several other emotions, I tend to speak slightly more like the Teutscher I am: one-to-one, our languages would sound very archaic by your standards. It changes not… It doesn’t change the fact that I can’t really see the appeal in one-armed handjobs.”

She cracked a wicked, toothy grin. “And that’s your problem; ya can’t knock it till you try it.” Frosty rose a hand into the air, then made a single, vicious, vice-like snapping motion therewith, followed by a vigorously violent masturbatory motion as she made direct eye contact with me. They she winked and blew me a kiss. When she saw the face I made in response, she burst out laughing. “There. There’s my fun for the day.”

“I… beg pardon?”

Frosty leaned back in her bed and uttered a pleased sigh, like she’d just been pretending to have good sex with someone who sucked at sex. “The sound of one hand clapping sounds a lot like disappointment.” She glanced at me, then looked forwards. “I would know. I’ve been there before.”

It took a moment for the implication behind her words to click. “Wait. Come again?” She didn’t reply. “Because, back in the train, I am pretty sure that… well… I’ve seen you naked before.”

“Yeah, you’ve seen what little I’ve to offer,” she said in an offhanded manner. “That’s my secret weapon, trying to convince folker there’s more under my clothes than there is. You’ve seen, so my feminine wiles are powerless now against you. Kinda sad. I can’t hit on you now just to try to fluster you. Do you know how boring that’s gonna make our relationship? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

I rubbed my eyes. Or well, rubbed one eye, and prodded at the sewn-up flesh where my other eye would have been. “You know, when I woke up today, the last thing I was expecting was to have another man ram him penis down into my urethra and make me his bitch. But the second to last thing I was expecting was to be hit on by a one-armed girl.”

Frosty shrugged. “If you squint real hard and gimme fifty bucks, I can be a boy just for you.” I grunted, and she went on with, “Let’s say I have a very innate understanding of many different harness knots and the creative strap-on uses of the common squash.”

It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea if that would actually fool anybody. I’d never taken the time to really do an in-depth study of my new set of genitals. For all I knew, it could literally look like a squash. Or maybe a carrot. I really hadn’t wanted to look, since they didn’t feel like mine own set of tools, and it was a common courtesy in the Fatherland not to manhandle the junk of your fellow Männer. Of course, maybe that wasn’t the case in Equestria. After all, der Laiskas, our holy book, in its first half—the Book of Chains—alludes to the fact that the best way to have sex was missionary position for the sole purpose of procreation followed by a firm hoofshake. So maybe when Duke Elkington showed me the bad touch, he was just giving me a friendly Equestrian greeting!

Wait, no. That never actually happened. None of that did, but I’d been saying it so much that it made any difference. I made my own reality!

Apparently, I had been sitting there in thought for too long, because Frosty let out a “Bleh” followed by: “Hey, is it weird that I’m more upset that I may have just lost the knife that I just bought than I am about actually losing the arm itself? Because I had a knife on a sheath on that arm, since it was awesome.” She sighed. “Ugh, the one fucking time I find a knife that matches the other one.”

I shook my head. “I know I’d be irked in your position for much the same reason. A good blade is invaluable, Fräulein. Look at my sword.” I gestured to the sword I still carried, though which had come to be outshone in importance by my revolvers. “I had to steal it from a museum.”

“Why, I recall when that bogtopus pretty much cut off my hoof—er, my right hand, and I thought ‘Well, at least I jerk off with the left one’ before I fell down into the mud. So, I’m sure you’ll be fine. There were only minor amounts of train oil and industrial lubricants in your open wound at worst, so no infections, plus the medicines should keep you well and healthful.”

She reclined in her bed. “I have a sudden hankering for grapes.”

“Why grapes? Had there been more time this day, I’d taken you for a strawberry-banana smoothie. Those are most pleasant upon the palette, would not you say? Although, I’ll have to make sure you are sixteen or older, because I don’t want to look like some creep having smoothies with a lady so well below his age. What age are you, Miss Frosty?”

“I’m, like, twenty-three. Flattered, though.” She found a little bandage with a colored design somewhere on her body. “Oooh, sparkly.” She blinked. “Wait. ‘So well below his age’? How old are you?”

I slowly shook my head and shrugged. “I have lost track of the days since I left the Fatherland.”

She gestured at her left eye. “I think it’s the eyepatch. Makes you look older. More grizzled.” Frosty dragged her finger down below the eye and over the cheek. “And that badass scar. Really ages you, man.” Then she adopted a very confused expression. “I just realized I can’t remember what color panties I’m wearing, and for some reason that really bothers me.”

I shrugged. “In the future, may I suggest black or red? Those are rather cool colors which I am deeply fond of. Ooh! And stockings. Lots of stockings and garter belts. Corsets too, if you’re feeling it, even though I can’t understand how you women wear them.” I shook my head. “In conclusion, wear red or black. Mayhap a laced corset too. And stockings. Although, unlike Lightning Dust of New Pegasus had been doing”—I paused for a second to dwell upon my dead confederate—“please don’t wear a chainmail bikini. I mean, not that it helped her when she did get shot, since it basically hit her square between the breasts, but… Ugh, I swear, her damn pants weren’t attached to the part around her pelvis by anything but garter belt, and all I could think was ‘Why?’”

Frosty laughed, looking up at the ceiling. “Yeah, yeah. If you can find me a nice corset and help me lace it up, I promise I’ll wear it and sexy stockings for you. Deal?”

I smiled, climbing to my feet. “Deal, Miss Frosty Winds. I’m glad to see you are well, and now I must depart. Sorry if it seems sudden, but I am on a timer.”

When I turned to leave, she stopped me. “Where are you going?”

“To the town of Sleepy Oaks. I must depart, and I do not believe I will ever return.” Gritting my teeth, I thought about how my time-wasting had cost Lighting Dust and her mother their lives. The more time I wasted, the closer something was to happening which would lead to Stronghold and his stolen book, Calêrhos, getting to Sleepy Oaks, and probably killing the werekind Cards before bringing his wife back with him into my world. I was too slow. I was too slow. I was too damn slow. And I had to get there before him. I would not fail once more. “I am to leave now, and I fear that we will never each other again see. Wir werden uns nie wiedersehen.”

Frosty reached out her hand and grabbed mine. “Wait, no. Don’t just leave me here!”

You can’t just knock a girl to the ground, buy her a drink, and then just walk off! Lighting Dust had said after I’d first met her in the Watering Whole, a plea not unlike Frosty’s now. Please, please don’t just leave me here without telling me something.

I grit my teeth at the memory. I’d only ended up taking Lighting Dust along with Cards and me because I figured I could’ve used a pegasus, plus I was sure she wouldn’t leave me alone otherwise. And Cards? Well, she only joined me because I’d bullied and threatened and scared her into joining up with me. I was just a nice guy like that. They were lucky there were merely confederates, not friends. And for that, back in my where, they were still alive.

“I’m a one-armed bitch in the husk of a city I once called home,” she went on. “I’ve got nothing here! No future, no hope, and no friends!”

I looked down at her. “Frosty Winds, know that I have conquered fear before, though I know it to be my inner sleeper. I now walk the Road of the Wheel, my eternal hell of hells, for I am a damned Mann, and there is no release for a monster such as I. Believe you me, into the after-realm I know I will suffer for what I let happen to you—”

“It’s not your fault!” she countered harshly. “Don’t kick yourself over that! It is not your fault! And if you blame yourself for it, I’ll punch you right in the dick till you learn not to blame yourself for things you couldn’t control.”

That was almost kind of funny, in a sick, twisted way. “And the fact that you believe that is precisely why I am a damned Mann—”

Frosty rammed a fist straight into my groin, then yelped. “Ow, fucker! You’re wearing a cup!” She shook her hand. “Gunslinger, look—I know you don’t really kenn me, but you gotta believe me when I say that you’re the only person I even kenn in the slightest!”

“And I’m sorry that you came to ‘kenn’ me,” I replied solemnly. “I won’t lead you on any further; within me lives my inner sleeper, fear. And the more you sing praises of me, the more that fear comes to grasp just how much shall I be tormented in the Wheel of Time, and I could do very well without having to dwell upon my failures and mistakes like some angsty teen or overly edgy heroine. Now, let me alone,” I finished in a guttural tone. I had to go, but she grabbed me again.

“I will punch and kick you straight in the dick if you keep blaming yourself, Gunslinger,” she hissed resolutely. “Sorry if I seem a bit clingy, but I’m a neurotic bitch—what were you expecting? I’m not gonna go on some stupid spiel about anything, because that kinda stuff is just stupid. But I can see it in your eye, Gunslinger: you’re a good man, and stop trying to tell me otherwise, because it’s not true. But for the love of the Founding Fathers, don’t just leave me in the middle of nowhere without any means to survive a-a-and without any friends left in this world. I’m begging you, Gunslinger. You were there for me back on the train, now let me be there for—”

The back of my hand was feeling very lonely and unloved, and so I set him up for a blind date with Frosty’s cheek. “Speak you not so well of me, you mare!” I spat, and Frosty gasped. I just stood there panting, and she just sat there staring. When I finally managed to control my breathing, my voice came out laced with acid. “When I was a mere boy, I once performed an action that most displeased Father. In short, I was in trouble. And when I explained him mine actions, said I, ‘The ends justify the means.’ Father just looked down at me and asked simply, ‘Then tell me, boy, what justifies the ends?’ And I couldn’t answer him.” I resisted the urge to say ‘And then Father taught me the bad touch, and ever since then, I’ve worn a codpiece to protect my penis’, mostly because it was utterly untrue. Mostly. “And this day, Frosty Winds, my ends had no justification, the means wherewith I accomplished my ends mark me a monster, for I knew what would likely happen to you and yet I went through therewith all the same!”

I took a step back. “And I let it all come to pass because you are a thing to me, Frosty Winds. There can be in my mind no difference betwixt people and objects; for if I came to see people for people, then knowledge of the sheer monstrousness wherewith I conduct myself would drive me mad.” I took a breath. “And if you think you are anything but a thing in my book, Frosty Winds, then you are mistaken in the highmost caliber.”

She affixed me with steely green eyes, the hand imprint of my hand upon her face. “You’re lying, Gunslinger. I’ve been on both ends of what you’re trying to do here, and I know you’re lying to push me away. You’re a damn good liar, but behind your eye, you lie. And you’re a fool if you think I can’t see through you.”

I gestured to the tarot card in my hat. “I am The Fool, can’t you see? For God’s sake, woman, let me be! You’ve guessed wrong my aim, and you don’t even know my name!” Weird random rhyming fun time.

“Then tell me it,” she demanded in a slow, dark voice.

“No,” I hissed. “I refuse. And you can’t trust a man who gives not freely his name. For if a man gives not his name, then it is tainted by sin. And if his name itself is so vulgar and vile, then what can we conclude about the man? I am simply the Gunslinger, the Man with No Name, for that is what I am worth. It is why I abandoned my true name, forsook it for Faust, which is as true a name as I can be hight. I forswore my true name and birthright therebecause, as a monster such as I deserves nothing more. Fare thee well, Frosty Winds.” I turned to leave, balling my hands into fists. “And… I am truly repentant for what I did unto you.”

And I left for Jayne the Terror Train, left that I might meditate upon the face of my father.

|— ☩ —|

“They are unloaded, Gunslinger,” came the voice of Jayne. “I can detach and proceed down the tracks to Sleepy Oaks.”

Sitting on the floor of Jayne’s frontmost car with my legs crossed, my shirt off, and my one remaining nipple so hard from the cold that it could cut diamonds, I slowly opened my eye. “C’s in the third car, right?”

“The skinwalker is; he and I were alternating between playing I Spy and a generic game of riddles,” she chimed. “I think I prefer I Spy, for I never much cared for riddles, and the skinwalker knows far too many ones for me. He’s beaten me twice, and that, I must say, is such a pleasure. One can get tired of always winning. And I must also say that you keep very interesting company. I knew there was something special about you the moment I spied your skinwalker arm. But I would have never thought that you and a skinwalker were working together.”

“And you would have known sooner had C actually helped me board you earlier.” I looked about Jayne’s front car. She’d done some redecorating. It now looked less like an abattoir trying to pretend to be a train. “But no. He had to wander off and leave me with a flying squirrel.”

I took a breath, closed my eye, and went back to meditating upon the face of my father. Only through deep meditation would I calm myself here, and thus ensure that I would never again fail as I had done today. As I meditated, the Iron Cross upon my breast felt heavy. It had always been a weighty necklace, but now it felt… well, heavier.

A little chiming noise erupted from the ether, followed by Jayne’s vaguely but not quite condescending voice. “That was just me coming to inform you that we are moving, though thanks to the great engineering of my makers, you’ll likely never feel so much as a bump. Barring further complication, we should be in Sleepy Oaks within a few hours.”

“I thought Sleepy Oaks was days away.”

“Perhaps at C’s speeds, but at my speeds, we can make it there easy. Were it not for all the twists in the ironroads and the friction-prone nature of the tracks themselves, we could have been there sooner, but the peoples nowadays don’t know how to make good ironroads for me to travel upon.”

“Shame then that these people don’t build the, uh, ironroads like the Old Ones.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I cocked a brow. “I thought you said the Old Ones made you.”

“No, I stated that I was built by the Banded Folkdoms of Markslands, whose original founders Eveslanders now worships as gods. The Old Ones came long before them: the Old Ones built things like the Cœur of Olympia and the original Drawers before the Folkdoms got into them and built atop them. They created things like your skinwalker friend, too.”

I grunted, but said nothing else. I only cared to be left alone to my thoughts, half-naked and cold. There was to be only I and the face of my father.

Time passed, though I wasn’t sure how much. Seconds and minutes and hours all sort of blended together when I meditated. But it had been long enough that I no longer felt cold, and I had suppressed to death my urges to consume and imbibe.

But it was then that Jayne chimed, “Gunslinger, minor delay. I’m passing through Fort Drawers on my way into the drawers, which will take more time than anticipated. Also, your left eye.”

My right and only eye closed, I asked, “What thereabout?”

“The stitches are doing you bad. I could clean it for you, redo the stitches, and then… Well, I can fix up those wounds; I have state-of-the-art medical facilities and a surgical license.”

I fingered the stitched-up gash from that metal pipe back in that abandoned theater. “It feels okay. Why do I suspect you have an ulterior motive for wanting to redo the wound?”

“Because I do,” she said. “I don’t like your eyepatch, and I imagine you loathe having only the one eye when once were two. Amongst my capabilities with surgery would be to… forge you a temporary mechanical eye, one connected to your optic nerve, which would allow you to use the eye as a normal eye.”

“Sounds like something I want.” I didn’t question how such a thing could work. I’d read enough comicbooks to know that you didn’t question advanced sci-fi technology. “What’s your ulterior motive?”

There a low whirring noise, like she were mechanically groaning at me. “I want to use your head to install a camera through which I could observe the world from outside the prison that is my body. I could speak to you and be spoken to through this ocular implant, and I would very much like to be right in the action when you murder more monsters. Although as a machine I have no specific sex, but insofar as I do have a sex as I identify with, it is female. Extending this metaphor, nothing would get my nonexistent and metaphorical lady parts quite so lubricated as getting to witness first-hand death, gunplay, and more death.” A clicking noise. “Ah, it’s always been a dream of mine to kill somebody. Say, for example, to run over a flock of small children as they play on the tracks. But since the odds of this are slim, cheap live-action voyeurism must suffice as my ticket.

“So, what say you? You get to see out of two functioning eyes and don’t die of an infected wounds, and I get to pleasure my metaphorical lady parts with guns and bullets and carnage.”

“Talking trains are suddenly very scary,” I opined.

“Huh,” she grunted. “I would have figured you to more openly jump on this opportunity to see with two eyes again. Or at least hit me with waves of questions and and general marveling at my technological prowess.”

I finally opened my one eye. “Forgive me if I have my misconceptions about a murderous train of pain and terror, Jayne, but… I’ve come to enjoy how badass this eyepatch is. It’s uncomfortable enough to know that part of my body isn’t mine own, and it might be further discomforting to know that another part of my body belongs to another as well.”

“Please,” she begged. “I can program the software to include numerous very handy features for both of us. I swear, it will only be minorly invasive and cause, at worst, minor night terrors. Heck, the eye won’t even function unless you’re in range of my rather considerably powerful wireless connections, but I really, really would like to be able to help you, Gunslinger.”

I considered it, then slowly sighed. This was going to suck. “I hesitantly accept your offer, Jayne the Terror Train. What need I do first?”

“Well, first—does this smell like chloroform to you?”

|— ☩ —|

I lazily awoke in a cozy bed aboard Jayne the train. My eye… eyes. I had them in the plural now, and once again did I have depth perception. Except, the left eye felt wrong, almost cold. I wanted to jab a finger into the tear duct and wrench the eye out of my socket. A little mirror appeared before my face, and aside from the well-looking gash under my left eye, everything looked off. I could tell there was something off about the left eye, the way it moved, the silver of its iris, and the mechanical look to its inner mechanisms.

“My, my, I do still have it!” Jayne said with a laugh. “I can’t wait to see all this violence close and personal!” she went on in the tones of a horny schoolgirl.

I grunted, getting a feel for how everything looked now that I could see properly. Credit where credit was due, but the moment that I had the Calêrhos book back, I was going to jam a knife into my eye and tear out this fake monstrosity.

“Are you not overjoyed, Gunslinger?”

“Just take me to Sleepy Oaks,” I replied in a toneless voice. “I do not wish to dwell on how wrong everything suddenly feels.”

“But now you have eyes! In the plural.”

“And I look forward to when I have a real left eye once more.” Although, really, that peripheral vision was nice. All that extra space… “Now, be silent and take me to Sleepy Oaks.” I got up out of the bed and walked up into the frontmost car. “Display me a window out the front, Jayne.” And her front monitor did as asked.

I stood there at the front of the train, watching and waiting for Sleepy Oaks to appear as the landscape zipped past at unreal speeds. Crossing my arms, my steely eyes gazed long out forwards. Soon would come Sleepy Oaks. Soon I would make right my failures this day, to finally justify the ends by stopping Stronghold, and then making sure to stop whatever Korweit was planning to do with that book back in my where.

My silvery mechanical eye whirred nigh silently in its socket, moving alongside my real eye oh so perfectly that it felt fake. Its touch was cold, almost itchy. But I would bear it for now. Two eyes were always better than one, and I imagined this was the truth for gunslinging as well. So I bore the cold touch of my mechanical eye and bade my time.

|— ☩ —|

As the sun prepared to finally sink beneath the skyline, C slowly walked through the streets of the empty town. It all seemed bigger than I recalled, and not just because werekindred were themselves taller than my native kind. Atop C, I rode with my hat over my eyes, my gunbelts low and ready to be grasped. The final step of my journey was nigh.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Jayne chittered in my head through the new eye. “Are you excited, because I’m excited—I’ve never been so excited!”

“Shut up,” I drawled slowly, “I need to concentrate on the face of my father.” To her credit, she did.

I heard them before I ever saw them. When I finally did come to see them, I slowed C down to a crawl and inched forwards.

I recalled this place well: the grand center of Sleepy Oaks. By light of the fading sun and lamps, I could make out everything clear as I needed to. Plus, my mechanical eye appeared to have excellent low-light vision.

At the far end of the large central plaza had been erected two large crosses, upon both whereof were crucified men in what looked like some variation of the Carolean uniform. Standing before the crosses were three werekindred, two female, one male. Dressed in long coats, with the man and the taller woman wearing flat-brimmed hats, they faced away from the crucified men. The three faced out at the dark figures looming before them.

Like when I’d first come to this town nigh a month ago, I could just barely make out many, many figures cowering in the buildings lining the plaza, cowering, watching.

The woman with the hat was flanked on either side by the man and the shorter woman, both of them falling slightly behind, though. “Back. Off,” I heard her growl at the darkest figure before her.

That figure looked like a man, only it was not a man. He felt… wrong, even from this distance. As dapper as his suit and top hat were, there was something unholy about him. And to cement that thought, the other figures behind and about him have off similar vibes. Dark figure all, and three of them weren’t even werekindred but were hulking, lupine beasts that reminded me a lot of werewolves.

“Why, I don’t think so,” the figure said. “This is our town. And by this time tomorrow, the Backbone will have completed the dark rituals, and you will all be his sacrifices.” He pointed a far too long finger at a werekind I’d failed to see. Standing behind the shorter woman and clutching her legs was a small girl child. “Especially you. I’m going to enjoy ripping you apart for what you did, runt.” The girl grabbed onto the woman’s leg even harder.

The lead woman—whom I thought of now as Sheriff—moved her hand as if preparing to reach for a revolver at her hip. “One last chance. Back off, or I kill you, for I will not let you harm my town.”

“Look at them,” the figure—whom I seemed to want to call Bart—gestured at the crucified men. “They tried to protect your town. And see what we did to them. And now… you know what we consider far too merciful to do to you tonight for what you and your deputies are trying to do.”

The Sheriff reached for her waist, but Bart quickly closed the distance between them and kicked her straight in the stomach. She screamed as she tumbled across the grass, gasping for breath. “Do as you do, boys!” Bart cried out. “To all four of these bastards! All hail unto him, the Devil’s Backbone! All glory to the Queen of Graves!”

They all rushed forwards. The deputy man, sword and shield in hand, tried to charge forwards, only to get mobbed by three of the darker figures, who threw him to the ground. He tried to fight back, but he could hardly land even a blow on them. The little woman reached her towards waist and actually drew a pistol out. Sadly for her, Bart slugged her in the breasts and kicked her into the gut. She fired, but the shot went wild, the gun flying out of her hands.

“Your blood,” Bart growled with a cackle. “I want to see your blood!”

When the little girl tried to bolt away like a tiny, pathetic rabbit, one of the monstrous lupine figures stepped right in front of her. It smiled and licked its lips, brandishing its claws. As it raised its hand to strike, the girl shut her eyes and screamed, “Daddy!”

“No, this is horse!” C growled, and tackled the lupine horror. I jumped off him and landed on the ground before the girl just as C forced the beast onto its back, kicking and stomping and beating upon the thing.

I smiled at the little girl, then looked up to Bart. From here, I could see what about him was all wrong. His limbs all looked a little too long; his nails were more like claws then nails, blood dripping from them whence he’d clawed the woman on the ground before him; and instead of eyes, there were tiny, fanged mouths where the eyeballs should have been.

“Who are—” He tried, only to find a bullet hit square between the eyes, which felt so much easier now with two eyes. Because when you were waging a Teutonic Blitzkrieg, hitting the bad guys hard before they could react was key.

A dark man spun to face me, his eyes and lips sewn shut, a sword in either hand. I generously donated a bullet to his ‘remove my heart’ fund. Blitzkrieg! Blitzkrieg! Spinning around, I cocked my revolvers and fired each one individually at the small gathering of figures beating on the deputy man. Now with two eyes, I felt far more accurate, even though Jayne was making noises in my ear that sounded like a particularly violent orgasm, which I could have done without.

When the first two went down, the third one—his forearms replaced with rusty axes, like some horror cliché—screamed and ran for me. Cock and fire. The bullet damn near tore his arm off, and he tumbled to the ground, bleeding out horrifically fast.

“Stranger, down!” the Sheriff shouted. I ducked, and she fired a gun at some bloke who thought he could come up from behind me. I nodded to the women, then turned my attention to one of the lupine horrors. The beast roared at me and charged. “To your left!” she shouted, and I saw the other wolf.

I hesitated until the last second. And as the leftmost wolf howled and reached out for me, I angled my left revolved up near thereto and fired the weapon. The exploding exhaust coming from the side of the gunbarrel hit the wolf square in the face, the actual bullet flying past it and into the chest of the other wolf.

In a quick motion, I basically jumped back as I tried to aim my other gun at the now-screaming-in-pain wolf, only to trip over a rock and fall onto the ground. I caught myself and merely did a really awkward, really stupid-looking backwards roll and sprung back to my feet. But, that backpedaling allowed the downed Sheriff to fire into the beast’s belly. I nodded to her before I spun around and shot the last dark figure square in the mouth.

C, I noticed, was busy eating his kill. In the true spirit of the Rheinwehr’s Blitzkrieg and mass hit-and-run tactics, I’d successfully killed off most all of my enemies before they’d even known who I was. With a last, quick survey of the battlefield, I nodded with satisfaction; all of the Backbone’s agents were dead. “You…” she stammered, and I turned to the Sheriff woman. Her hat on the ground, I saw her blonde-with-red-streaks hair, her pink eyes.

I twirled my guns around on my fingers, only to then hold them still and blow on the smoking barrels. Holstering the guns, I said simply, “Howdy.”

The little woman clambered to her feet. Her hair, I quickly noticed, was black with red streaks, her eyes red. “You… you… who are you?”

“I travel in silver and gold upon my dusty old road, little Fräulein.” I spoke loud and clear, trying to hold back a look that was equal-parts grin and grimace. “And I have come from somewhere far beyond for one express purpose: to save Sleepy Oaks and defeat the Devil’s Backbone. But think not of me as a hero.” With control, I gave the three a smile. “You may call me the Gunslinger.”

Author's Note

Footnote: 80% to next level
Think this chapter was dark? It gets worse.

Chapter 32 — Oaken

Chapter 32: Oaken

“And, I have an even more essential task for you to complete: make some friends!”

Victory.

Hail victory—Sieg Heil! Hail to the King—Heil, König, dir! Hail to the Reich, to the Father. Blah, blah, blah, typical patriotic nothingness. To me, victory existed almost as a kind of given, provided I worked hard enough. Failure was for villains or people trying to dress up their dicks to look nice. Look, guys, I understand what you’re going for, but there’s nothing you can do to make something that looks like it’s hanging out of a shark’s mouth look any better, not even if you put it in a little velvet dress.

But as I stood in the City Hall of Sleepy Oaks, concluding a short summary of why I was here to the massive crowd of some five hundred people—nigh five times more of the town’s pony population before I slaughtered every last stallion, mare, and child—I felt a sense of victory, one properly earned after my failures with Frosty Winds, Lightning Dust, and Taran mere hours ago.

“So, I came to stop the Backbone, save the town, and then probably ride off into the sunset, never to be seen again, as we fancy gunslingin’ types are wont to do.” I bowed my head. “Thank you much for time, folker of Sleepy Oaks.” I walked off the front stage and into the back rooms of City Hall, where a man with glasses and a flat-brimmed hat met me.

“I can’t believe you’re real!” he squee’d. “I-I-I heard the legends, even heard the stuff on the livebox, but to see an actual knight of the gun here in our town… The Founding Fathers have answered our prayers!”

“You forget that I am a Teutscher,” I said in a toneless voice. “My deity is the Lord.” I looked around. “Now, where is that Sheriff woman?”

“Her? Well, that’s why I’m here. Right this way, Mister Gunslinger sir.” I followed him out of the building, down the lamplit streets, and towards a well-lit concrete building of about three stories.

“You are a deputy, then?” I asked.

“Aye, sir. One of two, minus the Sheriff herself. Well, used to be more, but then the old Sheriff got axed, then a bunch of other deputies got dead quick. It’s only me, my friend, and the new Sheriff these days.”

Old Sheriff? So, this world’s version of Stronghold was dead, then? Interesting.

“She does her best,” he went on, “and she’s the only one we got willing to stand up for this little town since Elkington all but abandoned us. Well, we had those two agents from Songnam, those guys you saw crucified out there—Agent Boulder and the Recon Elite Sniper Captain hight Marty Stew. Stew said he was a half-wolf, half-demon dragon king sent to save us, and, well, he had a good show up until those bastards up and murdered ’im.”

Then came the building. I swallowed as I entered it, for I knew this place well. When last I was here, it was a ruin, and the front desk had been empty. Now, there was that little woman with the red-with-black-streaks hair. She was chewing on a pencil with a fazed-out look in her eye. And as I entered, she spat the pencil out, gasped, and then somehow managed to knock her chair over backwards.

The woman sprang to her feet before I could ask if she was alright. I saw gauze wrapped around her midsection.

“OhmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohMYGOSH! You’re the Gunslinger!” She practically bounded over the front desk and up towards me. “I know I saw you and you saved me earlier, but still!” She made a high-pitched cheering noise. “Hi! I-I’m Cards—” it took every ounce of willpower in my body not to suddenly darken my expression “—Cards Greaves.” Wait. She had a last name in this world? “And did he tell you his name? He’s Glasses!” Again, it was all I could do to stop from frowning at this little ball of excitement and starry-eyed amazement.

Jayne whispered, “Can you shoot her? I think she’d be adorable, bleeding out from a stomach wound, don’t you?”

“So, uh, Mister Gunslinger, after you went inside, I took your horse to the stables, and got him all ready for when you need him again. Oh, and Doc Dome helped patch me up in the building’s clinic, which is why Sheriff Blackout’s here instead of town hall, she needed to get patched up.”

“Sheriff Blackout,” I mumbled, the mechanical eye feeling heavy. I think I liked Blackout better when she was a bludgeoned-to-death mare lying at the hooves of Cards.

“Yeah; she’s my mom!” She faux coughed. “But, um, you didn’t hear that from me. Doesn’t like being called that, especially not since… since Dad died.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure where your father is, he is well.” Which is to say, he’s currently alive and trying to kidnap your mother into the world whence both he and I hail.

Cards thanked me, and then Glasses led me through the building, up the stairs till the third floor. I saw the door to Strong’s office had been cordoned off with black and yellow tape. “I can find her office from here, thank you very much,” I said with enough force to ensure he wouldn’t question. And indeed, her office was exactly as it’d been last time. I knocked on the door.

“Come in,” came her voice, and I did. Her office was as spacious as I remembered it, decorated with a few photos, bookshelves, and a painting of Blackout with a hairstyle identical to that of her daughter. It could have almost been Cards were it not for the pink eyes. On the desk were two revolvers, a bottle of red wine, and two glasses therefor.

“I’m glad you could make it, Gunslinger,” she said with a smile. Blackout grabbed the wine and poured herself and then me a glass. “Please, have a drink. There’s not much we can offer you in our poor little town, but we’ll do ya what we can.”

“I take it Cards is your daughter, then,” I said, and gestured my head over to the painting.

“Yeah, so she’d be. Poor little thing.” She sighed, looking down into her wine glass. “I do what I can, but I won’t lie: I’m a shitty mother. I wish I could be better, but ever since her father died, she’s… been distant, and I don’t really know how to reach out to my sweet little Cards. She was closer to her father than to me.” She sipped. “It’s been hard for everyone since her father died. Even the guns here, nothing like yours, were his guns, and they were the guns of his father, and his father before him, and so on and so on.”

Oddly, I wasn’t sure if she was telling me the truth about Cards or not. She’s seemed like a psycho bitch mother back in my where. Could she actually be a decent person in this world?

“Funny that you should mention Sheriff Stronghold,” I said, my voice coming out slow as molasses, almost with a drawl. “Because he was the matter at hand wherefor I’ve come to this town.”

She seemed to freeze like a deer about to be hogtied and used as a piñata full of scorpions for a fat child. Then: “What’s that look in your eyes mean?”

“I’m debating how much to tell you, Miss Blackout,” I replied simply. “And then, were I to consider telling you the whole truth, how much thereof should I obfuscate with specific wording so as to make my tale seems less crazy.”

Blackout said nothing, just stared at me as I pondered.

“Stronghold isn’t dead; he’s well alive, and he’s coming here,” I finally admitted, and she jerked up a knee, hitting the desk.

“What?!”

“To be precise, he possesses something which belongs to me, a book of great power. He wishes to use the power of this book to take something back with him to whence he hails.” I shook my head. “When I acquired the book and took it to the Crystal City… well, I won’t pretend I understand how, but it allowed him to come into your world. In a way, I suppose I should cry your pardon for raising the dead.”

Her eyes were wide. “They… they mentioned a great sorcerer with a mysterious book.”

“Who did?”

“That man with the mouths for eyes. Said with his power behind the Backbone, they were going to destroy Evesland.”

I took a moment to consider this. “Then Stronghold is already nigh, and if what they said was true, then tomorrow is when they attack. I know not how be came to service the Backbone, no know I what his means will be. What I do know for certain is this: I will defeat the Backbone and protect you, then I will subdue your husband, and then I will likely need to return to Elkington, for the good king indirectly sent me on this mission, as he did in the where whence I hail.”

“And Elkington will reward you?”

“Beg pardon, but I don’t see how that relates.” I paused. “Though were I to stay around, I imagine he might. Were he to get over the fact a comrade of mine executed General Parishioner. Tomorrow, though, comes a black day. I have traveled long and far this day, and though I might be what my people call a Schlafchauvi, one who takes pride in getting little sleep, I would like to rest my head for the night, hoping to wake up early tomorrow and ready myself and mayhap this town for the coming storm.”

She rubbed her forehead. “This is… a lot to take in.”

“But you need not take it in alone, ma’am,” I replied. “I’m here to help you, for I suspect well that he is after you and you alone.”

Blackout blinked. “Me?”

“Yhar. And since I brought him into this world, through failures on my part, it is my job to protect you and your daughter from him.” I shook my head. “Think not of him as your man, for he is not this man. He is like him, but not. Confuse them not.”

She nodded and took a drink of her wine, finishing the little glass. Blackout looked as if she were locked in internal dialog, debating with herself about what to say. At the end, she cleared her throat and looked to me. “Any other earth-shattering revelations and information?”

My right arms comes from a skinwalker, I’m actually a unicorn, in my world your daughter bludgeoned you to death right over there in your own office—and when I was just a boy, my father and King Elkington teamed up to teach me the bad touch. I shook my head. “None that you would like to hear, and none which would actually benefit you to know.”

“Right, right.” She was silent for a moment. “Well, as for your lodgings, there’s no real inn anymore in terms of beds. Long story short, there just aren’t any. Tavern, yes. Inn? No. ”

I grunted. “I don’t need much to fall asleep. Not even a bed, though one would be nice. You’ve no idea of the places wherein I’ve rested my weary head, like within… certain organs of a freshly dead whale, though I admit to not exactly knowing what it was till the morrow after.”

“Well.” She bit her thumbnail in thought. “There is a guest room in my house, if you can call a room full of boxes as such. I could set it up for you, I guess.”

“That would do fine, ma’am.”

Blackout pulled out a map of town, a town much bigger than I recalled it being, and marked her house thereupon. I thanked her and left the office, with the understanding that I would be at her home at a specific hour.

|— ☩ —|

As I found my way back to the front lobby, I found Cards and Glasses excitédly conversing amongst themselves and… that small girl from earlier? Yes, it was clearly the one who’d been cowering behind Cards.

As I walked by, Cards took a step while turning, walking straight into me. She froze, looking up at me as I gazed down at her. Cards opened her mouth to speak, but then the little girl immediately shoved her out of the way, looking up at me with sparkling eyes.

“Gunslinger!” she cried out, and then grabbed my legs. Either she was trying to take away my title by killing me in honorable combat, or she was hugging me. It was hard to tell. “You saved my life, Gunslinger! Thankee, thankee, thankee!”

Something about her voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, shrug, and then go back to sleep. I crouched down to ruffle her link pink hair. But as she squeaked and giggled with glee, I froze. I knew her voice. Knew it well.

Her name was Blossom, daughter of Doctor Dome. Before mine eyes I could see it, her body torn in half, my sword dripping with her blood. She was the first child I killed that dark day nigh a month before. Then I saw myself building a pyre, muttering in a voice schizophrenic with clashing tones, “O fire, be the cleanser of my sins!” And her flesh, with that of her mother and of her father, burning therein. I’d given her that much. And she had to burn. Because if I didn’t burn them, then Cards and Dust could have come back and seen what I’d done. Seen the broken Code. Seen the—

I took a deep breath. “Hey there, little girl! What’s your name?”

“I’m Blossom Dome! My Daddy’s Doctor Dome, and he’s super awesome, but you’re also awesome too!”

“Hey, where’d your daddy go?”

“Daddy? Oh, he went off to go get some things from home. Says he needs ’em for the coming fight.” She frowned. “He’ll probably take forever. Momma says he’d be late to his own funeral, but I don’t really know what that means.”

That nearly knocked me off my feet. Not because of the information in what she said, but in what she didn’t say. The spark in her eyes said she was lying; she knew well what a funeral was. Curious, though, that she’d say otherwise.

“Hey, so, uh, Blossom,” Cards said, rocking back and forth slightly on her feet. “So, ya wanna learn to play poker like I promised I’d teach ya?”

“No,” she said in the flat voice of disinterest only a child could muster. “I wanna talk to the Gunslinger!”

Cards visibly seemed to deflate. So, I smiled and said, “Hey, while nothing’s going on, I was going to get a drink. Anyone want to join me? Like, say… you, Blossom? I saw a little malt shop down the way, and thought to stop there. What say you? Want some ice cream?”

“Boy, do I!”

I looked up at Cards—now that was a weird thought. Looking up at Cards—and said, “You can come too, if you like. I’ll buy you a treat, too.”

She perked up almost instantly. Then she frowned. “Wait, no. I, uh, I wouldn’t want to impose on your wallet.”

With a quick gesture, I pulled out a gold coin, and Cards gasped. “Well, Miss Greaves, there’s a reason that I travel in silver and gold along my dusty old road.”

So, that was that. Glasses refused because he had a date with the grindstone and his father’s sword—which I really hoped wasn’t some terrifying metaphor for attempting to reenact my childhood—and Cards and Blossom went with me down the street to the malt shop. Though they were closed, the store owner gleefully opened her doors for me.

Blossom basically got a tub of some terrifically unhealthy ice cream, and I imagined that her parents didn’t want her eating such sweets, but I was nothing if not a bad influence on children. Cards, I observed with horror, got a strawberry banana smoothie. Dammit, Cards! Now was not the time to be earning my sympathies. Though why smoothies were in a malt shop, I didn’t question. In fact, I didn’t know what a malt was, although I assumed it was a milkshake for whatever reason. I myself also got a strawberry banana smoothie—because after all my months of searching and rambling about such smoothies, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to have one, Cards be damned!

The store owner offered the goods free of charge—since what was the point of money if she was going to die tomorrow? And what more was the point to charging the hero who was going to ensure that her money was worth something?—but I refused to accept her gift. I set down the gold coin, winked, and said, “Because I literally don’t have any smaller unit of currency than gold. Well, there’s silver, but gold is so much flashier.”

When Cards put a straw in her smoothie, she paused to look at my drink. “Hey, you got one too? Awesome! Nobody but me ever orders one of these things around here!”

I just stared at her, drinking my smoothie as I sat down at the table with her and Blossom. “Aww,” I said to the smoothie, “this tastes like sadness and crushed dreams of being a malt shop tycoon, not strawberry banana.” It didn’t stop me from drinking. Because even though this smoothie was poorly made, it was the symbolic nature of finally completing my long held quest to obtain a smoothie, to conquer and vanquish the evil that was a strawberry-banana smoothie-less life that… wait, what was I talking about again? Oh, now I remembered. I was talking about how one of the smoothie flavors on the menu was ‘Cherry Berry’.

“Eh, I don’t see it,” Cards replied with a shrug. “Tastes normal to me.”

Because you are nothing but sadness and crushed dreams! “Which is why you’re a deputy, not a connoisseur of all things thingy.”

“I like things,” Blossom chimed. “Especially the thingy things.”

Cards and I exchanged glances, and she giggled. Jayne groaned and muttered, “I really don’t like her. Really? A sex joke from that? What is she, fourteen?”

I continued drinking, constantly trying not to stare at Cards. After one glance too many, Cards brushed some hair out of her eyes—I’d forgotten how long her mane had once been before she cut it after I’d murdered Glasses—and offered me a weak smile. “So. You’re a Teuton. I-I’ve never met a real Teuton. Heard of them, sure. But seen? No.” She took another sip as I said nothing, though at least now I had a reason to look at her for a prolonged period of time. “I know a few Teutonic cities, sorta. Like Zentrum.” I bit down on my tongue; it was all I could do not to wince at her solarische mispronunciation of the word. Our Z’s went TS, not like the Equestrian Z! “Or, how about Cullen?”

“Never heard thereof,” I replied. “But I presume this is because your people have different names for our cities than we call them.”

She frowned. “How about Menk? No? Studyard? Brimborough? Midgard? Kingsrest?”

“If you mean Königsruhe, then no, I hail not therefrom, but I think I know thereof.” I accidentally kicked the metal support for the table. Thankfully, steel-toed boots really helped keep away any chance of foot pain.

“Uh, then, uh…” There was something cute and sad about watching Cards rub her forehead and try to think. She’d never struck me as a particularly smart girl back whence I hailed; but then again, I’d never given her a chance wherein to be smart, nor had such an opportunity arisen while she was under my watch. I shuddered slightly as I considered the possibility that Cards was actually much smarter than me, just that she was ruled by sad emotions and had never been given the great education I’d been given.

“Are you from Esztergom? Tanelorn? Orlais?”

I held up a hand. “Don’t hurt yourself. I suspect that the last was close enough to where I spent much of my earlier life. Die Stadt Neuorléans. I always spell it with an accent mark over the E because I’m a fancy man. Same for why I generally referred thereto and to its folker by the Frankish terms.” I nodded. “Yhar, Lysjana was a fine state.”

“You’re making my head hurt!” Blossom whined.

Cards chuckled warmly. “Right, right, boring stuff. I know.” She took a long drink of her smoothie. “So, Gunslinger, how do you plan on beating the Backbone?”

I shrugged, putting my smoothie down on the table. “Misdirection, confusion, mobility, Blitzkrieg, and bullets, but especially confusion.”

“What do you mean?”

I mulled over how to reply as I idly looked around. “As Skantarios once said, and as Viktor once spoke in more moderns times, one would do well to keep one’s enemies perpetually baffled. That’s why it helps to be a little bit random, a little bit crazy, a little bit psycho.” I smiled. “If your enemy can’t figure out what the hell you’re doing or what you’re wanting for, they won’t know how to stop you, nor will they even know what you’re going to be doing. Makes good sense; sometimes the best course of action is to perform seemingly pointless actions, even ones that seem to actually hinder you.” I raised and lowered my brows rapidly, tapping a finger on the table for effect. “Which is why I’m treating us all to sweets instead of actually doing anything productive.”

After a pause, Cards asked, “Why’s your left eye a different color than your right?”

“Well, mostly because of that psychotic train—”

“I resent that!” Jayne hissed.

“—but also because it’s not my eye. I’m just borrowing it till I can get a proper eye back.” I jabbed myself in the mechanical eye, and Cards flinched with a wince. “It is metal and machinery, not flesh and… whatever it is that eyes are made out of. White goopy stuff? Squishy un-pokey stuff?”

But as I rambled, Cards gave me a wide-eyed look. “You’re a craftling?” she finally said.

“Beg pardon, Fräulein?”

She shook her head, but still was staring at my silvery left eye. “A craftling. A voltblood. A steelman. Half machine, half man.”

I nodded. This was a concept I’d see before in my comicbooks—nerddom, you have saved me from not knowing what things are yet again! “You mean a Stahlblüter, steelbood.” She nodded. “Though it’s just the eye, nought more.”

“Wow,” she cooed, putting her elbows on the table, head in hands. “I’ve heard of those, but not since the days of eld have they been more than a myth…” She tilted her head. “What other impossible things are you?

I shrugged, looking at our little table. Part of me wanted to see if I could scratch my name thereinto with a toothpick. “Would it be terrifying were I to tell you that my right arm came from a skinwalker?”

“Probably,” she said in a suddenly weak voice, her eyes mixed with a drop of apprehension in a sea of amazement.

Balling my right hand into a fist, I set my elbow down on the table. Then I flexed its arm and rolled up its sleeve to reveal the myriad of tattoos on the utterly hairless arm, for this section of the arm’s bandages had somehow been torn earlier and needed to be redone. My left arm, I’d come to realize some time before, actually had coarse black body hair, however sparse it was. I smiled at Cards’ slowly paling face.

“I do not believe in fate, Cards, for it is like a heresy amongst my people,” I said, purposefully just trying to sound much darker and more dramatic than I actually was. “But had I such beliefs, I would say that fate has given me ample second chances at my failures and mistakes, let me live where otherwise one such as I should rightly die. And with these opportunities I have been given, I will defeat the Devil’s Backbone and save your life, Cards.”

“Me in particular?”

I gave Blossom a woeful glance as she wolfed down her ice cream like it was in some sort of competition. And the prize for winning was more ice cream. And stomach cancer, probably. “Hopefully them all, for I have failed once before, but you in particular.”

|— ☩ —|

We finished our sweets and went on our way back towards the sheriff’s office. I found the good doctor there, and I handed his daughter off to him. When Cards noted that her shift was over, I offered to walk her home in exchange for her simply filling me in on details about the town and the Backbone. She giddily accepted my offer.

Of the town I learned nothing new, or at least nothing I found noteworthy. Of the Backbone, I merely learned that he’d been more active in killing people. When I thought back thereon, Duke Elkington had only agreed to help and work with the Backbone as a way to appease the monster, to keep him from harming anypony in the short run, while in the long run buying time to learn how to defeat the Backbone. Funny how some random stranger from a faraway land just waltzed in one day and killed the Backbone, huh? All those years of evil work for nought. Still, if this mass slaughter and open abduction of people to turn into monsters was the alternative, mayhap Elkington really had made the smart move.

Of course, maybe Elkington was just a crazy pony who wanted Celestia in a corset and socks before him so badly that he had developed a hero complex, because he really had the hots for the mare who probably never ever put out. And when all his heroism pays off and Celestia comes to him, he learns that it was only because her clittorcock yearned for blood! That was my mind’s ending to terrifying story of love, treason, and giant genitals upon females.

At one point, I stopped to read an old, faded flyer posted on a wooden pole. “All männ ar tu riport tu the Taun Hall—bai orders ʌv Shärriff Stronghold. The Dävill’s Bæckbon is cʌming; wi mʌst rädi sords ænd shields.”

“The hell kind of written patois is this?” I asked.

“Something that needs to be taken down,” Cards said with a sigh. When I repeated and clarified my question, she blinked. “You can’t read standard Songnam spelling?”

“No, only standard… Eveslandish.”

“Weird,” she said with a shrug. “This is the official spelling as advocated by Songnam. Tends to make a lot more phonetic sense.”

We went on our way. But as Cards prattled on idly, I felt off. Like, something deep inside my bowels was having a Teutonic sparkle party with me. And I loved Teutonic sparkle parties. Then the feeling spread to my arms, and it felt as if I’d actually been jackhammering them away at sharp rocks all day long in the vein hope of striking it rich that I might earn enough money to not feed my kids. Because screw those ungrateful cretins.

“So, about that, uh, the Black Crusade?” Cards suddenly asked, and my mouth turned to cotton. “The, uh… the schwarz Kreuzzug?” It was all I could do not to shudder at her absolutely atrocious mispronunciation of Teutonic words. But on the plus side, I now knew what to expect from an Equestrian accent, and they were truly terrible in Teutsch. “I heard that was an important thing, Dad talked about it a few years back, and even the King made a big deal about raising supplies and munitions for the Rike, though nobody really knows anything about that weird war. I think one of my classmates said the whole war was a government conspiracy to raise taxes. But then she licked one of those Marolina parakeets and they’re poisonous, so she caught rapidly multiplying eye plague and died. But it was okay, ’cause she used to make fun of me a lot.”

I suppressed a laugh at her matter-of-fact tone. “Well mayhap we don’t like talking about that war,” I said, trying not to grunt from the sudden internal strain in my gut and arms, but it was about as easy as trying to get Cards laid. “The Reich’s population stands at about sixty- or seventy-million folks, by recentmost estimates from before I left.” Cards nodded. “A few years before that, not all that long ago, the census reported that slightly more than a hundred million people lived in the Reich. You do the math.”

“My Fathers,” she muttered.

I almost said, “Fathers? Well, I figured your mom was a slut, but that’s ridiculous!” But, well, for some reason I didn’t. Probably had something to do with being more concerned with the burning feeling in my arms and bowels.

“I was a trooper in that war,” I said, stepping over a weird little ditch in the road. “Higher education, like high schools, were taken out of service to free up manpower, boys and girls ages fourteen and up were encouraged to join the Rheinwehr and defend the Fatherland, child labor laws were temporarily abolished in the interests of the manufacturing, and the Reich likely spent most of the world’s money on the Dark Crusade. Years of ice and snow came, too. We hight it Todeswinter, dead winter. No sunlight through the ash and clouds, just dead winter, rationed food, and hard times. But we Teutsche would have all fought to the death to defend our Fatherland, and many did.”

I checked my weapons to try to take my mind off being serious, looking them over without real intent upon them. I’d been acting too damn seriously. Needed to loosen up. Punch a demon. Wear his organs as a fancy hat. Catch some sort of disease from all that raw demon blood. Now, cooked and pasteurized, demon flesh and blood was good eating and drinking. Symbolic of our dominance over the denizens of Hell and Anderwelt. Plus, demon was high in nutrients!

So, check. Two revolvers. Skybane, which I’d taken back from Frosty after Jayne ate her arm. Lastly, there was still my sword, the one which Snechta had made such a big deal of. That museum had dressed like a slut and had it coming, I swear!

Cards stopped walking as I finished looking over my gear, my arms still burning and itching. But when she stopped, I didn’t. I took one step, two steps, and then a ferocious kick-in-the-gut-like feeling erupted in my bowels, and I just collapsed.

“Gunslinger!” Cards cried as I spat out blood. She rushed to the nearby building’s door, opened it, and dragged me inside. Or tried to. She grunted and strained herself, but I hardly went anywhere. Poor, tiny Cards. “Hold on, I’ll just bring you into my house and… and something!” It wasn’t Cards’ house as I remembered it back it my where. In fact, it was an entirely different building.

Trying not to grunt I forced myself onto all fours, looking like some wretched animal. “I cry your pardon, Cards. I… I just need to change my arm bandages.” She helped me up, then led me upstairs into what must have been her room. I could tell it was hers from the peculiar female scent of it all, different but so alike to the female scent her room had had in my where. Also, because the room was little better than a pigsty, with clothes all over the floor and bits of food wrappers here and there.

I removed my coat and shirt, Cards watching me with gritted teeth. The bandages on my arms looked terrible, oddly colored in all sorts of places, and there was the spot on my right arm where I’d somehow torn off the white gauze. When Cards asked if she could help me, I growled for her to leave the room, and, after long hesitation, she did.

Sighing like a bloated seacow, I set to work undoing my bandages. My arms, I found, looked discolored in several places, with a few cuts on them that should not have logically been there. As I finished with my right arm, I paused to look at where my body ended and C’s flesh began. Seams, almost. Not those of sewing, but those of flesh. My tannish skin and C’s darker flesh mixed and matched poorly and raggédly where the two parts connected. And considering how I’d hacked off the infected limb whilst delirious and infected, the ragged nature made sense.

“Cancer, I think,” Jayne chimed as I banged my right arm with fresh, white gauze. “I was doing some scans, and I believe you’re suffering from notable throughbright burns, which likely caused cancer, amongst other things. While performing that surgery, I administered some drugs to help with that, but I am a train.”

“And I am a horse,” I said back.

“That’s C’s line,” she huffed. “And you have no idea how much he enjoyed using that while we were riddling.”

“Oh, sod off, Jayne.” She played a sound that was exactly like a hissing cat, and I sighed. “If only I hadn’t been dicking around with the Cœur—that’s whence I got this.”

There was silence. “Cœur?”

“Yes, I reached thereinto.” I shrugged. “The Black Man said it gave him those black eyes like shadowy whispers, but I think he was just… tainted with disease the likes whereof I freely admit to not comprehending. Like one of those disease from the jungles of the Elfbone Shore.”

“Shit,” she muttered. And before I could ask, she demanded, “Take out your knife and cut your left arm!”

“What?”

“There’s no time! Do as I say—I swear I’m not just saying it because blood makes me hot! It’s the only well to tell if you’ve contracted forrot!”

I hesitated for a long moment, thinking it over. Then, as if in a trance, I pulled out my knife—the blade honed to the point of nigh invisibility—and effortlessly cut a line on the underside of my arm. At first, there was blood. Then came the black sludge. No, no, it wasn’t a sludge—it was like a whispering shadow, with tendrils of darkness. It was that same shadowy material that had made up the Black Man’s eyes.

“Fuck,” Jayne murmured. “That’s not throughbright poisoning, that’s forrot! Corruption!”

“Huh, that’s neat,” I said in a blasé voice. “So. Forrot, then?” Before mine eyes, I saw the black tendrils warp and weave themselves around the cut, forming into a cloth-like scab. The scab pulsed and burned, and then chipped off into a powdery substance. The wound was gone, save for a thin red line the likes of which my body could likely heal itself in a matter of days.

“It’s a lingering, soul-rotting condition that my makers documented at length,” Jayne said.

“You know, all this serious ‘blah, blah, seven days till death, and I just killed your hamster’ stuff is really bumming me out. Can you tell a joke or something? Seriously, this day is without any humor since I lopped Frosty’s arm off. At she least was fun,” I said lazily.

But she ignored me. “My makers went through extensive werekind testing, and noted… while what I managed to steal and hack away is vague, they noted it had several terrible effects. Madness, manifestations of monsters, corruption of the very soul and body, and… in one case, they noted it melted a man, and what was left exhibited ‘skinwalker-like’ traits.”

An image flashed in my right eye of a man, his body mostly liquid and melted into metal grates that made up the floor. Then the image moved as the man smiled, raising a bloody, torn up hand towards me. The hand was healing itself with the black and red mass of nebulous material, like C. Then the room erupted into white fire, and within moments the man was ashes.

“That was a white book of that incident,” she said. “What of any other wounds you might have? Please, check them.”

With a grunt, I removed my shirt, looking at the scars of my body, whereof the recentmost was the one I’d gotten from falling down two stories onto a metal pipe. Slowly, I removed my pants and looked at my legs. The scars along my legs were worse, a reminder of why it was a bad idea to piss off a griffon, and how I’d killed her for this back in Chausiku’s shop. I traced the leg scars with a finger, feeling the tissue like a man feels all that jelly he’s drowning himself in.

“My Fathers,” I heard Cards whisper, jerking my head up, I saw her standing there in the doorway. She, well clothed, and I, nigh naked but for my hat and underwear. Hello, creepy setup for the world’s worst porno magazine, which, come to think, Cards probably had a lot of under her bed. “All those scars…”

I grunted. “If one wants to keeps one’s skin beautiful and if one wishes to fight for the innocent, one must choose betwixt them. I chose to fight.” I reached into my bag and pulled out more gauze, proceeding to wrap and bandage my right arm. As I bandaged, I noticed Cards slowly creeping forwards. When I was done, she was standing right before me.

“How did you get all of them?” she asked in a distant voice.

“Mostly by being an idiot,” I said resolutely.

“Oh.”

I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of Cards’ room, and by extension, the scent of Cards herself. “Look, I’ve been being far too serious with you, Cards. Too dark and brooding. Now, I may not be long for this world, but I’m being mean to you if I’m too serious.” I smiled wider. “Because if I don’t smile enough, don’t joke enough, I start to remember the monster I am. And that’s no bueno, Señora Naipes.”

She had a finger outstretched towards a scar, and I took her hand and touched her finger to the white flesh, then let go. “This one was from long before I became a gunslinger, from that time in Songnam wherein I thought it’d be a good idea to jump off a balcony. Well, to insult some guy to his girlfriend’s face, and she tackled me over the balcony. Fell two stories. To this day, I still sometimes have trouble breathing.”

“You survived falling two stories and piercing your lung at the same time?” Cards asked with a glint of amazement in her eyes. Or maybe she was suddenly on her period. Hell if I knew with these werekind women. I contemplated asking her if God was currently punishing her with the Time of the Blood, but I didn’t.

“Of course I survived,” I replied. “Had I died, the universe would have lost her favorite plaything. And the universe enjoying your torment is just as important a factor to surviving as throwing away food wrappers is for preventing ants. And no one wants ants, Cards. No one.” I looked around Cards’ floor, and all the wrappers thereupon. Raising a brow, I let her hand go. But she did not turn red and go to clean her room. Instead, she caressed another scar.

“And this one? Where’s this one from?” she asked, and I grunted.

“This was from my ex-girlfriend. She was holding a candle and tripped down the stairs. I caught her, and her candle sort of really stabbed me. The wound bled and then was cauterized at the same moment. I laughed it off, though it freaked her out to no end.”

“And this?” She fingered gently at the scar with two fingers, as if rubbing it for good luck. Because I was a genii in a lamp now, I guessed. And Cards’ three wishes would all be ‘Can you make people want to sleep with me’, but such a miracle would be beyond my powers.

“This one? From falling up a flight of stairs.”

“Up?”

I nodded. “Yes, up. Part of my old job in the Reichskriminalamt was to investigate and put an end to the supernatural—demons, monsters that ate people, weird things like stairs that make you fall upwards when you trip on them. Hell, my partner agent, Spezialagent Rosen, was actually a trained priest. Helped me out, that fact did.”

“It did?”

I looked to Cards’ window, out at the dreary town. With demons and monsters lurking about, you’d think she’d close her blinds. “For one, he could help perform Exorzismen, and in order to become a priest, you need some other training. He chose a holy path the Maschinengeist loves well, so Rosen had a degree in mathematics as well as criminal justice. Had his calling been professional study of the sciences instead of that of a Special Agent, Rosen could have easily been a saint, up there amongst the ranks of Saint Heinrich Bessemer, the Mann who invented the way to cheaply mass-produce steel, wherefor the Church canonized him.”

Her hands went down and seemed as if to grab my upper legs, one for each hand. Cards was bending forwards rather far, her long hair falling over her shoulders. “And… all these wounds?”

“A griffon.”

“They’re amazing. Really. So… beautiful, like your flesh were a patchwork quilt of stories.”

“Aye,” I said, and nearly slapped myself for the word. Damn you, ability to pick up on language! “Whence I hail, such things are a mark of such deeds. To a warrior such as I, they are sacred, holy… heilig,” I finished in the growl-like tone I adopted when speaking Teutsch to foreigners. “Heilig sind die Wunden auf dem Leib vor dir.”

Whence I sat, I could see clear down Cards’ shirt. Her shoulders squeezed her demure bosoms, almost swelling them in size. When she looked up, our eyes met, and she saw where I’d been staring.

Cards’ fingers tightened on my upper legs as she licked her lips. “I, um… S-see anything you like?” she asked with a terrified, hopeful little smile, a little line of red forming on the flesh under her eyes.

I levied her a hard glare. “Cards.”

She jumped back, putting her hands before her. “Ah, I’m sorry I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

“Did somebody put you up to this?”

The woman groaned weakly, putting her hands behind her back. “N-no.”

“Because you have the look of someone who does not want to do what they’re doing. Yet, a part of you does. Was it your mother?” I pressed on, and she swallowed.

“I… this is her house, too. And when I told you I’d brought you here, and…” She swallowed, face turning even redder. I thought she looked like a giant, terrible zit that just needed to be popped. By a snapping turn. “I mentioned you’d paid for the smoothies in gold, and she just got this look in her eye, and I… she… I’m sorry, I just… and you… I… She says I have to… with you… because it’s the only way to make sure you’ll stay to protect the town, and b-because whatever reward Elkington gives you, it’ll probably end up being a position of power, and she… she says that I…” She flinched under my gaze. “So… she says that if I don’t, then… then… so you and I have to… y’know… Don’t throw me out!” Her voice softened. “I couldn’t do anything to save Dad, and if this helps me save M—Sheriff Blackout, I’ll do it. She’s all I have left! Please. I don’t wanna keep being her little fuckup!”

I grit my teeth. “Cards, know that I would never take advantage of you or any other girl.” But, I thought, using her own daughter in a game of manipulation and control does sound like the Blackout of my where. Treating Cards as a poker chip, a bargaining tool. So, that familiar sliminess is comforting. “And if you think I’ll stand for this, you are wrong.” And if you think I’d let Blackout win, you are wrong.

I pulled my pants back on and secured my gunbelts low on my hips. Aside from pants and my guns, the only thing I wore was my hat. Standing up, my body towered over Cards’ little form, both in size and sheer mass. I pulled my hat low over my eyes and said, “Where is your mother?”

“I-in her bedroom,” she said with moist eyes.

“Thank you, Cards. And no matter if you did throw yourself at me for your mother, know that I respect you too much to do such a sin unto you as take your virginity.”

She blinked. “You… how did you know I’m a…?”

I smiled. “Because some things remain constant throughout the multiverse.” And under my breath as I left the room, I added, “But other than that, you’re not the emotionally scarred wreck I’ve come to know and love.”

|— ☩ —|

Hat, fingerless gloves, bandaged arms, pants, and gunbelts. That’s all I had when I burst into the master bedroom, a frown on my face like that time I had to eat seven badgers. There she was, pink eyes, her blonde-and-black hair, sitting on her bed. Lipstick, mascara, a tight corset which pressed her breasts so tightly that I was sure they would explode, a red thong, stockings and garter belt, and red-and-black socks.

“Blackout,” I said harshly.

“Ah, why it’s you, Gunslinger!” she said, then made an effort to cover her breasts and groin with her hands. I had to give her that, she was far more woman that Cards was, a body much like that of Taran. If she was like she had been in my where, then this was probably supposed to be very hot. “You’ve caught me at a terrible time! I was undressing and preparing for bed! How improper of you to see me like this. Why—”

I slammed the bottom of a fist into her dressed. “Cut the crap, Blackout. I know what you’re doing, but I’m not falling therefor.”

She fluttered her lashes, because epilepsy equalled sex. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

“Cards,” I said. “You know well what she just tried on me.”

Blackout put an arm across her lap as she put a finger to the edge of her lip. She innocently titled her head in confusion as she shifted her posture to expose her groin. I could see the very outwardmost edges of that which underwear was meant to hide. “My daughter, why… Oh, she didn’t try anything rash, did she? She’s been so lonely since her father died, and I think she just really wants a strong, handsome male figure in her life to make up for him.” She shrugged, folding her hands across her lap.

I gave her a grunt I walked over to her red-sheeted back. Now I was right before her, and she was looking up at me. “Mister Gunslinger,” she huffed, “how improper of you!”

Quickly, I reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look straight into my eyes. “I don’t care, let me state that simple enough. The man whereof you speak is, in a sense, alive out there right now, and he is the greatest danger to your little world. I don’t care about your petty scheming, the same way you schemed to get your husband to marry you. You’re not a good person, Blackout, and you can’t lie to me. So I’ll say this once, and I’ll say this clearly: scheme not, for it works not upon me; and leave Cards out of this. She’s innocent and has no place in your wicked ways. Such a shame she had a witch such as you for a mother. Now, are we clear on this?”

Blackout smacked my hand away and spat, “Get your hands off me!”

“Are. We. Clear?”

“Of course she’d fuck up and tell you,” Blackout growled. “That’s all the little bitch is good for. All she’ll ever be good for.”

I glanced back at the door to make sure Cards wasn’t standing there. “Whence I hail, Blackout, there’s a reason you died.” She blinked. “Whence I hail, the town of Sleepy Oaks is dead,” I went on through gritted teeth. “It is dead because I killed it. I failed. I will not fail again, and I will save all your lives. It may not restore perfect the Code, but it will be penance enough. So, leave Cards out of this, and we shall have no more problems betwixt us.”

She sneered disgustédly at me.

“Right,” I said with heavy emphasis on the T. “Now point me to my quarters for the night, and we shall conclude our business in peace.”

|— ☩ —|

The night was shorter than I’d hoped, like that really delicious sandwich you spent all that time making, only for you to chew it down in a few bites because your girlfriend was hungry and so you offered her most thereof. Look, point is, it was just past dawn when I found myself out of bed and cooking breakfast.

Cards came down dressed in nothing but skimpy panties, half asleep and yawning. My first thoughts when I saw were, oddly, for I knew better, Hey, look—a werekindess without cripplingly massive chest tumors.

When she saw me here in the kitchen, she seemed to remember she wasn’t wearing a top, and rushed back to get something, which turned out to be an oversized shirt with the words “Downhill: That’s how I roll!” I put the eggs, bacon, and pancakes on her plate without comment.

Her mother, on the other hand, eyed me as if I were trying to murder her with a rolled-up newspaper filled with hamsters as I gave her breakfast. “Aren’t you going to have some?” she asked through narrowed eyes.

“I haven’t eaten since that steak I had in New Pegasus some two or three days ago,” I said. “I’m not hungry; and were I hungry, the pain would feel good. I’d welcome it.”

I left the two women to likely have a very awkward conversation by themselves. I imagined it’d go like, “So, Mom. None of us managed to seduce him last night, huh? Does that mean we’re both equally failures here?” Whereto Blackout would slap Cards and tell her to go to her room without supper, because Blackout was never taught what breakfast was in wherever she grew up.

Outside at the town’s stable, I found C the horse with a frown on his face. People were walking around the streets with a semblance to normality, many of whom smiled and waved at me. Still, I didn’t think too, too much thereof when I asked C, “Why the long face?”

“I am a horse,” he sighed. “But also because Debra—” he pointed a hoof to a palmito horse standing in another stall “—is a preppy bitch who’s too good for me.”

As I watched, Debra kind of just shat herself, letting it all fall to the ground. “Right,” I said, “and she’s quite a catch to be without.”

He sighed again. “My powers of seduction have failed me yet again. I don’t think I’m long for the love game, man.” His ears perked up. “So, today we save the world?”

“And kill some bitches!” Jayne roared. “So awesome!”

“I suppose. We mayhap stop the Backbone, stop Stronghold, stop Strong’s intentions for his wife, and stop by Songnam for our ride out of this where.”

“You said stop a lot,” C said in a plain, helpful voice. “Consider a different word for more varied sentence structure.”

“Oh, sod off,” I huffed. “Let’s just ride about town, scouts things out, and set up a position wherefrom to fight the Backbone.”

|— ☩ —|

“This place is so much bigger than I recall it being,” I said idly as C walked down the streets. Sunlight flickered through cracks in some of the wooden buildings, none of them looking older than mayhap a decade or two. Either this town had some really shoddy builders or the local termites had suddenly got a hankering for exotic hole’d wood, like that cheese nobody likes. Nobody.

Dark alleys between buildings were filled with either nothing or old wooden crates. When I pried ajar one such crate, I found it filled with mummified hamsters. My guess? These had all been Cards’ pets at one point, and, as with that dog she once mentioned having, she had never realized you were supposed to actually feed your pets.

A passing man offered me something when I asked him. He said, “Yon boxes were originally for transportation back before the Backbone upset most all trade. And yeah, it is kinda suspicious that these are all just… here.”

“If you’ve had no trade, how are you all still alive? Foodwise, I speak.”

He shook his head and said “We’re nigh starved out, Gunslinger,” before walking off.

“Nigh starved out?” I asked the air. “But Blackout had enough for a decent breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and bacon.”

“Oh, the corruptions of being in charge,” Jayne said with a chuckle. “That’s why I’m happy as a train, where the amount of harm I can do is… oh so pathetic and minimal.”

C and I went on our way. In one lonely part of town where all the buildings had broken windows, ragged roofs, and rundown walls, C said, “Have you ever heard of the Eternal Champion?”

“No, not really,” I replied, hat low over my eyes, but still scanning the rundown skidrow like how a beaver scans for victims wherein to lay his beaver eggs. “Why?”

“Well,” he went on, “as the stories of my people went, the Eternal Champion is a hero who exists in every time, world, and dimension, for he is a type of constant, an agent chosen by Oz to serve the great cosmic balance, fighting for either Chaos or Order, whichever one has gotten too strong.” He whinnied, and we turned a corner. To our right was now the shores of that murky lake which lead into the swamp with that really long name I couldn’t remember. “But despite his chosen nature, the Eternal Champion often knows not of his true purpose, sometimes even fighting it, but the Champion can never succeed in fighting what he is.

“The Champion, they say, may appear as many people of either gender, though saying he is easier to say. He is a warrior without peer, and none may stand against the him.” C fell silent as a little boy walked alone down the street. The boy looked at us with starry eyes, and just as he was about to speak, C stamped his hooves and bellowed, “No one will believe you if you tell them of me!”

The little boy quickly ran away, crying.

“Sorry,” C said with a laugh. “I’ve always wanted to do that! Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, the Eternal Champion. The title can pass on, they say. Once, when I was but a boy, Mother said those dark times wanted for a Champion. That’s part of the reason why I became skinwalker. That even if I was not some hero, I could help my kind. ”

“Skinwalkers are made?” I asked, looking at an empty house lot which was just filled with empty bird baths and one framed photo of a squid.

“Aye, in a matter of speaking. The form you know me as, so alike to these inferior werekindred, was the form they gave me upon becoming skinwalker: designed for superb endurance, great strength, supreme dexterity, and being tall and scary.”

“So. You had another body before your current one?”

“Yes, that is the truth.”

I adjusted my bandana. “Was your original body anything like that of these werekindred?”

C burst out with a throaty laugh. “Me? Like these inferior werekindred? Not in the slightest!” He shook his head. “The one which I was born with, were you to have seen it, would have proven to be utterly unlike these werekindred. By birth, we called ourselves Maíthur, which… which I suppose would translate into something like ‘the Most Beautiful Children of God’. We bear no relation to such an inferior species as those of this where. No relation to such an inferior species. They’ve no more in common with me than they have with Satan.”

“Satan,” I said, my mind thinking about the word. “Who is Satan?”

“Should be spelt S-A-T-A-N,” he added, and I furrowed my brows in confusion.

Then I blinked. “Zah-tahn? That’s how her name is said, not ‘Sey-tin’. At least in my language.”

“I was going on how it’d likely be spelt in Equestrian,” he said with a shrug.

“Well, in any case… Uh… Well, I don’t know how she—Satan, the Queen of Graves—would look like.” It dimly occurred to be that if C’s knowledge of things stemmed from his consumption of tongues, that he should have logically had no knowledge of Satan, the Queen of Graves, for she was a Confessionist concept. Unless he got her name from consuming the tongue of the original Devil’s Backbone, that is. “Although I imagine it must be horrible to gaze upon.”

“Why say you so?”

I looked down an alley wherein there were more big, ominous crates. “You mean, ignoring now the fact that she’s supposed to be dead and has been for a few thousand years?” I asked, he said nothing. I sighed. “In the Book of Chains, it states that after Satan gathered up the Antiker, the Ancients, and lead them against Heaven in a great rebellion, the Lord defeated her. Thereafter, He was so enraged that He both utterly wiped out most all traces of the Ancient’s mighty civilizations and rent Satan’s soul and body asunder. The Queen of Graves survived, but was horribly… destroyed therefrom, in a sense.” I shook my head. “Point is, I don’t know what Satan looks like, so the comparison you made was null.”

C uttered a dark chuckle. “Well, with the way the world’s moving these days, something tells me that won’t be the case for long.”

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” I said.

“Of course it is,” he almost snapped. “I’m bored so I’m trying to foreshadow all sorts of things that aren’t real, because what else am I to do when I’m bored?”

“Yhar, you make a good point,” I said with a nod. “Er, back on topic, how does one even become a skinwalker?”

C twisted his neck around to look at me, a smile on his face. “I was made to butcher my own mother and consume of her flesh. And then I made to slay and consume of the flesh of many innocents, from children to the old. This was both a part of the ritual and because such sins would force me out of my highborne caste. I was cast out of the kingsblood, a prisoner, a convict, and I fulfilled my end of the dark pact. So became I C the Skinwalker. All fed by Mother’s stories of the Eternal Champion.”

“And,” I said with hesitation, “you tell me now this story because you… you think I am the current incarnation of the Champion?”

C spun his head back around and guffawed with great fervous. “Oh God, no! No, no, and no!” He laughed some more. “Though they are not much like the Eternal Champions of legends—those such as J.C. and Roland—I believe I have found whom this when would call its Eternal Champions.”

“Plural?”

He nodded. “No legend says the Champion was to be more than one individual, but nor did any say it was impossible. Granted, they’re not much like those of my legends, but they’re close enough for government work. Literally. They are six figures, six mares, whom I intend to keep tabs on after this little excursion. The tongue of one whom I ate just before entering Calêrhos seemed to have a few words in her diction regarding distant speak of such ponies about whom nigh naught is known, and they interest me. Oz willing, you may even meet such mares.”

“It is a sad fact, then, there is is no such thing as fate,” I replied dryly.

“Think as you will; it matters not in the end, for reality will begin as it ended.”

“With the Allfather opening the Door?” I asked.

C snapped his attention to me. “‘How do you…?” He shook his head. “Yes, in a sense. That is one way in which the world may end. But, uh, I brought up the Champion for a reason. And that reason was because I’d just thought of a joke about that, but, well, since now I had to explain the background of the joke, it won’t be funny.”

“Oh,” I said. “That was anticlimactic.”

|— ☩ —|

I found Cards sitting in a café nigh the town center. I waved at her, calling out her name till she snapped out of a thought-trance. She scurried over towards me, waving back.

“Hey, Gunslinger! What were you up to?”

Quickly, I summed up the nought I’d be doing and learning over the past hour or so. I helped her onto my horse, and she rode with her body uncomfortably pressed up against my back—we were both wanting to head nigher the town center, although I suspected she only said as much because I had mentioned going there.

When we reached the center, we both got off. Cards saw something and quickly ran off to help some old woman who proceeded to wail on Cards with her purse.

“So, Cards is as Cards does,” C muttered, never taking his eyes off the little woman as she curled into a ball on the ground, and the old woman walked off triumphantly. “Ever interesting girl, that Cards. Lots of things right about her, wouldn’t you say?”

“Too many things right with her,” I said with a dark chuckle. “She’s not the emotionally scarred Cards I kennt and helped create. This is a Cards, not the Cards I really care for.”

“Interesting,” C muttered, still staring at her. And though people were passing by, none seemed to notice the muttering horse but me. Which was good. Although what they’d do if they learned C could talk I knew not, but it likely wasn’t good. Just as there were reasons I kept secret my mad hacky sack skills. The world just wasn’t ready for some things.

“Ugh,” Cards said, brushing dirt off herself as she came back up to me. She found me sitting on a bench under the shade of a great oak. “That was old woman Jispeange. She’s a real monster, she is. Also a literal witch. Or she was, one. Always trying to befriend and help her, but she, uh, she keeps a purse full of pine cones and small rocks for a reason.” She frowned, taking a seat next to me. “Me.”

“Witch,” I groused. “When you hight her so, my first reaction is to draw steel and end her.”

“Why is…” She looked at the Iron Cross hanging around my neck, laying just upon Dust’s red bandana. “You’re a Confessionist, right?”

I nodded. “All who perform magic must die, so said the Prophet. Holy is technology, wicked is the spell. After all,” I went on, “you never hear of demons entering the world via technology; demons and monsters enter our world through magic and magic alone.”

“Then… if you believe all that, how come you’re not trying to kill her right now?”

With a shrug, I drew a circle in the dirt with a foot. “Because I am a hypocrite. I am too practical a Mann to deny that magic can have its uses. I have seen that magic will always do more harm than good, no matter what. But so too am I currently questing after a magical reward to heal my old wounds. Thereafter, well… we’ll see where hypocrisy leads me.”

I watched as C wandered off and proceeded to bug a man carrying a barrel. “I recall once in the Reichskriminalamt, Rosen and I had were sent out into the bogs and bayous of Lysjana, and we found a whole clan of magicfolk. They’d been burying their dead in such a way that they came back as guardians of their own crypts, and had been attacking local folker.”

“You speak with a vague Olympian accent,” she said, and I blinked.

“Sorry, I picked up some jargon when last I was there. I pick up on local accents a bit too easily at times.”

“Aye,” she said. “Most people ’round here just say ‘folken’ or ‘folks’, not ‘folker’.”

“Aye,” I replied, “I’ll keep what your folken say in mind. Anyways, Rosen and I fought the magicfolk, and when the dust cleared, the adults were dead but we had a bunch of children to deal with, all whereof had been weaned on magic.” I sighed. “Lucky for them, the state was kind enough to round them up and send them to be forcibly reeducated.”

“That’s terrible,” she muttered.

“Huh? Why would them being reeducated be terrible? It was a mercy, is what was. They probably ended up thanking the state for being so charitable. Had the kids been slightly older, the state might have demanded their execution based solely on the sins of their fathers. But the Reich is nothing if not kind and charitable, so we sent the kids off to be reeducated, and then gave them a future. It’s not like the state makes of habit of reeducating everybody; it only offers this courtesy to children poisoned by magical parents.”

“That place you worked for,” she began.

“Das Reichskriminalamt,” I offered. “Or ‘RKA’ for short.”

“Yeah, that. Seems like a terrible job.”

C galloped around the town center, jumping into a pond and knocking over a lady walking five dogs. The dogs scampered and one probably ate a pigeon. This pigeon was likely a loving father, and all his children soon starved to death, and his stupid pigeon wife drowned in a birdbath.

“Hmm,” I hummed. “I wonder if there exists some sort of way to draw the Backbone out, to make him fight us on our terms.” As I looked around, I noticed they’d taken down the crucified agents. That, and C was trotting up to us with a bag. He set the bag down before Cards and whinnied triumphantly.

“What the…?” Cards muttered, bending forwards and taking the bag. “It’s… full of muffins. Chocolate chip, it seems. Mmm! These are good.”

I glanced up at the heavens. The sun waded through the clouds, casting shadows that told me it was about eleven AM. “C,” I sighed. “I take my eye off you for second, and you come back with muffins. Whence came they?”

Cards shoved a muffin into my face. “Try. One!”

With a groan, I did. After all, healing potions wouldn’t work without some food. C lay down before the bench and panted for no good reason as Cards and I munched.

“So,” Cards eventually said. “Your arm and eye aren’t yours?”

I gave her a look. “No. Mine arm hails from a skinwalker; mine eye from a terror train.”

“Representing!” Jayne cheered.

“How does one ever come by such an eye? I think you said something about it before, but, well…”

I leaned back and sighed. Then I told her a very abbreviated story of Frosty and the Terror Train, neglecting to mention anything that made me look as wretched as I was. “And then the train said she'd follow my orders, and that's how I got a craftling eye. Basically speaking, of course.”

She shot me a puzzled look. “I don’t get it. If the train can make craftling body parts, and it swore to obey you, why didn’t you order it to make a voltblooded arm for your friend Frosty?”

That… Well, there wasn’t anything I could say to that. Somewhere in the back of my head—which was to say, my left eye—Jayne snickered and said in a singsong voice, “She’s smarter than you.”

I slammed a fist into the bench, roaring, “Shut up!”

Cards flinched back, holding her arms up to protect herself and shaking.

Jayne giggled, and I slugged myself in the eye, bellowing, “Ta gueule! Halt verdammt noch mal die Fresse!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Cards sputtered in a pleading tone. “I didn’t want to—”

“No, no, not you,” I said. “It’s the Jayne.” I poked my left pupil… thingy. “She’s laughing at me. The eye does what it wants sometimes, just as my right arm does.”

“Oh, I, uh. Sorry. Usually whenever somebody yells, it’s at me. ’Cause I suck. So, I thought you were angry with me.” Cards shook her head. “Still, for you… that just sounds… terrible. To think that you couldn’t control even parts of your own body. That’s incomprehensibly horrible.”

I narrowed my brows, but not at Cards. “C, what are you looking—stop leering creepily at Cards!”

“You talk to your horse a lot,” Cards added.

“Because he understands me,” I muttered. “And no, I won’t explain that.” I tapped a finger to my jaw as C got up and trotted off to wherever it was C trotted off to. “Hold up—idea time fun extravaganza. What if I helped set up defense for the town, then just, you know, left to meet the Backbone in his lair like last time?”

“Last time?” she asked with a frown.

“That’s it!” I slammed a fist into a palm. “You can trust me on this one, Cards. So worry not—I’ve done this before,” I said. “It has only ended in tragedy once. So, who’s up for round two?”

Then I looked up and saw a man in white robes, the front open enough to reveal his black shirt and blue jeans. He was standing a few yards before us, look on his face that just said “Huh. I wonder how many squirrels I can fit inside that.”

“It would seem we were fated to meet again,” the man said, his red eyes glistening in the late morrow.

Cards gasped so hard I was sure her throat had imploded. “D-Daddy?”

“Shut up, freak!” he hissed in a tone so festering with loathing and hatred that even I flinched. “I was speaking to the so-called Gunslinger.”

“Stronghold,” I said, standing up, hand to my hip. “So this is your form.”

He spat on the ground. “I had heard tell that you’d followed me. Though I must thank you; I am only here because of you.”

“Daddy?” Cards whimpered. “Daddy, is that you? Daddy, why are you being so mean? Why are you back? Why—”

“Be silent, bitch!” he growled. “I have a daughter and I love her very much, and you are not her.”

Before he could even turn his attention back to me, I drew my revolver and cocked it. “Be she from another where, she is still your progeny of a sort.”

Stronghold threw his head back and laughed. “Is she now?”

“Aye,” I said. “So, for all the hell you’ve made he go through, tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you in the gut right now?”

“Because,” he said—

“No!” Cards shouted, scrambled in front of me and my gun. “You can’t kill him! He—I—he!” she sputtered.

“Vacate thyself from before me,” I said to her in a low voice.

Stronghold laughed warmly. “She’s werekind, and werekindred ain’t real. How have you not gotten this yet? You and I? We’re real, of true flesh. So, go ahead. Shoot through her to hit me. I am her father, am I not? You’ve my permission to blow her lungs out and hit me through her.”

“Wh-wh-what?” Cards asked weakly, tears in her eyes as she turned around. “Daddy, what do you…?” She choked up.

“Yes,” he said. “I have a daughter whom I care deeply for, and you’re not her.” He looked at me. “It’s not even a person, just a thing, Gunslinger. I don’t see why you must stand in my way, but you’ve gone this far, so no doubt you’re here to do just that.”

“If you speak true,” I said in a calm voice, “if you do love Cards, why are you here?”

His expression didn’t change as he shrugged. “Because I need a Blackout, even if it’s not my Blackout. The Backbone promises he can make her real if I use Calêrhos to aid him, so I’ll get to take Blackout back with me in the form she had back home… before you murdered her!”

I didn’t have the heart to correct him, as hilarious as it would be to give him a personal vendetta against his daughter. “Translation: you are here because you are weak and selfish.”

“Maybe, but you’re still a murder!” he shouted. “All those poor denizens, even the children—butchered! All at the end of your blade!”

As much as I wanted to, I refused to ask how he know that. Mayhap he’d seen me. How was I to know? “And so you come to another where to do thereunto harm, Stronghold?”

“No,” he said. “It’s like when you kick a dog; it can’t feel pain; you’re not harming anything. And this is the same with these werekindred.” He smiled. “Love drives me, Gunslinger. What noble cause do you call yours for what you’re doing?”

“I am the knight here, you the enemy. Ich bin der Ritter und Ihr der Feind. I am here because those who would do evil in any land are mine enemies. As Elkington counted the Backbone his enemy foremost, count I thee today mine enemy likewise. I come to return thee to whence thou hailedst with me, and to prevent unto the innocent harm. My heart may be corrupt but it beats true. Canst thou the same say?”

He blinked. “The hell kinda needlessly archaic speech was that?”

I cleared my throat. “Sorry. I get like that when I feel dramatic or emotional. Not the girly, touchy-feely emotional, but in the angry sort of ways. Or nervous. Really, I just like the way archaic speech sounds.” I looked at Cards, her body still before me and her father. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. You’re not looking at me.” I stepped to the right. “Problem solved.” And I aimed at Stronghold.

“I came here to see my beloved once before we sacrificed the town to the Backbone, but I suppose this is the end of this little excursion.” He gave me a halfhearted wave. “Ciao.”

“Indeed, you will make for good dog chow—wait a minute!” I stamped a foot. “This is an astral projection, isn’t it? And shooting you will make the bullet go through you and probably hit Blossom or some other small child, right?”

“Probably,” he said. “Or—because teleport!” He snapped his fingers and vanished in a cloud of frogs. Literally. The ground was now covered in very confused frogs. They hopped around and ribbited, and one of them died then and there of frog ass cancer. Or so I presumed.

Cards stumbled backwards and onto the bench, a baffled look on her face mixed with tears. She stepped on a frog as she fell, and I was about to yell at her for not caring about the lives of innocents frogs when I remembered that I didn’t care.

“The Backbone is going to attack soon, I feel,” I replied, walking around and herding the frogs into a pile. It was surprisingly easy. “We have little time to prepare.”

Tears in her eyes and rolling down her face, Cards looked up at me. “‘She’s werekind, and werekindred ain’t real.’ What did Daddy mean? Why… why… I am so confused.”

I looked around to see the almost fifty people around the town center who’d stopped by to watch. With a wave, I tried to convince them to leave. Then I took a seat by Cards, watching all my herded frogs escape into the wild.

“Cards,” I said, “neither that man nor I are werekind.”

She looked at me, squinting as if she needed glasses. Or had just been hit in the face with a bat. “What?”

I sighed. “Swear unto me that you will take everything I say here as gospel, as fact without ulterior motive, and acknowledge that no matter how crazy it will sounds, it is the honest-to-the-Allfather truth.”

She performed a series of motions, saying alongside them, “Aye, cross my heart… hope to fly… stick a cupcake in my e—oww!” She rubbed her jabbed eye. “Owie, owie, owie. Gunslinger, why does everything hurt? My heart aches, my stomach hurts, and now my eye hurts.”

Cards twitched, then put her head in her hands and just sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed.

Well, guess who wasn’t dealing with any more angst? This guy! I’d been so brooding and everything that I had no patience for other people trying to brood. Only I got to be edgy and angsty. So, I figured I’d just wait out the angst storm by leaning side to side and trying not to dance to this catchy dance beat I suddenly had stuck in my head.

C the Horse walked over, have us a confused look, then horsily shrugged and went about eating all the frogs alive.

“I… I just don’t know what to do,” Cards sobbed out.

“Well, don’t look at me,” C said casually. Cards bolted her head up and looked at him. “I refuse to repeat myself.”

And that how how Cards passed out, landing face-first in the dirt. She twitched, rolling herself over, a bit of foam coming out of her mouth.

“What’d you do to her?” C asked me, shaking his tail around for no good reason.

“Eh,” I said with a shrug. “I told her that I was pregnant, and that she was the father, and I wasn’t going to let her have custody.” I sighed. “See what I mean? This Cards isn’t used to dealing with my bullshit; she loses it too easy.”
Sighing again, I looked down at the girl. “We should probably take her home.”

“Hers or ours?” he asked. “Because this Cards looks like she’d make a great rug.”

“While I agree, I think she should take her to her home.” I stood up. “Okay, help me out here, mate.”

Author's Note

Footnote: 80% to next level

Chapter 33 — Decked

Chapter 33: Decked

“You little foal! Thinking you could defeat me? Now you will never see your princess, or your sun! The night will last forever!”

Deck.

It was a fun word. As a verb, it might mean to punch somebody, for instance. Or it could mean to decorate. With boats, it could refer to the top level, or a few other levels on massive ones. But most importantly, a deck was something wherein you found Cards.

Here in her bed, Cards snoozed snugly under the covers. There was even a little smile on her sleeping lips. I sat besides her. Or, well, so I had been before I fell to all fours and partially crawled under bed.

When I got back from under the bed, I had in hand exactly what I’d been expecting. Sort of. Sitting up in the chair beside her bed, I looked at the magazine cover. It depicted a woman with flowing pink hair standing there, clad only in her flesh and a long-worn thong, with a logo “Olympian Skyhouse” obscuring her breasts.

Out of curiosity, I flipped open the pages. This book had a certain… smell to it, I dimly noted. Now then, would Eveslander porn basically be women naked save for socks, like it was in—“Holy shit, that’s Lighting Dust!”

I froze as I looked at the page, Cards stirring beside me. There, on the left page, was Lighting Dust, same dusty eyes but different haircut, wearing what I’d hight her “Chainmail Bikini, -4 cold resistance.” She was in a nigh fetal position, her head turned sideways and facing me as she appeared to be pulling off her armored stockings.

On the next page, she was just standing there before a forested background, shyly waving. The little blush on her cheeks helped emphasize all the white flesh showing, save for the red bandana around her neck. The one which I now wore in her honor. And there was a lot of flesh to see. Her nipples poked out from the bandana, as it failed to cover them, and I could see down to her naked groin, and the little… lightning bolt pattern she’d shaved—well then. Turning the page now!

No use! The next two pages were also her in different sexy positions! Feeling sick butterflies in my stomach, I turned the page once more. And this was… odd. On the right she was standing there, arms behind her back, with a little blue jacket, unzipped, which just barely hid her nipples, her other bits now covered by a skimpy white pair of panties. She still had that badanda on, and she looked like some kind of pornographic cherub. The page on the left was, of all things, an interview.

I fidgeted with my banana, which was about the moment I heard Cards stir, groan, and say in a groggy voice. “Huh. I thought your bandana looked familiar.” She looked at me, and her eyes widened. “I mean—oh shit oh shit oh shit!”

I set the book down, kicking it under the bed. “Do you recall my story of the train, and the girl Lightning Dust for whom I did all of that?”

She nodded, her cheeks red.

In a toneless voice, I said, “That was her. Five pages of her. Naked. In a magazine I found under your bed.” I touched my bandana. “I now feel dirty wearing something someone has worn as you’ve touched yourself to them.”

“Nnngh!” she yelled under her breath, which I just learned was possible to do. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m s-sorry I’m such a fuckup. I know! I’m dirty. I’m filthy. I’m useless.” She grunted in frustration, refusing to meet my eyes. “How can you even stand to look at me?” Despite her words, I just gave her a blank look. “And you’re just, looking at me like that. That disapproving look. Emotionless. She was your friend, and—and you know what I…” She swallowed. “I-I just wish you’d get angry. Hit me—”

“Spank you?” I offered with my best attempt as a mischievous smile that probably came out more like ‘I am a pedophile; would you like some candy, little girl?’

Cards flushed a deep, guilty red. Her face looked like she was a super nerd who’s just gone out into the sunlight for the first time. Flaky, flaky sunburns! The woman gave a single, deep, remorseful sob as she held her head in her hands. “I just want to give up. Give in. Let someone else take this all away so I don’t have to keep being this little fuckup anymore. A-and then Daddy came back, and even he doesn’t want me. Why would he? No one wants me. I’m… just a fuckup.”

I brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Be that as it may, know that I would never think ill of you, Cards of Sleepy Oaks.” Except how I always make fun of you, that is. “If you think you need to change, you are mistaken. You may be flawed, Cards, but know that your flaws render you beautiful.”

She blinked. “Wha’?”

“Perfection is a sin; perfection is hideous. You are deeply flawed, Cards, and that’s what makes you worth fighting for, in a manner of speaking.” I patted her on the head. “You have your metaphorical demons, Cards, but understand that we’re all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours.” I slid my hand down to her cheek. “If you think you’ve got it bad, Cards, you should see the unholy demons which infest every corner of my flesh. And mine don’t play well with others.”

She simply stared up at him. I could see her try to speak, but nothing came up. She only looked up at me with… understanding? Hope? A mix of vague arousal and shame? Hell if I knew.

“You know, Cards of Sleepy Oaks,” I went on, taking my hand from her, “I have now watched you demean and destroy yourself in two worlds.” I smiled. “And it was far more adorable when you were a tiny unicorn.”

Her brows furrowed. “I… what?”

“Whence I hail, Cards, there are no ‘werekindred’. I was born a unicorn. You were too. As was your father. But there were three equine breeds. Lightning Dust was a pegasus, for example. Ditto for my ex. My old comrade, Rosen, was an earther, neither unicorn or pegasus.” I nodded as Cards mouthed ‘What the fuck?’ So I explained to her the vague story of how I came to kenn her in my world, leaving out the parts where I murdered her best friend and cut off part of her ear, but filling her in. “So, now I am here to get back that magical book, Calêrhos, that I may go home therewith and heal my ruined flesh. Any questions?”

She raised a hand. “So… you’re a unicorn?”

“Aye.”

“And if I went through the mirror, I’d also be a unicorn?”

“Probably.”

“Huh,” she said in a dull voice, resting her head against her pillow. “I’ve always wanted to be a magical unicorn.” Then Cards uttered the most utterly, vile, and un-Cards noise i’d ever heard, and it shook me to the core: she laughed. “Well, that’s just how today was meant to go. I’m a unicorn in another world. Wee!” It was so horrendous that I had to murder it! Cards laughing was not okay!

“Also, C isn’t a horse,” I said. “He’s a skinwalker.”

“Skinna—what now?”

C chose that moment to burst into the room. “We have a problem, and it has nothing to do with pushing Timmy down in that well!”

“Talking horse!” Cards yelped.

“What of it?” C grunted. “Look. I just found out what those boxes scattered around town were for!”

“Wait. Fuck, skinwalker!” Cards screamed.

“Bitch, deal with it!” C hissed. “Amigo mio, look—they’re not boxes per se. Each box is actually hiding a demonic rune painted in white.”

I came here to see my beloved once before we sacrificed the town to the Backbone, Stronghold had said. And suddenly my heart was pounding in my chest. “Scheiße! C, we need to destroy all those boxes! I don’t know to what end, but I know what he’s doing! Come on, let’s go!”

“W-wait,” Cards said. “What about me?”

I jabbed a finger at her. “You just stay here! I’m declaring the rest of today an Angst-Free Zone!”

Cards looked at C and then to me. “You’ll… you’ll be back for me, right, Gunslinger? After you save the town and the world and get that book back?”

C whinnied. “You know, I bet that clinginess is one of the main reasons nobody likes you.”

I said nothing to either of them. If anything, I practically stormed out of the room.

|— ☩ —|

Galloping down the streets upon my steed was easy. Jumping off C, hitting the ground with a roll, and then springing back up just before Sheriff Blackout wasn’t easy. So, I mostly just fell and rolled around awkwardly and landed at her boots.

“Gunslinger?” she asked, looking down at me.

I jumped up, clasping my hands to her shoulders. God, I was a giant as a werekind. “Blackout!”

“What, are you here so we can shout each other’s name really loud at each other?” she asked, frowning.

My hands fell down to her waist, finding nought. “Where are your guns?”

“What are you—?”

“Verdammt noch mal, Frau!” I hissed. “Where are your revolvers!”

“Back in my office. Why?”

“Scheiße!” I growled. “Look, woman, I need you to get them right now, I need you to round up Glasses and whomever else is willing to help you, and destroy any of the big boxes that litter this town’s dark alleys—okay?”

“What, why?” she demanded. By now, there was a crowd gathering around us, people asking questions not unlike Blackout’s.

I stepped back and shouted, “Hey!” That got them to listen well. “Folks, those weird boxes around town are part of some ritual the Backbone is planning. Now, Blackout, gather anyone you can and destroy them, and we might live!”

Blackout blanched. “Wh-what about you?”

“Me?” I flashed her a winning smile. “I’m going to find some corn.”

“Bu—why…? We’re out of corn!”

I pounded fist into a palm. “Dammit-all! Then I guess the only choice I have is to…” I took a deep breath. “Is to do whatever it is that the hero does to save the day!”

“Um, fight the bad guy?”

“Exactly! I am going to do that posthaste! And also destroy those runes of sacrifice on those boxes.” I drew my revolvers out in a flash. “Because nobody boxes me in!”

That was bad and you should feel bad.

And guns in hand, I sprinted down the street.

With everything I knew, it occurred to me that the center of all these white rituals of sacrifice would likely have a nexus of power at the center of town. I reasoned this entirely out of my ass, but it sounded smart. And when the people started to mess with all of the runes, no doubt the Backbone would react to save his resources. I knew not wherefor he wanted the runes, but I knew that I didn’t want him to have them. Although, well… As I sprinted down the street, guns in hand, and jumping over at least one dog to look cool, I figured that many people would die to the Backbone’s legions.

But blood for blood, teeth for teeth, eyes for eyes. To defeat the Backbone, people were bound to die. If they were lucky, they’d die hilariously. But probably not. The best I could do is draw the Backbone and fight him on my terms. Standard Teutonic military tactics. Never face the enemy on his terms if you can help it.

So I reached the center of town, that grand plaza under shade of great trees. I faced towards the west, the direction whence I’d come when I entered Ponyville. West, the direction ever to be behind me. West, whence the Devil’s Backbone would come. This called for a dramatic monolog, but as I was panting so hard that I had to cough—stupid lung wound!—I couldn’t think of anything to say.

I struggled to fully catch my breath, but I did manage to force the chokes down. Breathing hard, I looked out at what would be my battlefield. The word was spreading fast, as i could see from all the people running around and shouting orders to others: destroy the crates, destroy the crates, destroy the crates.

Once again, I’d lost sight of C. After I’d hopped off him and rolled to Blackout, he’d probably gone off to eat a burger or something. Where I stood, I could see straight down the streets and to the edges of the swamp. I checked my guns: both fully loaded, ready for bear.

The Backbone had been mortal in my world, having been downed with a few sword wounds. With these revolvers, I doubted I’d need nearly as much as they had within them, but there was no kill like overkill.

It was nigh high noon, and no bird sang. It was now that I saw it far in the edges of the swamp. A bolt of flaring bright bolt that lit the water red with its reflection and glow as it raced thereover. With blind speed it came nigh to the central town plaza before it scattered into a hundred pieces which flew to the four corners for all I could see. But the biggest flare fell straight down at the edge of the plaza.

The form materialized from a cloud of sparks exactly like how dead cats didn’t. I watched as it came into view proper. Tall, bipedal, three sets of arms, leathery wings, and a mouth within a larger mouth. The Devil’s Backbone, ladies and gentlemen.

“Howdy there, pardner!” I called, and he looked at me.

“So. You are the one who has forced my hand by attacking my sacred runes,” he said back, his gravely voice carrying smoothly to my ears.

“Yeah, I guess that’s me. See, the local folken are currently destroying your white ritual, and so you’re totally out of luck. Real sorry thereabout, buddy.” I shrugged. “But if it’s any consolation prize, you look scary when underground, but up here in the light? Nah, you’re just a cuddly leather huggy bear, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t taunt him were I you,” Stronghold singsonged, stepping out of a nearby building.

“Let him do as he will, it matters not,” the Backbone said. “It is the final day and soon final night of the Nightmare Moon, and what we are to need happen under the Black Erelith’s moon. Might as well happen sooner rather than later.”

“Riiight.” Stronghold approached the Backbone with an almost bored gait. “So then, Mister Backbone, should I?”

“Yes, you should,” the Backbone replied. “And in exchange—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. You just keep your end of the bargain and we’ll be golden.”

“A demon always keeps his end of a pact. It is the utmost sin amongst us to betray those with whom we’ve signed a pact.”

Stronghold pulled out the book and read aloud from a page. The words sounded like gibberish, but then everything suddenly went to shit. Columns of red erupted from all across the town, and then came the explosions. And the shrieks that sounded as if souls were being wrenched from still-living bodies in a hail of fire and death magic.

I drew a gun and shot Stronghold, but it missed. No, no, it didn’t miss! He’d moved to the side with impossible speed. As I stared at the former Sheriff, I almost didn’t notice the ribbony, transparent bands of red flowing into the Backbone.

“Nyoh! That’s a bad kitty!” I admonished, and fired at the Backbone. The bullet stopped in midair before the demon and just fell to the ground uselessly. “Hey, that’s no fair! Cheating! He’s cheating! Someone stop him!”

“Tell me, Gunslinger,” the Backbone rasped. “What is the single most terrifying thing in all reality?”

“The thought of Cards ever having a shot at getting laid?” I replied, and even Stronghold let out a single snicker before catching himself.

“Nay, ye Knight of the Gun. The most terrifying thing in all creation is a skinwalker.”

“Well, I suppose, but so far he’s been mostly cuddly, if a bit of a deranged psychopath. But mostly cuddly.”

“And so what do you see before thee, Gunslinger?” the Backbone asked, and more hellish explosions went off, more beams of red light into the sky. More and more red ribbons of energy flowed over the buildings and poured into his flesh.

“A pansy ass bitch,” I said. Then, in a song: “Oh, I see a bitch, do you see a bitch? For I see a bitch, and I aim to shoot him deaaaaad. Sing with me. It’s funny!”

“Joke as you will, warrior, but you are about to witness that which all thought was impossible before providence sent unto me Stronghold. Witness and behold—the death of hundreds, and the birth of a skinwalker!”

“Boo! Boo! You’re just playing copy-cat!” I said, trying to ignore the pounding in my heart as another fired bullet stopped dead in front of the Backbone.

The Backbone laughed as Stronghold flipped to a page of the book and read the words. He finished, closed the book, and said, “Right, well, that’s that. I do intend to see you on the other side. But for now, I have my beloved to find and return.” I shot at him, but he just… sidestepped the bullet and calmly walked into the nearby storefront. “Do take care now, will you?”

My eye returned to the Backbone, and holy shit was his skin always so grey and his muscles so bulky? I blinked. His wings were gone, the two smaller pairs of arms were gone, his body was more in like with C’s, and his face was like a werekind. “It is a start, but the casket-husk of the ancients forms!” he roared with a laugh. “Remarkably fast, be it not? But, ’tis but a cocoon of sorts! Yet even with this infant skinwalker’s succulent flesh, I am stronger than even the Devil! I am second only to Our Lady, the Queen of Graves herself! And I will serve her will with your death!”

“I’ve seen bigger!” I called out.

He snapped his fingers, and flares of red erupted across the rootftops all around me, and likewise I imagined for most of the town. Monsters, demons, werewolves, and all manner of things which should not have been sat atop the town like frosting that was made of pure awful. As more energy flowed into the Backbone, more and more of his body changed.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, “I bid you to kill!”

“Shut up!” I said, and fired at the Backbone. The bullet hit him this time, destroying his left arm and—Scheiße, it just reformed itself in a nebulous mass of teal and black As the monsters lurched off their rooftops, the screaming started in earnest. Screens of women, men, and children. Of pure, primal terror.

“This is how it all begins, my brothers and sisters!” The Backbone laughed. “It began with a dramatic monolog, and it ends with the blood of countless millions!”

“Scheiße!” I shouted, spinning around and darting for the nearest building for cover. Far too many monsters, far too few bullets of mine.

Without fail, three wolven beasts slowly ambled out of the malt shop I was darting for. These ones were bigger and thicker than the ones from last night, with huge claws and teeth that could double as steak knives; if the wolves last night had been the runts, these ones were the overly masculine jocks who walked around with their chests puffed out and did drugs. And winners didn’t do drugs!

The biggest of the tree wolves looked at me, looked at the Backbone, and dropped his ice cream cone with a roar. He decided that my ass was a tasty treat to make up for his lost ice cream, so I presumed, which was why he and his two brother-wolves charged for me.

The Backbone was too busy powering up or whatever, so he just sat there. And a voice inside me said that my bullets wouldn’t mutilate these wolven buggers like it had the wimpy wolves from last night. Logically, I did the most heroic thing ever and I just scrambled into the building nearest me.

I didn’t bother wiping my boots as I stormed through what must have been some sort of pet store. Well, I half-assédly tried to wipe my boots, but, you know, wolves! Then one came in right through the window, its maw slavering and teeth bared, freaking out tens of small birds and dogs and cats and at least one probably illegal howler monkey.

“You didn’t wipe your paws!” I shouted, and fired thereat from the hip, which missed most heartily.

Arm raised to strike, the wolf lunged. Trigger pulled, and bullet straight into his spine. The wolf yelped, its momentum carrying it into a large fish tank. Glass shattered from the impact, sending a flood of water and a very confused-looking octopus onto the wolf. I could see where the glass had gashed upon a part of its head by the ear as the wolf rose from the ground and shook itself off like a dog. The action sent droplets of water flying, and also launched that octopus off into an iguana’s exhibit, where it quickly proceeded to strangle the lizard. Goddamn, what I wouldn’t have paid to have been able to watch Iguana vs Octopus wrestling!

Blood leaked from the wolf’s mouth, torso, and head as it smiled at me. It wasn’t going to yield, was it? It was all-in or nichts for these guy, it seemed. I was imaging that bad guys must have had some really great employee health benefits when the wolf roared and lunged for me, literally scaring the shit out of a gaggle of puppies.

Backing up towards the rear wall where I knew I’d seen some sort of emergency exit, practically jogging, I fired two more rounds into the wolf’s upper body before it gave up and died.

Seven bullets down, I counted. Only five left between my two revolvers. Still moving to the back of the large, empty, dusty store, I couldn’t help but wonder why the other two wolves hadn’t—and then the wall to my left exploded. Because super termites or whatever—but also because of a flagrant infestation of werewolves! Man, this place was not passing the building code, assuming Evesland had such a thing.

I coughed from the dust and went to cover my eyes, but I remembered that one of my eyes was a machine. It felt no pain. So I clenched my right eye shut, and stared out into the mass of dust and debris. The wolf had seen me first.

Trigger pulled, cocked. Trigger pulled, cocked. The twin bullets tore through the dust, leaving trails as they impacted the wolf once in the leg and once in the shoulder. Like Cerberus himself, the wolf howled with rage. Two bullets to the chest solved the howling problem. The wolf tumbled to the ground, and the final bullet destroyed its head.

As I compulsively went to reload, I looked out at the plaza and saw a scaly man-beast rushing for me. Could I reload in time? No. But, there was a third wolf, so where was… Oh, that made sense. I knew where the last wolf would most likely be.

Quickly, I holstered my guns, took out my sword, and rushed the back door. I charged out with a warcry, weapons at the ready,

The werewolf was exactly where I thought it’d be: hiding just outside the door into the alley.

With a quick swing, the sword gouged out its throat. I didn’t wait for him to die; I only had time to see the look of surprise on the wolf’s face as I pulled my sword out and ran. First door in the alley I saw, I bolted through.

It was a house of some sort, that much was clear from the glimpses I saw as I shut the door behind me and sprinted through and into a living room. Grinding to a halt, I found four pairs of eyes on me: one from a battered woman, one from a bloodied man, one from an injured boy, and the last from a bony, skeletal creature of white flesh and spikes with the boy in its savage maw.

The bony beast dropped the boy and lunged for me, its many claws sinking into my left arm. The damn thing might have torn the limb off had it not been for the protective nature of my duster. It grabbed my sword in its maw, trying to pull my steel away. Arms and sword being grappled away from me, I jerked my head forwards and sank my teeth into its throat. It screamed, trying to pull away as I pulled back in kind. In a moment, the monster was clutching at its bleeding neck, spraying dark blood across the floor before it fell onto the ground, dead. A quick scan revealed no other monsters, I heard nothing else from within the house, and the front door was closed tight. It was a wonder how the monster even got in here.

There was still a chunk of bloody flesh in my teeth. But, it was demonic flesh, so I grabbed it and took out a solid bite from the slab of meat, chewing and swallowing, the rest in my hand. This fresh, there was no need to cook it. I wolfed the rest of the meat down, licking away the blood. My stomach growled as the little boy groaned in bloody agony, his parents still frozen, locked in each other’s arms.

“Has the boy eaten today?” I asked, and the father hesitantly nodded. With that in mind, I pulled out an Olympian healing potion and gave it to the boy. As he healed, I removed my knife and cut away a chunk of the demon’s chest; while the thing was mostly skin and bones, one such as I knew where the best cuts likely were.

My hands were covered in dark blood, as was my mouth, by the time I’d finished savaging and chewing more of the beast. I smiled at the family as they stared at me with wide eyes, my teeth dark with blood. “Demon is good for you,” I said. “Eat it, for this is how we assert our dominance over Hell and its denizens.” I licked my lips and my hands. “It’s also really tasty. Like, really good and its blood tastes like a good sauce, if a little coppery.”

Suddenly as I watched the father pull his son close and the whole little clan cowering in fear before me, I thought of the pink-eyed arms dealer and the idea of “Wholesome Family Values”. Then I remembered the thirty-five javelin rounds I still had from him, and quickly fished through my bags and loaded them into my guns. It was slower than usual, and I had to replace the bullets in my bandolier with javelin rounds, too, for faster future reload.

I took a breath, needing just a light breather to get my thoughts in order to formulate a plan. If the Backbone was apparently now super hard to kill, then… then I’d be a fool to take him head-to-head, and his legions of monsters would only make things a problem for me. So, logically, I needed to go after Stronghold, for he was mortal, if apparently now super bullet avoidant. Were I to find him, I was sure something in his book would show me what needed be done to stop the Backbone, though it was mostly just a lot of hoping on my part.

Question was, where would Stronghold be?

Wherever Blackout is.

And of her. Where would she be?

Gathering the revolvers from the police headquarters?

So, there was my goal. I holstered my guns, clasped my hands together, closed my eyes, and dropped to the ground in mediation. Father’s face at the back of my mind, I remembered everything I’d seen of this town, forming a perfect map thereof in my mind. It was different from in my where, but close enough for my purposes.

With the map pictured well in my head, I stood up, picked my sword back up and sheathed it, thanked the terrified family for their time, and reminded them to eat their demons and vegetables before I rushed out the front door.

|— ☩ —|

The center of town was, as I’d seen, a messy nexus of monsters. Logic dictated that I ought avoid such a place, so when I stepped out of the house, I darted to the left. Fires and smoke raged off in distant parts of the town, and I could hear the folks screaming and shouting like they were the damned. Really, though, that wasn’t exactly unreasonable. Had they only had more corn products: demons were weak versus corn, goddammit!

I ran through the first intersection, feeling a vague urge to cough but suppressing the hell out thereof. Guns still in my holsters, I focused on making it to the next intersection. And when I hit it, past the short row of buildings, I took another right. To either side of me were rows of houses, shops, and a few warehouses.

As I vaulted over a barrel lying on the street, I noticed just how many front doors looked as if they’d been torn off. Now I could smell the aroma of burning wood as I glanced at all sorts of makeshift barricades set up in alleyways and on parts of the road: wooden boxes, carts, and junk. None of it particularly impeded me or the demon’s forces, I figured. In fact, the stuff on the street looked more like debris, and it likely was. Because when you killed and ate someone who was just minding their business, you usually weren’t the courteous sort who’d clean after himself. Oh, kids these days, no respect, I tell thee…

The town center passed by on my right for a moment, and I dared glance towards it. Hellish minions walked about, dragging screaming people and gathering them up like a shepherd does his sheep, if said sheep were sentient and really wanted to just live. Haha, stupid mindless slave animals. The Backbone was there, I spied, still doing that sucking-up-energy schtick.

My legs felt as if on fire as I reached the next intersection thereafter. My gut and arms felt worse; they felt wet, not moistened with sweat, but a weird wet as if they had become… runny, like my ex’s poorly cooked eggs. There was a reason why I could cook a damn fine meal, although it was mostly because I enjoyed defying stereotypes.

Suddenly, I heard a gunshot to my left, down a street whose next intersection was cordoned off with a large wooden cart and a dead horse. The horse was the stuck-up bitch who’d refused C’s advances, it seemed. Figures moved on the distant side of the cart, though I couldn’t make them out.

Regardless, I sprinted towards the cart: if there were gunshots, that meant Blackout was there. And if I had her, I could lure Stronghold to me.

Another gunshot, then came the the voice of an angry girl shouting, “Leave them the fuck alone!”

Revolvers drawn, I hopped up onto a barrel, up onto the cart, and jumped over its top. My boots landed upon something hard yet furry, and it went down under my weight. I didn’t bother to look down as I pointed a gun and fired into the chest of a lupine horror to my left, the javelin round exploding its lungs out from its back. Jerking to the left, another javelin round eviscerated the intestines and stomach of another wolf.

I crouched down, set my guns on the ground, and pulled out my knife. The wolf below me struggling to get up, and would have if I’d not lifted its head and slashed out its throat, jugular vein and carotid artery both.

I picked up my revolvers and reloaded them with more javelins as I looked out at the small gaggle of children standing there, staring at the bleeding woman on the ground before them. She was holding up one of Blackout’s massive revolvers in hand, a trickle of blood running down her mouth, claws marks over her chest.

“Wee!” Jayne cried out in orgasmic glee. “I knew Cards would look adorable with a stomach wound!”

“Hey there, Gunslinger,” Cards said with a cough. “I was just, y’know, doing stuff.”

I knelt down and gave her two of my healing tonics, whereof I was beginning to run low. In a few moments, she was up and capable of walking. “Blackout brought home the guns last night, and when the screaming and explosions happened, I grabbed one and… came across these kids, and… I’ve been trying to get them to the chapel.”

“Chapel?” I asked.

“Your horse can taaaalk!” one of the boys whined at me, pointing.

“Aye,” Cards said. “A big, strong stone church built by a Confessionist missionary a while back. He’s helped protect folken before, so he’ll do it again. He’s a nice man, too, that Priester.” I tried not to grit my teeth as Cards’ Equestro-Eveslandish accent touched my proud teutsches word in its no-no place. Rape-Cards was the worst! “Really, he’s one of the few people who’re nice to me, even offering to help me learn Teutsch. With any luck, he’s still there, and if I know Father Bart—err, Vater Barthlolomäus, then he’s helping Sheriff Blackout get folken into the shelter he has in the chapel.”

“I never saw a church,” I said blankly.

She gave me a lopsided look. “Then I guess you weren’t looking hard enough. It’s kinda hard to miss.”

Suppress the urge to slap. Suppress it!

|— ☩ —|

Silently, Cards peeked over the crate. Here in the alley, with about seven wee tykes behind me, I let her lead. To get to this place, I had to basically go back the way I came, although from a different angle. Cards said her mother would likely be there, so I had to follow her there. Really, she’d shown me a little map. Well, she’d drawn me a map in the dirt, and I knew the vague location of the chapel. Cards seemed to want to skirt by the edge of the lake first, though. All in all, I could have gone there on my own, but… for some reason, I was allowing Cards to lead the children and me there.

God, Cards was leading me. Screw it, maybe Stronghold had a point about these not really being people. In a world wherein Cards could lead, there was only death.

“Couple of big, ugly fuuu—n-hating guys out there,” Cards whispered. “They pass by, we make a break for it, and then cross the alley and take a left at the town hall at the alley’s end.” She smiled reassuringly, though I could see through it like thin, wet panties.

I nodded, and she hunkered down. Then I thought that I’d just thought of a panty line involving Cards, and that thought made my skin crawl. Wait, no. My skin was already crawling around my arms and gut, as it had been now for a great many minutes, although even thinking of Cards in any vaguely sex-related sense was just… unholy. It didn’t help that, with the way Cards’ shirt and little armored vest had been torn, from just the wrong angle, I could see a bit of nipple, and since werekindred thought that swollen mammary glands were the sexbomb, that… just didn’t work very well.

Still, Cards took everything in stride. It gave me cause to wonder: if I hadn’t basically destroys Cards’ life, murdered her only friend, and made her pants-wettingly terrified of me, was this how she would have been? Could she have actually had a shot of competence without me? And for that matter, just how badly had I hurt Cards in my where?

When one the tykes, a little girl in a dirty pink dress, sniffled, Cards forced a smile and said, “Hey, wanna hear a joke?”

“I guess,” she said.

“So, a man and a woman meet at the funeral of a guy they both work with, sorta. The guy and the girl fall madly in love with each other, but the guy leaves before the girl can get his name and address. So, the next day, she kills the man’s sister. Why?”

There was a pause.

“You suck at jokes,” the little girl said.

Cards let her head fall. “I know…”

“If she knew his sister, how come she didn’t ask her?” a boy asked.

“I don’t know!”

The kids, one by one, heckled Cards about her lack of joking skills, and poked holes into her joke. I sat there in silent thought, my skin crawling. Against my better judgment, I pulled up my left leg and watched as something sloughed off. Slough was a fun word, too—for some reason, I always pronounced it like der Schlauch, though, which was the teusche word for “hose”. And though I tried to distract myself with banal thoughts, I couldn’t ignore that my arm was runny.

The forrot’s blackness wasn’t what was oozing out, though; if anything, it was helping hold the limb together. But, it was still something to think about, something much better than the fact that I recognized this alleyway.

Nigh a month ago, although hardly more than a few days ago in terms of days I was properly conscious for, I had stopped in this alleyway. Then I’d turned around and, with my sword, slew the rest of Sleepy Oaks, drowning the mule baron in a pool of his own stomach acid. I couldn’t even remember my sword killing all those foals, but I knew I had.

And of these children before me… how many of them had I personally murdered in the world whence I came? It was… an uncomfortable feeling. It was a feeling foreign to me… and I suspected that it was regret.

No! I barked in my head. Gott verfluche das Gesicht seines Vaters! God curse the face of your father if you dare break down with regrets now! Think of something, anything, else, but feel and think no regret. So I did. Because listening to the voice in your head was a great way to make friends.

I tapped on the box, making a noise. Two fingers raised, I said softly. “I know why she killed them man’s sister. In your joke, that is.” They all fell silent. “She killed the man’s sister because she knew the man would be at her funeral and where it would be held.”

Cards nodded hesitantly. “Heck, that’s… that’s actually the answer, though a bit wordy.” She glanced at the kids. “It’s, uh, a weird little joke I heard this one time, and they said only a sociopath would be able to figure out the answer.”

I cocked a brow. “Then I guess I must be a sociopath.”

She laughed, though she had to force it down. “Oh, I can see that. As we know, all sociopaths are nice, like to save people, and… and refuse to take advantage of sad girls.” Cards forced a smile. “Thanks for that, by the way. N-never really thanked you. I mean, I… I want to thank you for being nice, Gunslinger. I just… kinda wanna say that… I…”

I raised myself slightly, checking over the box and into the streets before Cards could finish her sentence. “Coast is clear, let’s move!”

|— ☩ —|

“Okay, go!” Cards hissed as she lead the troupe of tykes across the street and at an angle into a barber shop. I recalled that it had been boarded up whence I’d come, but must have been in more active service in this Sleepy Oaks “There’s a way through here!”

I brought up the rear, and to my left I could see the town square some two or three blocks away. And as the last of the tykes went into the building, my heart sank in my chest. It felt like I was going to vomit the organ out like a frog being crushed under the weight of an enormously fat child whose mother insists it’s a glandular problem, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.

I looked down the road, past the wreckage and debris and junk and at the thing which Cards couldn’t have seen. My throat felt dry as I then looked at the ground wherebefore I stood.

This… this was exactly where I’d killed Blossom. Where I’d broken the Code. This was whence my issues of self-loathing had come. Because I was a monster. Standing here, I could see her body. And to this day, I lacked the wherewithal to fix the Code, to make myself whole, to cleanse myself.

“Gunslinger, get inside!” I heard Cards shout from the barbershop.

I looked up at Cards as if in a daze, and then I looked back down the street. The thing which had first taken my attention was there. I no longer saw dark red wisps of energy coursing into the town center.

And then the entire center of town suddenly erupted with an unholy white and bluish light, bathing the rest of Sleepy Oaks in its ethereal colors. Even Cards now took notice of it, the aura shimmering off her red irises. Though I know not for sure what it meant, I was pretty sure I could guess with great accuracy: the Devil’s Backbone had completed his ritual transformation, and was now a monster not unlike C.

In other words, prepare your anus: the rapening begins!

“Cards,” I shouted, suddenly turning and bolting for the doorway. “We need to get the tykes to safety, stat! To the chapel!” And because that’s where Stronghold must be, I didn’t add.

|— ☩ —|

White stone composed the thick-looking walls of a building taking up its own block, surrounded by houses and other such constructs. It was a church alright, with steeple and bell tower and everything. It beat me how I hadn’t noticed such an obvious thing, especially a building not generally seen outside the East, where Konfessionismus ruled with an iron fist.

Before the building’s front doors was a great garden and fountain, and in this sanctuary of nature was a clear path straight to the entrance. We checked the streets, then raced across and to the doors.

“Lets us in! It’s Cards, and I’ve got children!” the woman called out, banging on the evidently locked and likely barricaded door. Moments passed, and I kept watch for any monsters. The white and blue glow had vanished, replaced by a sense of unease. The screams of people were dying down, and I didn’t think that meant that the folken were safe, so to speak.

Sounds of a ludicrous amount of loud unlocking noises and a hard scraping came from the door before it creaked open. “Fräulein Cards?” came the voice of what must have been a middle-aged gentleman.

Cards bowed her head ever so slightly. “Grub disch, Vater.”

I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from screaming. No, no, no! Bad Cards! That was not how anything was pronounced! But as I nearly had a seizure of hate, Cards herded the kids into the slight opening in the door, graciously following after them.

Then a tan-skinned man poked his head out from the door, squinting his golden eyes at me, a smidgen of ash on his salt-and-pepper goatee. When he saw me and the Iron Cross hanging around my neck, his eyes widened.

“Servus und grüß Gott, Vater,” I said in a short, clipped voice, squeezing past him and into the building. I looked around the pews and altar and create cross of Laurentia. But at the same time, I dipped my hand into the holy water and performed das Kreuzzeichen, saying aloud, “Im Namen des Vaters und der Prophetin und des Maschinengeists. Amen.”

When I turned to the Priester, I found that he’d locked the door back up. It was an impressible array, truth be told. “Spricht Ihr Teutsch?” he asked.

“Yes, for I a Teutscher am,” I replied in Teutsch. “And I remember the face of my father.”

The man in the dark priestly robes with gold and purple highlights nodded. “Whence come you? Your accent, are you from Zentrum?” He grit his teeth, then hesitantly went on with, “Or perhaps you hail from one of the more Southern regions. Are you from—”

“Neuorléans, in a manner of speaking,” I said, cutting him off with a horizontal slashing motion as I continued to look around. “I spent a fair amount of time in Zentrum, however, whence my father hailed. Graduate of the Universität zu Neuorléans, too,” I went on with a shrug, “before they burned it, that is.”

He nodded. “So you’re a Southerner?” he asked, and I shrugged.

The Vater opened his mouth to respond. But just then Cards darted up to us and said, “Isch kann spreken klein Teusch—er, Teutsch auch!”

I gave Vater Bartholomäus a dry look, proceeding to say in Teutsch, “She says you taught her this. How in the Allfather’s name have you let her go on thinking she’s good? Look at that smile. She thinks she’s not all that terrible!”

The Vater gave a sheepish shrug. “She may be… beyond subpar, but she tries hard. Even though her hard is rather soft.” I uttered a chuckle, and he continued shortly thereafter. “But, you have to admit, it is sort of adorable seeing her try. A-and I lack the heart to really tell her that her Teutsch makes me want to grind my teeth till they are nought but dust.”

Cards said something to the effect of “I am a jelly doughnut”.

I patted her on the head and she smiled so wide as I said in a proud voice, “Sehr schön, Liebes, könntest du jetzt aber bitte aufhören, meine Ohren mit deiner Stimme zu vergewaltigen?”

The girl frowned, looking at the Vater. “Uh, my Teutsch isn’t all that good. What’d he say?”

Vater Bartholomäus glanced at me, then replied, “He said your Teutsch makes him proud, and you will one day bring him much pride therewith.”

Cards beamed just the cutest, girliest smile I’d ever seen. And, by God, happy Cards looks all sorts of wrong and unholy!

I had, in fact, said, “Yes, that’s nice, sweetie, now could you please stop raping my ears with your voice?”

“In any case, Vater,” I went on in Teutsch, not wanting Cards to understand, “I am here because I’m looking for Stronghold and Blackout.”

“But Stronghold is dead,” he replied, walking alongside me down towards the altar.

“So Blackout has not passed through here?”

“No, she has. Was here, actually, but she left to help round up others. In the crypts and catacombs and shelter beneath the church, where she went after saving as many townsfolk as possible.”

“Such space exists beneath the church?” I asked. Looking around, the lack of many people up here now made a lot more sense. I spied Glasses, who was helping Cards get the kids into what I could only presume was the basement area. There were a few other folken besides Glasses, but he and Cards stood out most in my mind. A dull part of me noted just how much Vater Bartholomäus was taller than the others, like me, though not by such a degree. Hooray for Teutonic tendencies to be taller than other races.

“Yes,” he replied as we reached the altar. “I built this place atop an old temple of the Founding Fathers. Slowly, my flock has been growing, a great deal in part to my philosophy and kindness.”

“Philosophy?”

The man hesitated, then crossed his arms behind his back and stood up tall. “Yes. Before the Backbone, I offered the great space under my church as a refuge to those persecuted by the Confessionists of this land’s easterly cities.”

I blinked as I thought back to what King Elkington had said about witches, both Black Erelith and that one who’d recently caused such a commotion in the coastal cities of the region. “You… you mean to tell me that you… you offer sanctuary to those who practice magic?”

He swallowed and nodded. “It is my interpretation of the Book of Keys that the Frau Laurentia spoke on knowing and controlling magic, treating it with care, not to murder those misfortunate enough to be born therewith, or those seeking to simply learn of the world wherein we live.”

In that moment, my face must have bore a vicious, murderous expression, for the Vater noticeably flinched. “Of course you’d think that, heathen Priester,” I spat. “It’s no wonder, really. Just like Social Grace: if someone is nice to Cards, it’s a clear mark that they’re evil and corrupt. I used to work in the Reichskriminalamt! I know your kind, and you’re as dangerous as a witch, spreading dangerous lies as though gospel.” The Vater stood his ground as I pressed up against him, glaring down at him. “You are a disgrace to the cloth, and you should be burned.”

But I took a deep breath, putting distance betwixt the man and me. “Lucky for you, some idiotic bastard masquerading as a Priester is the least of my concerns right now. Tell me when Blackout will return; this knowledge may well save us all.”

“I know not. My recommendation is to hunker down, sit tight, and wait for her to return. I have a spotter up in the bell tower. Good day, Gunslinger.”

I nodded at him. “Auf Wiedersehn, Vater.” Then, after a moment’s thought: “May your first day in Hell last ten-thousand years, and may it be your shortest.”

Sighing, I left the Vater and walked over towards a pew and took a spot thereon. Sure, I could go out and try to find Blackout and thus Strong, but a part of me was sure it was a better idea to let her come to me, and thus to be the one holding ground when Strong did whatever he was going to do.

“Curious situation we’re in, hmm, Gunslinger?” Jayne asked.

“You could say that,” I muttered. When speaking to the train in your head, no matter how real she was, it was best to keep low your voice, that others didn’t hear you. “Were C here, I bet this would be easier for me; he’d make a dandy scout or something. Stupid horse.”

“C said some odd things,” Jayne added as I looked around the pews. Myself watching the Vater as he helped attend to Cards and the types, she went on. “He spoke of working for an angel, and being on the hunt for flesh.”

I snorted. “C is a liar. And he is a person-eating hellspawn. A part of me is sure he said the angel-working-for part simply because he was trying to seduce you or something.”

“Well, being that I lack a vagina, he’s free to try to seduce me all he wishes,” Jayne said calmly. “Although,” she went on in the tones of one whose finger is up to her face as they thought, “had I genitalia, that might actually be sort of awesome. It’d have to be super sensitive, likely turning into a twitching mass of pleasure with but a few touches, and I’d offer it to be used after some particularly riveting bloodshed, while the gore is still exciting my circuits.”

“That… is a very uncomfortable thought, and I wish you to never again mention this to me. Ever.”

“Well, I—did you see that?!”

I blinked. “See what?”

Then came what was arguably the single most unnatural and skin-crawling sensation I’d ever felt: the feeling of having mine own eye moved for me. My left eye looked far up and to the left, my right eye still facing forwards. A wave of vague, dizzy nausea hit me, and I quickly adjusted my right eye to match up with my left.

Up there the high windows I could just barely make out bright lights of white and blue. Angelic, heavenly colors so favored by demons and whacky suicide cults alike.

I touched Skybane on my back, my sword, and then set my hands to my revolvers. The feel of the steelbark grips and the texture of the gunmetal helped keep my thoughts level, my heart at rest.

And now to play the waiting game.

|— ☩ —|

As it turned out, with enough focus, it was entirely possibly to make a bullet dance betwixt a werekind’s fingers. I watched, transfixed, as the bullet moved like water through them all, then back and to dance again. I was pretty sure I should have been thinking up battle plans, but this was just sort of trippy.

So when someone so rudely banged rather loudly at the church’s door, snapping me out of my trance and making me drop my bullet, I immediately took a dislike to that poor, desperate soul. How dare they try not to be eaten by demons or turned into magic force via white magic! These people, ever inconsiderate.

Dimly, I heard someone from high above, likely that guy up in the bell tower, shout something about Sheriff Blackout. Of course, as soon as I heard that, I was on my feet, my heart suddenly racing so hard that I could feel my blood pressure skyrocketing. I momentarily considered changing my diet before shaking such thoughts out of my head and readying myself to draw my revolvers.

“Blackout?” Cards cried out somewhence unknown. Glasses said something inconsequential as I watched Vater Bartholomäus head for the door. I walked down the aisle as the Vater went about the arduous process of opening this church’s only real defense.

When the door’s last bolts and whatnots were down, it nearly exploded inwards as a small flock of men, women, and children came in. Blackout, I could see, was standing behind them with a frantic look on her face.

“Let’s, go, let’s go, let’s go!” she was shouting. “Bart, this is everyone I could find, I don’t think there are any others!”

Through the church’s high windows, I saw a flash of red. It came somewhence and went somewhither. That in mind, I reached the doors. “Blackout, there you are!”

Blackout looked at me with a mix of several emotions, none whereof were pleasant. “Why are you in here, not out there?!”

I glanced up for any more odd colors, and only say that white and blue light from the center of town. “I was looking for you, and I knew you’d come here. Theretofore, I was helping your daughter rescue children.”

For a moment she wrinkled her nose in disgust, but a strident shriek put that on pause. At the far end of the church’s gardens was a man with toothy mouths were his eyes should be. Though she had her gun out, I drew my revolver, cocked, aimed, and fired before she could so much as get a good look at the thing. Something under the flesh of my arms felt like it was slithering as I reloaded, cursing myself for having wasted a javelin bullet on something that looked so frail.

“Shit!” Blackout spat as I heard footsteps rapidly approaching me from behind. Probably Cards and Glasses. “Was that thing following us?”

Above us came again that flash of red. I could see dark stormclouds in the sky, and I was positive that therewith came the light trickle of rain getting its footing. Quickly, I reloaded the missing bullet as I said, “I think it was following you, Blackout. You’re the prize Stronghold wants, and he’s willing to let everyone else die therefor. And since I’m really, really tired of this where—”

“Look, that’s fine!” She stamped a foot. “Now would you just move outta my fuckin’ way so I can get in there?” She moved to push past me, and I grabbed her and held her at bay. The thought of using her as living bait was tempting. “I don’t wanna just be standing here with my thumb up my ass!”

I shot her a dry look. Then I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, there stood Cards and Glasses, the Vater off to the side. Cards had her hands clasped together under her chin as she gnawed on a lip corner. “Cards, Glasses, Vater Bartholomäus, we need to ensure that a certain bastard doesn’t get his hands on Blackout. That’s imperative.”

“Fathersdammit, just let me in!” Blackout shouted. She glanced over her shoulder, down the street to the distantly moving column of light round a corner. “Shit, okay, what is that?”

“Well, it’s technically the demonic equivalent of using a tasty worm and dangling it from a fishing rod into a pond of sex-starved tuna,” I said, still holding her back, not letting her past me. She struggled to get past me, but, well, she failed, suffice it to say. “Although supplant worm for ‘vile bitch’ and likewise replace ‘sex-starved tuna’ with ‘sex-starved ex-husband’ and we came to what’s really going on here. I suspect now that he knows where you are, he’s come to collect you.” Without warning, I pulled her into the church. “You’ve been out here long enough for my purposes. Folken, protect this women. Bitch may she be—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“—if Stronghold gets her, there is no doubt he’ll run off, and thus I’ll have no shot of getting the book, Calêrhos.” I smiled. “Also, I just plain don’t want her anywhere near me when she’s fighting. Something tells me that in a big fight, she’d be about as useful as a condom full of tiny teeth from some indeterminate animal.”

Why hello there, use of humor to suppress stress. Yes, I could go for a pile of beaver pelts at this moment. Hold the mayo. And the sense. Cents, too. I’ll have none thereof.

I nodded. “You lock this door, and you lock it tight, and you do everything on this earth to protect this woman, else we all fail. She is still our bait, in a way.”

“Wait, what are you going to do?” Cards asked, almost pushing her mother aside to stand before me. I say ‘almost’ because when she tried, her mother shoved her away and I had to catch her so she didn’t fall. Of course, I had to nudge her back into the building proper.

With a dark smile on my bleak countenance, I simply shut the big doors. Turning around, I faced out at the approaching mass of light. “I’m going to do as I always do: save the day.” As I stepped forwards through the garden, bits of rain hitting here and there sparsely, I amended myself with, “And hopefully without killing a whole bunch of kids this time.”

|— ☩ —|

The street seemed so silent as I stood there in the middle of the road, the rain still short of a drizzle, but nevertheless noticeable. I could feel hundreds of eyes upon me, monsters hiding in the alleys and on rooftops, watching with interest as everything came down to one, likely overdramatic fight.

There he stood, just walking around like it were nothing, his skin grayed, his body twisted and corrupted into the skinwalker-like form, and his mouth far too large for his beady eyes. When he saw me, he gestured to a pair of imp-looking things behind him, who quickly fiddled with the cart they were hauling. They flipped a large switch, and off went the light, which had been coming from a weird thing in said cart.

Huh. Suddenly, now that I knew this big light wasn’t because he glowed, he seemed far less badass. Of course, he could probably still rip me limb from limb, but I wouldn’t be cooly ripped limb from limb.

“If you are here,” came the Backbone’s voice, loud and throaty, “then Blackout must certainly be within yon church.”

I shrugged. “What, you’re looking for her too, now? I mean, I guess she’s got, uh, whatever it is that folken here think is hot, but is she really worth all the trouble? Think thereabout: she’s a shitty mother, I don’t think she can cook, and the only thing that ever came out of her womb was Cards.”

“It’s not so much that I’m looking for her as I am merely providing a distraction, for I intend to hold up my end of the bargain.” He shrugged.

“But while we fight,” I went on, “Stronghold is no doubt going about his nefarious business. Were I to turn to go off and stop him, you’ll murder me from behind.And since you know where she is, so does he. So, I am on a sort of timer. I’ve got to defeat you, get Stronghold, nick the book, and then save the day, I suppose. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

He only smirked, slowly sauntering towards me, his movements like that of a werekind but exaggerated and heavy. “You stay, you die. You go after Stronghold, I kill you, and you die.” He blinked. “Because killing you doesn’t cause you to die, it seems. I need to hire a speech-writer. Or enslave one. Hmm, yes, that does sound pointlessly nefarious, doesn’t it?” He laughed. “Ah, yes, because being so pointlessly—”

I sighed, massaging the bridge of my nose as he went on. “Difficulty level?” I mumbled to myself. “Invincible skinwalker beast with a penchant for murder and with a look in his eyes that says he’s going to rape me in the nostril. Okay! Can-do spirit, let’s save the day—but first, a one-liner!”

My eyes fell to my hips. “But my guns are still… something scary.” I looked up. “You know, since I can’t figure out how to make this line make any sense in context here, I’m just going to say it.” He didn’t seem to hear me; rather, I think he was probably going on about his tragic backstory or whatever. I really didn’t care at this point.

Quicker than greased lightning, I drew and cocked the weapons which a now-dead man had once hight rapecannons and shouted, “My guns don’t even know the meaning of ‘consensual sex’! They are the Cherry Berry of guns!”

The bullet fire tore off half his face before it exploded. Twice. And it destroyed most of his head. His jaw kept moving as he went on his villainous monolog, his legs wobbling forwards, almost stumbling.

C’s body reformed via nebulous shadows of black and red with the occasional twinkling star within. The Backbone? Several tear-like holes opened in the thin air around him, and from each reached out a hand clasping a surgeon’s needle. They stabbed into his mutilated face, and dug out strings of blackish red therefrom. Before mine very eyes and with a supernatural speed, they reached down and picked up the biggest chunks of the Backbone’s head, showing themselves to be far, far longer than any arm should rationally be. They sowed chunks of skull and face onto the mesh before stabbing the needles deep into the chunks. And the hands grabbed at the chunks, clawing into them, and literally dragged the rest of the Backbone’s head and face back into existence around the mesh before slinking back into their tears in reality, leaving no trace of their presence save for the now-smiling abomination standing hardly five meters before me.

“Well then,” I said in the kind of high-pitched voice I never spoke in because I was smart enough to always wear a codpiece.

“Hey,” the Backbone prompted with a slowly, honey-like voice that gave me chill bumps and made my balls scramble as deep into my body as they could get away with. “Wanna see a magic trick?” He held up his right arm as if flexing, and the skin twisted and undulated and convulsed and turned into a boney lance.

Before I could depress the trigger of my leftmost gun, he charged out me with a hellish roar, his distant minions cackling for him a chorus. The javelin round hit his shoulder and nearly blew it off, though he took it like a total trooper.

With every ounce of force in my body, I threw myself at the right and rolled on the road as he hit where I’d been mere seconds ago, scoring a deep furrow in the dirty road. Because obligatory environmental damage meant serious business. When he turned to me and charged again, I could see his damaged arm was literally hanging on by surgical, blackish-red threads.

Even as two bullets hit him in the chest and probably destroyed his lungs and liver, ensuring he could never breath or drink alcohol again, he laughed, which was sort of impossible without lungs. But, when you’re an invincible skinwalker-demon, you probably did three impossible things every morning before breakfast.

“Nope!” I shouted, jumping back as he stabbed at the ground. His aim really was shit, wasn’t it?

The damaged arm had regenerated well. I knew this because he reached out and backhanded me therewith as he pulled his lance out of the ground. He hit like a bitch, like my ex-girlfriend. Which was to say, he hit hard enough to make me want to hide and cower in the closet and hope that she—that he never found me.

Before I could make a witty and ultimately really annoying response, he twisted his leg around and kicked me straight in the ribs. Trying to jump back might have saved me from something, but it didn’t stop the rush of agony followed by the rush of rolling for no small distance end-over-end over a road and into the church’s garden, hitting my head something hard and knocking my hat off.

I looked up, feeling blood leaking down my head, around my head bandages I still had from my failed dive-for-cover back aboard the train with Frosty, and down into my ear. Although the Backbone was coming for me again, my primary concerns were, in order, to find my hat, and to make the little Lightning Dusts stop flying around my head. Seriously. The fact that at least two of my ribs here probably broken? Pff! Hats were more important than ribs.

When I found my hat and put it back on, I found the Devil’s Backbone standing there. “Howdy,” I said, and shot him one in the leg and stomach. He wasn’t amused by this, a fact conveyed to me partially from his expression, and partially by the way he pretty much broke my leg with a side-sweeping kick.

Arms from the nether stitched his body back together piece by bloody piece as he stood over me. That didn’t stop me from shooting him twice more. Although it did stop me when he jammed his lance deep into my lung, and I reflexively dropped my guns and tried to curl into a little ball, like I used to do when either Father or my ex was angry with me. And though they’d never stabbed me in the lung, I was pretty sure that Maiya had wanted to.

In any case, I realized that thinking about my terrific love life was precisely the wrong thing to do about the time where he twisted the bone-lance, and I coughed out blood. By some miracle, he’d stabbed me exactly where I’d gotten impaled back in Songnam, so… well, at least I couldn’t get a new scar.

“You really piss me off,” he growled down at me.

I tried weakly to raise a lecturing figure. “That’s telling.” I coughed. “Instead, show how you feel by action—” He twisted the lance in my lung like he were trying to use my lungs as a frying pan wherein he was scrambling eggs. I tried to commend him, but all I did was cough out more blood onto Dust’s bandana and soak the edges of my Iron Cross.

My neck went limp, and my head lolled onto the ground. Vision now upside down, I could see a man in a black jacket standing outside the church’s doors, a book in hand. Seemed as if Stronghold had ditched the white robes for something more stereotypically evil-looking. Glancing betwixt his tome and the door, he made a gesture and touched it, prompting a loud snapping sound like thunder but with far more wood. Thunderwood? No, wait, that just sounded like something Lighting Dust would insinuate her sexual partner had in a failed bid to try to sound sexy to said partner. Speaking of terrible sex-related insinuations, I didn’t see what happened next, because the Backbone resumed his massive bone-lance’s penetration into my moist, quivering body.

Once cackling, the Backbone’s minions had all gone silent, though I wasn’t sure how long this had been the case. It didn’t seem to bother the monster before me. “I asked you what you saw before you once prior,” he said in dark yet liquid tones. “And I’m going to ask you once more. What do you now see before you?”

Weakly, I raised my head, blood leaking from everywhere save my genitals at this point. “Huh,” I muttered. Not that anybody but me and the train-lady in my head could even hear it. “Seems like there is a reason for the silence.”

“I ask it of you!” the Backbone howled. “What see ye before thee?”

The sound that came out of my mouth was almost like a laugh. “I see a horse.”

“What?”

He didn’t even have time to frown before C crashed into him, sending the Backbone skidding across the ground and into the garden’s central fountain. Without the lance in my chest, blood flowed freely from the now trench-like wound with alarmingly speed. C the Horse glared at the Backbone with an expression that I wanted to flinch from—it was such an expression of pure malice, hatred, and ill-intent that only the twisting, unholy countenance of a skinwalker could even form it.

“Howzit, gents?” C asked, his voice thick and heavy, like a mountain collapsing into itself a thousand times over. He reached a hoof forwards, and I watched as the skin and fur cracked and popped. With the sound of a hundred somebodies biting into particularly juicy pieces of fruit, the skin sloshed and twisted until the hoof was now C’s clawed hand. He moved the hand towards my bags, and from the fingertips came hundreds of little black tendrils which seeped into my bag and pulled out a pink potion.

The tendrils put the potion, uncapped, in his hand, and he poured it into my lung wound. My focus went solely to the feeling, burning trench, listening to the sizzling and hissing sound of the flesh healing. When I looked up, the last of the horse parts of C were twisting and rendering themselves asunder, sloshing and splashing until they were the mottled, tattooed flesh of the skinwalker proper.

“You know,” he went on in that dark tone of his, “I’ve spent a lot of my time here, between searching for the fallen angel’s exchange, just sitting around and doing some soul-searching.” The liquid running down C’s naked body reminded me of afterbirth, the water of a womb. “As ’twere, I’ve tolerated so many offenses against me and mine own. Yet you just crossed the line.”

The Backbone stumbled to his feet. “You… you… you are…”

“I am skinwalker, a skinwalker, the skinwalker,” C offered, glaring at the Backbone, his fists clenched. “And you are not. You are some broken facsimile created by the moderator’s book, the coding of the wordmaker, the destruction wrought by the codebreaker. You think yourself true.”

“I am a skinwalker!” the Backbone spat back, and I heard a gunshot from within the church.

C shook his head and smiled. “Oh?” He raised his left arm, and I could see that nigh every inch of its skin was taken up by wide-grinning maws of sharp teeth. He lunged forwards which such speed that he was almost invisible, biting hard the upper arm of the Backbone with his original maw. Though the demon tried to grab at C, his fingers ended up in the arm-teeth. All the while, C dug his own fingers into the Backbone’s collarbone. The dozens of toothed maws twisted and reached forwards with long, black necks of their own, latching down on the demon, holding him nigh still.

The skinwalker jerked his head back and, with the sound of a hundred smashed branches crushed by a snapping tree, ripped the Backbone’s arm uncleanly off. What came out of the Backbone’s mouth was a sound so shrill I had to grit my teeth. C stepped back, the Backbone’s arm in his original maw. His arm-mouths unlatched from the Backbone and instead moved to devour the demonic arm like so many piranhas. Nothing, not even the bones, remained within seconds of the voracious biting and chewing.

“Because,” C said, “you don’t taste like a skinwalker. And I should kenn.” He poked himself in the naked breast. “For I have eaten many a brother.”

The tears in reality came again, arms with surgeon’s needles. Almost every inch of C radiated with a smile. Literally. Though his feet now were like a raptor’s talons, and his legs up to his knees were armored, bony plating, everything else smiled. There was a huge, skull-splitting smile of his face. The smiles of his arms. The toothy maws of the likewise fanged maws grinning from his chest. Those on his back. His sides. His legs above the armored knees…

C licked his face-lips with a long, pointed tongue before growling, “I have hunger. Such hunger!”

Though I bled all over, and though I was trying to stand up, I still watched. The arms from the tear—I thought of them as nether-arms with nether-hands—stabbed into the Backbone’s body with their needles, pulling back out therefrom strings of blackish red. There were so many nether-hands on so many nether-arms.

C charged into the mass of hellish limbs, his face-mouth chomping down on one of the nether-hands and ripping it off with a wet crunching sound. When nether-limbs tried to retaliate, all they did was smash into the many grins of C. His many maws bit down hard on the nether-arms, many of his mouths reaching out on their black necks to grab fleeing prey, and many just content to rend chunks of flesh free for feasting. C even reached into one of the tears, pulling out a nether-arm that’d managed to successfully flee. It too became more food for the skinwalker.

Leg probably broken along with at least two ribs, I watched him work as I gathered up and reloaded my guns. Then I still watched as I attempted to hobble past him and through the open doors of the church. There’d been a gunshot, and that didn’t fill me with confidence.

When it was over, C licked his facial lips before bending and twisting himself to lick clean the bloodiest parts of his body with almost motherly care. “While a lovely nostalgia trip to see such arcane methods of holding a supposéd skinwalker together, I am afraid there was a reason such techniques never made it into mass production. See, now that I’ve eaten them, you can’t regenerate.”

All his unnatural mouths smiled once more before closing, their lips sealing with an almost comic but entirely literal zipping. They were like little scars, and then were gone. Now there was only C and C’s tattooed flesh alone, his one true mouth giving the on-his-knees Backbone a lopsided grin.

“Now,” C said, still grinning, “can you yet see why inferior races are forever unfit to wear the title of skinwalker? Because that is what you and all your ilk are: biologically inferior by a degree which you can’t even comprehend. But that’s okay. That’s nature.” He leaned in towards the Backbone, and the demon fell onto his back, trying to scramble away. “But you are at its bottom, whereas I stand at its pinnacle, it supreme apex.”

“Th-the apex of what?”

His voice was calm and fatherly as he said, “Why, of the food chain.”

C grabbed the Backbone’s face in his long, clawed fingers and twisted him around. Quickly, he shifted so that he now held the demon by the back of the head, fingers digging into the skull. C slammed the Backbone’s face into the ground, and through gritted teeth growled, “Here, let me rub it in!”

Pressing the demon’s face into the ground, C raced forwards into the church. I heard a scream as C’s sprint knocked me to the ground. There existed now streaks of blood, pieces of mottled skin, little balls of rolled up flesh and gray matter along the places where C had been grinding the demon’s face into the ground. Where he’d been rubbing the facts of life in. And there were a lot of those places, if all this gore was anything to go by.

When I got back up, I felt like I might vomit. But I forced that feeling away—mostly ignored it and prayed it’d vanish, really—as I limped into the church. Distantly, there was another sound of gunfire.

The scene within was a mess. Pews stood broken and smashed, chunks of the stone floor ripped out, and blood everywhere. The Vater was on the ground off in a corner, and I didn’t care enough to try to figure out if he was alive or dead. Really, my main concerns centered around C, on all fours as he very loudly tore chunks of flesh out of the Backbone and shoved them into his maw, his one maw.

That concern quickly shifted over to the side as gunfire erupted past a thick-looking door. It burst open and out came Blackout, tumbling and rolling on the ground. She coughed and spun onto her back, raising her gun as the man in the black jacket calmly strolled through the doorway, humming to himself a little tune.

“Get away from me!” Blackout hissed, aiming her gun at Stronghold and firing. It clicked. “Shit!” Blackout pressed the trigger again and again as fast as she could cock it, but since doing the same thing again and again wasn’t known for new results, the gun just kept clicking uselessly.

“Oh come now, dear, it’s not like you must play so rough,” Stronghold said in a jovial tone, smile on his face. Blackout resorted to crawling backwards to get away from the man, but he just kept walking towards her.

Then, panting hard, Cards ran out of the door. She nearly doubled up, sweat dripping from her brow. Cards saw her father and mother. “Stop it! Stop it, Dad!” she cried out, her eyes wet. “Whatever I did, I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I can be better than-than that other Cards from wherever you’re from, just stop hurting her!”

Blackout actually took the time to stop crawling in order to say, “For Geremiah’s sake, you stupid little girl! He doesn’t want you! Nobody does!”

Judging by the jerking motion Cards suddenly made, she’d just been hit with an invisible warhammer to the gut. Then she froze as a stray glance ended with her locking eyes with the skinwalker.

C finished with the bloody piece of meat he was chewing and licked most of his face clean with his sharp tongue. “I wasn’t counting on guests, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t have much to share.” He smiled that toothy, fanged smile of his that was larger that most people’s faces as he held out a gorey chunk of flesh with an eyeball therein to Cards. “But what I have I share.”

Cards looked at the offered meat, to the mutilated but still recognizable Backbone he was crouched over, and then over towards me. By this point, I was limping as fast as I could over to Stronghold and his beloved, but, well, a part of me was sure that were I to take the time to finding a healing potion, I’d be wasting too much time and would miss something.

She looked back over to C, eyes wide. I recalled that skinwalkers were the epitome of horror in this where, or so implied Lighting Dust. Even the mentioning of their name seemed to cause discomfort and anxiety. So I could only imagine what Cards was feeling at this moment as she doubled over and vomited.

Although, it didn’t take much for me to realize that she needed not a towel wherewith to clean herself. For some reason, that struck a chord within me. She’d pissed herself in sheer terror when first we properly met in my where. So… was I literally scarier to Cards than the skinwalker was?

Had I a magic eight ball, a part of me was sure it’d say yes.

“D’aw, that was such an adorable face!” C crooned. “You know, before you shot all that vomit out of it.”

“Holy shit!” Stronghold exclaimed, looking up at C.

“Yes, I’ve been here for a while,” C stated in a dry tone. And with a little wave: “Hello, least attentive man in the world!” He wolfed down a huge mass of flesh exactly like how a wolf wouldn’t. The skinwalker licked his hands clean before slowly standing up on his two thick legs. “Stronghold, you have abetted a grave blasphemy ’gainst me and mine own.”

“What the hell are…?” Stronghold said before trailing off. “You’re… you’re a skinwalker. You’re just like those monsters in the book!”

Fists clenched, C very slowly, deliberated walked towards Stronghold. There stood a great distance betwixt them, and much of this place was now in ruins, but I doubted that C cared. “You speak true, he of the book, moderator-taius.” Though calm and even, his voice sounded like the fury and hatred of a mountain of accidentally racist postcards. “And know that I shan’t countenance your transgressions.”

He stopped suddenly, his talon-like claws scratching on the stone floor. “But likewise know that though I am to sever the wicked, I am here on business first and foremost.”

Quickly, Stronghold opened Calêrhos and flipped through it, muttering what sounded like “Come on! Come on!” under his breath. “Celestia! How I wish I was a mage!”

“Sad then that you picked up the moderator’s book, Calêrhos,” C added, tilting his head to look at Cards, who was spitting out the last bits of vomit from her mouth. “You shall do, aye, so she shall. Flesh is well and potent, nay?”

“Wha’?” Cards asked weakly to the skinwalker.

“C, what are you doing?!” I bellowed, tripping on a broken statue and falling onto the floor. “Get the bastard! Apprehend Stronghold!”

“He has the book of he who moderates,” C said calmly. “It is a sad fact of my reality that though you have it, the capability to do him grievous bodily harm is beyond me here.”

“What?!”

“Domôrhin!” Stronghold shouted, crouched down to grab Blackout by the belt as she scrambled away from him. In a flash of black light—not that made much sense to me—Stronghold and his wife vanished.

“Dammit, C!” I shouted, slamming a fist onto the ground. The action netted me a nasty splinter in the side of the hand.

“Should be only local. He doesn’t quite know his role in this world.” C shook his head, the mouth on his face actually a normal-sized maw. “He has taken her, I think, to this where’s equivalent to the house they shared back in our world.”

“Then we need to go after them!”

Cards blinked hard, peeling her eyes off C with noticeable effort. Almost as if trying to ignore the giant skinwalker over yon broken pews, she looked at me. “Oh shit, you’re hurt!”

“No!” I shouted. “I’m just getting really into character for this part I’m auditioning for tomorrow!”

She looked at C and jumped back when she saw how creepily close he was standing next to her now. By the Lord, C must have been a good seven feet tall, and compared to Cards, his body just looked all sorts of screwed up. His flesh made the hair on the back of my neck stick up. Werekindred now looked so natural, I supposed, that this abomination seemed unholy.

Cards quickly darted over to me. She brushed aside bits of debris so that she could kneel down and rummage through a little pack she was wearing. From this angle, I could see that little pink tip of flesh on her chest, and I took some solace that without large bosoms, Cards was seen as less desirable. And Cards’ failings and inferiority always filled me with a certain comfort.

“Here!” she said, pulling out a big pear-shaped bottle filled with a crimson liquid. It was the kind of healing potion, I knew, made from the extract of the Doktorkäfer, the doctor bug, which mean it was a non-magical Teutonic potion. “I was saving this for a special occasion, but I guess this will have to do.”

“For the love of the Allfather!” I snapped. “Stop trying to sound cool and just give it me!”

“I’m sorry!” Cards sputtered out quickly, flinching back as though I’d just slapped her. And since I’d slapped the Cards of my where across the face on at least two occasions, I would know.

“’Tis said as ‘give it to me’ or ‘give me it’ in this language, Gunslinger,” C added helpfully.

Hesitantly, Cards slid a hand under my head and lifted it slightly as she gave me the healing potion. When it was all swallowed, I grunted and jerked as the potion burned and healed my ribs and leg. At first she again hesitated, but she still ended up putting my head in her lap, running her fingers through my hair, and shushing and calming me.

“We really shouldn’t be wasting so much time,” C commented. “Every second here is another second closer Stronghold gets to figuring out how to properly dominate Blackout and flee from this world, forever denying you your eye and horn back.”

That thought sent a jolt down by spine. I had the sudden urge to move, despite the healing burning my still-injured bones. Soon enough, however, that was over, and I ambled to me feet. “I thank you, Cards.” And I smiled, ignoring the figure of C looming darkly behind her, leering at her. One nice thing, just one nice thing, and we’d charge after Stronghold. “Healing potions help. You actually did good this time. See? Not a total failure.”

Cards absolutely beamed with such childlike joy that I wanted to take a photograph of her sparkling eyes.

In an instant, her beaming smile became of grimace.

Slowly, like rusted clockwork, she turned her head from me, so slowly, to her right side, just at the base of her ribs. A large, clawed hand gripped her tightly there. C’s hand. I think that both Cards and I realized that, without warning, it wasn’t the only hand at that exact same moment. Hands on her shoulders, sides, legs, over her mouth, even over her breasts—all reached out from behind her.

It felt as if my blood were ice as I looked above Cards and into C’s grinning countenance. With a sudden roar, the clawed hands gripped Cards fast and tore. Blood and torn fabric scattered everywhere. My mouth seemed to fill with cotton, my tongue felt as if utterly absent.

C smiled wider and wider at me, leaning forwards and licking his lips. “Like I said, I’m here on business first and foremost, Gunslinger.” He reached down and dragged his long, sharp-ended tongue up from Cards naked thigh, up her bare chest, and up to her ear, leaking a thick, wet stream of saliva. The liquid dripped and ran down her side as Cards let out a muffled mewl.

“Shh, shh, shh, lovely Cards, crying’s no way to behave,” C cooed. “The taste of your flesh satiates another checkmark. I do think I have chosen well, no?” He smacked his lips. “Although I wonder what she’d say when I remark about its virginity. Will she care, even? I know not.”

My voice found me rather than letting me find it. “What the fuck are you doing, C?!”

He laughed as tears streamed down Cards face, over one of his many hands, and onto her breasts. “There are very few things a man such as I needs or even so much as desires. So when the opportunity arises to acquire something I desire most desperately, I am willing to bargain.”

Hands and legs shaky, I reached for my guns. I had a hard time finding even where my revolvers where. “What the hell are you going on about, C?” I asked in as threatening a tone as possible to make when your voice was shaking. When I realized so much of me was shivering like a sad, cold dachshund, I willed myself to calm down. A façade if need be, but to seem calm all the same.

“I came here because I took a deal from the fallen angel herself,” he said in calm, liquid tones. “I was on the hunt for flesh. And now through Cards, it is the fallen angel’s time to rise, and I will get what I am so desperate for. I don’t need to explain myself any further, now do I?”

The hands over Cards bosoms squeezed. She shivered and mewled.

“I don’t have the time to exposite like some stereotypical bad guy,” he went on. “Because we’ve mere minutes before Stronghold gets what he wants and wins, and you lose forever. All this work wasted, gunslinger.” He removed the hand from over her mouth.

“Gunslinger!” Cards exclaimed, trying to writhe out of C’s many grips but to absolutely no avail.

“You promised me you’d never hurt me or those whom I cared for!” I blurted out.

In a voice exactly like mine own, he replied, “She’s not the emotionally scarred Cards I kennt and helped create. This is a Cards, not the Cards I really care for.” His replication of me stopped. “And there you have it; you said it yourself. Near as I can tell, this particular Cards is fair game.”

“That was earlier!” I shouted. “I don’t wish for any harm to come to her! Goddamit, C, you made a promise!”

And C only smiled that smile of his at me.

Two-seven-two-five-four-two-seven. Those had been the needed numbers for the Cœur. C’s a liar.

“But regardless of such matters, you’re on a timer, tsaius.” Outside, there came a huge crack of thunder, bathing the church with a dark red light. “See what I mean? He’s going to do a lot of damage and he’s going to win. All your work for nought. Funny how such things work!”

I wanted to shoot him, to blow his head off, though I knew it’d do no good. But this close, firing would just as likely harm Cards, for all my bullets were still the twice-exploding javelins.

“This is how I make my fun, tsaius. See, I know right now that were you to try to stop me, you could and would. However it’d also take up a lot of time. More time than you have. Because should you try to stop me here and now, you wouldn’t have enough time to stop Stronghold and get back the book.”

Another flash of red lighting, too near for me to even be able to count the seconds till its sound battered me.

“So, tsaius,” he said with a smile. “Shall you live life as a cripple, broken, without eye or horn and with dying arm, saving the life of some bitch whom you’ll never meet again after this day, since she’s by now far too different from the Cards of your world; or will you stop Stronghold, make whole your flesh, and be able to use Calêrhos against Korweit for whatever he’s planning to use it for?”

“You utter bastard!” I shouted, heart racing but my body running dry on adrenaline. “You can’t do this!”

“Decide, Gunslinger,” he stated in a rock-hard tone. “Every second you waste, the less you have to save yourself and the book. You have some twenty minutes till it all comes crashing down on you, I suspect. But is that enough time to run to Blackout’s house and stop him? I wonder. Times does so fly, does it not?”

Cards looked at me with wide, pleading eyes, her face stained with tears.

My breath was hot, heavy, and fast. I wanted to stay and fight, but a traitorous part of me knew that though C was a liar, this was an utter truth. It was like a cold knife pressed deep into my pack, the blade of truths you didn’t want to accept.

I cursed C’s name, cursed the face of his father, but there was no avoiding it. The bastard was right. I had to decide. The book, or the girl. Without the book, there would be no healing myself in the Crystal Kingdom. Without the healing, C’s donated arm would kill me. My one chance to restore my arm, eye, and horn. Really, it came to this: to save myself, or to save Cards.

It was simple, really.

I smiled, wondering if, like Frosty, this Cards could tell how my eyes didn’t smile when I did. Frosty, whom I sacrificed to save Lightning Dust. Lightning Dust, who died anyway. Taran, whom I was too slow to save. Even Blossom, that little girl, was probably dead by now.

God, but I hated this world.

I shook my head. There was only one thing to do.

I looked her straight in the eyes. “Cards, I… I am sorry.”

Now look who’s the liar.

Cards swallowed. She didn’t hang her head in defeat; instead, she actually smiled at me. I could see her fighting not to choke herself with tears. “I-it’s okay. I understand. You have… hero stuff to do. And someone like me…” Her voice was getting smaller and quieter, so much that I had to strain myself just to hear her. “Someone like me just isn’t worth saving.” I grit my teeth, yet onward she spoke through her honest smile. “You know, I heard a lot about you over the livebox: how you ended the threat of the Cœur, defeated the Black Man, freed all those slaves, killed Black Jack, and gave those people all that food and medicine for free. In my darkest days, you were an inspiration, proof that there were still heroes out there, Gunslinger.” She sniffed. “A-and even if it was just for a day or two, I’m so glad to have met you.”

My knees felt weak. Like jelly. It took every ounce of willpower in my body to so much as take a step back.

“This is fun, is it not?” C remarked with what sounded like boredom. “Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take her back through the—”

“Wait,” Card said, and we all looked at her. “All this time, I’ve known you as the Gunslinger. But before I die… before I die, I want to know your name.”

I blinked, frozen.

“I like how you’re just so willing to waste time with such trivial nonsense,” C commented, and then his hellish arms extended, pushing Cards towards me. “Please, spend our time wisely and tell her all sorts of things. I think you choosing Stronghold and failing to stop him all the same would be hilarious.”

This close, I could feel the heat of Cards’ stripped-naked body. I fumbled for words. “My name is forsworn. Never trust a man refusing to give his name.” I hesitated. “My name is Chorwhacks Jigglebob.”

She gave me just the strangest look for what felt like ever. Finally, in a tiny, tiny voice, she muttered, “That was a joke…”

Cards laughed. And she laughed. And laughed. And laughed until they turned slowly into sobs. And Cards laughed until her sobs and laughs were indistinguishable. And she laughed until there was nothing left but sobs.

I offered her a smile. “It’s Jericho.”

With that, I turned and ran like I’d never ran before in my life. Time had been wasted, but what of it? If I was doing this to Cards, then… then it was the least I could do.

Sprinting hard, I listened to the chorus of her sobs and the new rain pounding hard outside. I had chosen myself over her. My flesh over hers. That was the way of my world. Yet, deep inside me, I felt nothing of the intense regret I knew I should have felt. In the darkest pit of my heart, nothing beat for Cards.

My loathsome heart thumped only for my blood; it was calm in the knowledge that I had made the right choice, and if given a thousand times to re-choose, I’d make the same choice every time. Because that was what I did: I sacrificed people for mine own desires and greed. That was the Tao of Jericho: help everyone and be a hero, but if it comes down thereto, sacrifice them if it furthers your goals.

Cards let out a sudden shriek of indescribable agony that made me want to curl my toes, grit my teeth, put a gun to my head, and make like Taran.

Then all was silent.

All but the loathsome beat of mine own heart.

Author's Note

!Perk Error!

Editor’s Notes:

Greetings, readers, I am Amacita, the editor no one knows about. I’ve always been the silent one, even though I’ve been on Team Jericho for the last several months.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s really been that long, but then I see the word count and realize, yeah, it really has been that long.

Way back when Calêrhos was only the seed of an idea on the Team Jericho Skype chat, the main reason I greenlighted it was because it would let us do more cute and adorable things with Cards, who otherwise wouldn’t make an appearance in Act II. It should come as no surprise, then, that much of her fluff and character development here were a long time in the making. Looking back on this chapter and the last, I have to say it was worth it.

And we have a great many plans for her in Act III.

You know, sometimes I wonder if anyone but us can tell the difference between things we’ve planned out, and things we decided were foreshadowing after the fact. Giant flying squirrels, anyone?

But not everything we planned made it into the Calêrhos arc. The javelin bullets, for instance, were originally intended for Jericho to mow down an entire Fallout-style vault filled with Cherry Berry clones on his way to Sleepy Oaks. If you were wondering where she was in this world, there’s your answer.

The other thing that sadly didn’t make it was the fact that, for the longest time, a copy of that dirty magazine under Cards’s bed was the only picture Taran had of her daughter. She stole it from one of her captors when he was asleep, and it became her most precious possession. We probably could have fit that in, but we didn’t think of it until after we published the chapter where she dies.

This is what happens when you write so much by the seat of your pants.

We’re very close to wrapping up Act II now, and we’ve got some great things planned for Act III. We’re going to see some old friends return, and maybe even an appearance by an elusive Equestrian princess.

See you in the comment threads,

Amacita

Chapter 34 — Ende

Chapter 34: Ende

“Oh, you’re ‘sorry’! Well, then, everything is fine!”

Regret.

I wasn’t a word I ever wanted associated with me, my thoughts, my actions, my deeds, or anything. Regret was for fools and cowards. Regret was that curious emotion smote from the mighty, and delivered unto the emotional and unstable. ’Twas for the weak and cowardly. It was the emotion that meant that if given the choice to do again, you’d make a different choice. And those who dwelt heavily upon it and its sister, guilt, were doomed to be pathetic and unable to get anywhere in life.

Regret was for Cards, is what I’m trying to say here.

It was not for the likes of me. And as I ran through the rain, ran towards the house wherein I knew Blackout and Stronghold to be, I felt no regret. No guilt. No remorse. If given the choice a thousand times over, a thousand times would I let Cards die.

Red lighting rupturing the dark sky above me, my duster and hat soaked with water, I kicked the door to Cards and Blackout’s house. My foot just sort of went straight through the door, and the rest of my body just sort fell down onto the three steps leading up the doorway.

Rain hit my eyes as I fell onto my back, the back of my head landing in the mud.

“Wow,” Jayne said with a whistle. “You really suck at this, don’t you?”

“Shut up, train!”

“No,” she replied flatly.

“Ugh, I hate everything,” I growled, kicking and trying to free my leg from the door. When that failed, I raised a gun and blew the door handle to dust. With a bit of effort, I crawled and floundered into the house.

“As a part of everything,” Jayne added, “I can safely say that this feeling is far from mutual. You’re my only source of fun, Gunslinger. So, I suppose I am forced to like you.” She yawned, somehow. “I must say, damning Cards was rather fun to watch.”

“Can it!” I snapped, struggling with the door. She didn’t reply thereto, so I kept fighting the door for my foot back. “Come on,” I said betwixt grunts, pulling my foot out of the door.

“Yes, come on, ya goofy bitch!” I heard Stronghold call out somewhence. Was he speaking to me or Blackout? If the latter, he’d really grown a pair of balls; if the former, then he knew me to be here, and that likely meant… something dramatic, I supposed.

Ignoring the mud on my hat and in my hair, I ambled to my feet and reloaded my missing bullet. Stronghold’s voice sounded like it came from upstairs, so up the stairs went I.

“Hold on, hold on, I nearly got this!” Stronghold exclaimed. “If you keep struggling against your bonds, you’ll get rope burns, and I’ll have to nurse you back to health!” He groaned loudly. “Dammit, one of these spells has to create a portal. Really, honey, do you know how hard is to go back home without that freaky, scary mirror-thing?”

Blackout screamed. “Do you fucking realize that the moment we’re through that thing, I’m going to tear out and eat your fucking eyes?!”

Stronghold laughed like a father watching his little girl fall down softly on her first attempt at walking. Although knowing him, this girl was Cards, and she was falling into a bunch of sharp, pointy objects not safe for children ages three and below. “Why, ma chérie, I can fix this. You’ll love me as I love thee!”

“Fuck you!” she spat, and I heard a loud sound like flesh being slapped. Blackout grunted before screaming.

“Shut your fucking mouth, you fucking beauty! How would you like that to no longer be a werekind, to no longer be artificial, a creation? When you come through with me, you’ll be real like me, like the Gunslinger!” Stronghold laughed. “And when you come back with me, you’re going to love me, Blackout! ’Tis fate! ’Tis the decree of the devices which hold all together, and you shan’t dissent therefrom for long!”

Bastard! Only I got to say stuff like “therefrom”; vague and annoying archaisms that nevertheless reflected a more one-to-one translation of Teutsch-to-Solarisch were my thing.

With one last hurdle, I rounded the corner and saw Blackout in her bedroom through the open door. She was grunting and panting hard, blood dripping from her mouth. Either she’d caught sudden-onset gingivitis (and they laughed at me for always brushing my teeth!), or Stronghold had hit her rather hard.

My first thought was that maybe the door was actually there but Stronghold’s magic had torn it across five separate dimensions, and so it could only be rendered as a mathematical question. That is, so I thought till Blackout saw me too, and the sudden look on her face was as if she’d just tried to sleep with a porcupine.

In any case, Stronghold was facing her, not me, and so I was unseen to him. Like my life depended thereon, and mayhap it did, I raised my gun and fi—I froze, just standing there. The doorway to the room was shimmering just slightly, like… and I’d never exactly seen one up close enough to know, but I was sure it was some sort of force shield. If my days of D&D had taught me anything, it was that either a force shield was invincible but on a timer, or it could only be penetrated with purely overwhelming force. Because, clearly, a game about magical fantasy as developed in a country well-known for its hatred of all things magic was the perfect source for accurate magical knowledge.

Were it the former, then firing at him would alert him to me, allowing him to prepare and fight me. He had demonstrated an ability to dodge bullets with his book magic, so who knew what now he could do. Were it the latter of the two cases, were my bullets strong enough to destroy the shield? If not, see the consequences of option A.

The woman with the blonde-with-black-streaks hair looked back to the dark man before her and spat blood onto his boots. “Eat shit and die.”

Stronghold crouched down and grabbed his wife by the chin. Tightly gripping her, he made her face him. A smile on his face, he said, “Why, if you keep speaking like that, I’m going to have to tie you to a chair rather than let you stay on the floor.” His eyes spread over her body. “And speaking of chairs,” he muttered, and pulled out a knife. He set his book onto the bed, and with his newly freed hand he grabbed Blackout, steadying her. Then he used his knife to cut off her shirt.

“There. See? I can’t see why you layer yourself with all the clothing.” He shook his head, pulling away her shirt. “Your flesh is so pretty. Hence, chairs.”

Chair. Said like shehr because the French can’t spell? Stronghold was a double bastard now; that was just so unfunny that a part of me just died a little inside.

As Strong creepily felt all over Blackout’s flesh, I searched for a plan. Wait, no, first I ducked behind the corner so that he wouldn’t see me. From here, I could see a hall closet, Cards’ bedroom, and the bathroom.

“And no matter what creature you are within, be it real or artificial,” Stronghold said in a sultry voice, “you are so… irresistible.” There was a moment of silence. “Hey, you know, why are all these things in your room different from back home? It’s weird enough that you had Cards in the house with you, but this thing?”

“Because I am not your Blackout!” the woman snarled. “This isn’t your world, that wasn’t your daughter, and I’m not your wife!”

As I looked into the bathroom and eyed the towels within, thinking of all my wet leather and the mud in my hair, Stronghold sighed loudly. “Look, mare, you’re not real quite yet. Everything within this world is a creation most artificial. But you can I make real, you I can give flesh and fur and a being on my world, my love. Because even if the Backbone were defeated, I planned ahead! I have a way! And all I need to do is—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” I muttered. “Incoming villainous monolog of evil.” Lo and behold, so it was such a monolog. Some boring stuff about his reasons or whatever, I didn’t care to listen. Instead, knowing that it was bound to be long-winded, I walked into the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and got the mud out of my hair.

The thought that I actually had possessed the time to fiddle-faff around, time which could have been used to save Cards, did not escape me. May the Fiddler play me, but this was good time to think up a plan of attack.

“Question is,” I muttered to myself in the mirror as I dried my wet outfit, “how do I get past that shield?”

Jayne sighed. “Look, a bullet like those you use can easily can through multiple walls, even concrete and brick without much problem. Maybe I can help, even.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Well, from what we saw in relation to where to are now, I can tell you where to shoot to get through the walls. Provided you’re not using those javelins, which would just explode the wall.” She went silent as I quickly unloaded and reloaded my guns with standard ammunition. I could make out Stronghold ranting and stomping around in his room. “Perhaps the only problem with this little thing is that since Stronghold is moving, I can’t quite pin him down. From what I saw, I could only tolerate stationary objects.”

“So we skirt around the corner, take a quick peek, and…” I paused. “But if he saw us, that might ruin everything, right?”

“Yeah.”

I pounded a fist into a palm. “So we do something to draw him out.”

“Like what?” Jayne asked, a little spark of excitement in her voice.

“Why, we shoot Blackout, of course.”

Jayne giggled. “Ah, I see! You’re just trying to wipe out Cards’ whole family, aren’t you?”

“Not by intent but by happenstance,” I said calmly. After a thought, I added, “Can you help my bullet only just graze her, not harming Blackout in any real way, just enough to bother Stronghold and mayhap lure him out here?”

“I suppose we could do that. Less fun than family friendly extermination.” She sighed as if I’d just told her she was adopted and that her real parents were undesirable ethnic minorities. “Should be easy enough.”

A reticule appeared in my vision. It was like a target in an archery range. I also spotted another one, which seemed to line up to whither pointed my revolver. With a few motions, I matched the two reticules up and fired.

In all candor, when Blackout let out that hugely girlish shriek, I had to hold a hand over my mouth so that I didn’t laugh at her pain. I stood and waited for Stronghold to bark an expletive, then storm out of the room. And to Jayne’s credit, he did come out like the idiot he was.

As soon as he stepped in front of the bathroom door, I gave him a high-pitched “Hello” and depressed the trigger of my revolvers. To my extreme irritation, the bullet just barely missed him. When I went to cock back the weapon, he spun around and darted. I tore after the man, keeping on his heels. There was no more little shield thingy in the doorway.

When he got into the room, he spun around and made a hand gesture. Of course, I’d seen enough magic to kenn whither this was going. And by that time, I was already tackling him to the ground.

“No!” he shouted. “I am the master of this domain!”

I tried to put my revolvers in his face, only to find a weird force of energy or something smacking my hand away. The gun went flying. As I watched the gun fly, I also saw Blackout huddled in the corner, trying to deal with the bloody furrow across her—

Stronghold slugged me across the cheek as I looked at Blackout. “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?! Everything in life was fine till you showed up!”

And then he and I were rolling around like a snake trying to scratch its back, attempting to fight and do other things. However, I suspected that neither of us were exactly very good at unarmed combat in bodies that were rather alien to us.

“In answer to your question,” I said between grunts, “no, ‘well enough’ is just quitter-speak for ‘not nearly fun enough’.” I managed to get my right fist into his—“Oh, screw you to hell!” I spat as my fist just sort of stopped in front of his face. “So you can shoot people but not punch them, Mister Mephisto?”

“You call murdering my love and butchering my town, and kidnapping my daughter ‘fun enough’, then?!”

I would have shrugged had he not been biting my shoulder. Or maybe this was extreme tickle-time. Either or would have been equally embarrassing. “For the record, Cards only came along with me because she was a slut.”

“You need to get laid first in order to be a slut!”

“Just because no one would ever sleep with her doesn’t mean she didn’t have the mindset!” I replied before he slammed my head into the endtable. “Also, am I the only one to ever notice that ‘to get laid’ was always a passive-voice construction? Am I?” I threw his face at the bed’s metal supports, only to have him flail around and knee me in the gut.

“I lay her,” he countered. “Not always passive.”

“I like how we’re arguing semantics while trying to kill each other,” I commented, kneeing his groin hard enough to make him chirp. I managed to climb my way off the man and stand, only to find that he’d somehow had the same idea. Also, props to him for standing on severely kneed balls.

He and I were both panting, but it was he who spoke. “I’m gonna kill you, and I’m going to use my book to go back home to a better world, a world without you.”

“But still a world with Cards, so I guess you still lose in the end,” I replied, smiling. “The girl left with me willingly, if possibly too terrified of me to ever consider running away.”

“Oh, fuck it,” he groaned, shaking his head.

“Who, Cards?” I shook my hand at him. “No thanks. Her getting laid would destroy the cosmic balance of the universe. Just think thereabout. Picture it for a minute.” Stronghold sort of paused, no longer sneering at me. Holy shit, was that fool actually doing it?

“Cards. With a stallion’s swollen rod of fleshy masculinity inside her. Are you picturing it? Can you see it?” I could see his face contort as the image bubbled up in his mind, as if the idea itself were causing him physical pain. “Yes, the brave, beautiful stallion is vigorously penetrating her—in and out with a sound like a fist in wet jelly as she herself moans notes of pleasure which she oughtn’t kenn!”

Sronghold’s eyes bulged in absolute terror, like he had gazed into the abyss, and the abyss was Cards’ genitalia. Then his head just sort of exploded, spraying the room and me with bits of brain and skull and other things that a man didn’t generally want to get covered in. And holy shit, that was proof of just how incomprehensible it was for somebody to try to even contemplate Cards getting laid. Stronghold, however, could no longer be counted as a somebody, especially not after he sort of just fell down to the ground. There was no fanfare, no exciting drama; he just fell down and died.

Blackout stood behind where Stronghold had once stood, my revolver in hand. She was gritting her teeth in that way which was supposed to look scary, but in reality just looked as if you were reacting to a particularly racist joke. The unfunny kind.

When ours eyes met, she shrugged. “What? Were you expecting a one-liner?” Blackout tossed the gun onto the bed with disgust.

I gave the woman an utterly blank look. “Well, it’s sort of obligatory, no? Yes? Uh, wherefore are you staring at me like… You know, I’ll just… do this.” I crouched down and rifled through Stronghold’s pockets and whatnot.

“The book is over there,” Blackout said. “Take it. Also, where the hell is my daughter?”

“One, I’m not looking for the book, I’m looking for any random thing that I think I might want.” I sighed. “It’s a compulsive habit I picked up from years of D&D. Sadly, he has nothing of note.”

“And two?” Blackout asked as I stood up and made for the book.

“Two being that… it is no matter right now.” I ended with a sigh, facing away from Blackout as I leafed through the book. When-and-if-ever I found my Cards again, I was going to hug her and say I’m sorry. Of course, then she’d get scared, scream, and probably bite my ear off, so… since that line of thought ended with me being forced to bludgeon Cards to death with the hilt of my sword, I decided not to ever hug Cards ever again. Maybe I’d just stand really far away from her at night, hiding in the shadows and constantly screaming encouraging things at her instead.

I moved more towards the center of the room after picking up and reloading my revolver. Still not facing the woman, I looked through the tome, through the Calêrhos which had done so much harm. A section I roundly found in the book was glowing with a vague teal. Oddly, it was in Teutsch, though I figured it was some sort of magic to let everything be my preferred language. Briefly, I wondered what this text would read like if my preferred language was interpretive strip-club dancing.

“You are on Level 17 of Calêrhos.” Those were the words. There dark text above and below it listed a total of twenty-five levels. There was also a section in the book’s table of contents that noted “how to return to the overworld”. That seemed promising. All in all, I felt like I could probably totally screw this all up and return home as an indescribable mass of misery and electrified sex-jelly.

“I will be out of your hair, soon, Blackout,” I said almost absently.

There was a pregnant pause before the woman spoke up. “You know, the King is likely to reward you most greatly for single-handedly defeating the greatest threat to the realm.” Her tone was eerily seductive in intent, although all it did for me was make me want to jam my thumbs into her eyes and pop them. “Are you sure you won’t consider staying?” With me her tone implied at the end.

“No,” I said, putting the book away in my bag. “I am above the vice of sex, ma’am.”

She snorted. “Right. Hence why you ranted about Cards getting laid for so long and in such detail, as if you’d been brooding over the topic for a while, right?”

I tugged on my hat’s visor. “Goodbye.” I moved towards the door, keeping Blackout from my sight.

“Fine,” she hissed with a grunt. “I guess it’s back to life in boring Sleepy Oaks with my useless wannabe-slut of a daughter. Sad, really, since I think she rather liked you.”

I paused at her remark, both in step and thought.

“What? Somehow that gets you to stop?” She snickered. “I don’t see what anyone could see in her over me. Look at me, I’m better looking, more charming, and do you see these tits? They’re real, and Cards didn’t inherit them at all, worthless brat.” In the room’s lighting, the upper half of her face became shrouded in shadows when she took a step forwards. The grin on her face, the only thing I could really see anymore, seemed monstrous. “What d’ya say, Gunslinger? You and I would make a damn fine team. My brains and your brawn. We could do anything to anyone.”

“Cards…” I wasn’t sorry. Dammit, I wasn’t! But still a deep part of me wished that I was.

“Oh, her? Sure, fine, be my guest. You be mine and she’ll be yours. To be honest, she’d be glad for any—”

“…is dead,” I finished, and Blackout fell silent. Long and hard. She actually cracked a very brief chuckle. Nervous, mayhap? “And it was all my fault that she died.”

There came a long pause. Her face emerged from the shadows as she took a step back. The grin was gone, but there were no tears in her cold eyes. “Well then, Gunslinger. Looks like I have one more thing to thank you for.”

I could feel my hands shaking as I looked down at the carpet, listening to the rain hit hard outside. “Two days ago, in a hospital in New Pegasus, I met a very brave and very sad woman.” My hands wouldn’t stay still. They clawed further and further down. “And do you know what she said to me?”

The woman said nothing.

“No mother should ever have to outlive her daughter.”

My hands no longer shook, for the heavy weight of the revolvers kept them steady. When I spun around, I got to see the look of pure surprise upon her countenance. It didn’t last long.

Author's Note

End of Act 2, Book 2

To be continued in:

Act 3: Jericho Dies at the End

Chapter 35 — Glass

Chapter 35: Glass

“Life in the Crystal Empire is wonderful, but it’s become a little… predictable.”

Out.

That was where it needed go. Panting hard, my body drenched in sweat, I reached a hoof up and clasped the knife in my left eye. Admittedly, I fumbled a bit and sort of stabbed myself in the eye a bit deeper, but that was because I was trying to remember how hooves worked again, having been so used to the weird physique of the werekind.

“Well, this is exactly how I wanted to spend my day off,” I muttered, testing the knife in my eye, finding out how firm it was therein. Not firm enough, methought, hence why I sort of hammered away at the blade till my eye was crying more than Cards—oh, to hell therewise. I couldn’t do it so soon after the fact, make fun of Cards in order to feel better about myself.

Around me, the dark hollow of the crystalline room felt like it was snapping its ebony jaws at me in-between the briefly flashing glows of smooth lavender light from the doorway to the other world. It made it kind of hard to see what I was doing, but then again, I didn't really need to see to know how deep the knife was in my eye. Still, with the portal behind me closed and off, I only had to deal with this one last remnant of… werekindredness? Werekindredity?

With a huff and a puff and an allusion to a fairy tale, I yanked the blade out. And there it was, my skewered and once silvern left eye. The eye of Jayne. But now she was back in her world, and I had no need of the Terror Train. Ergo, I opted to let her loose, and I could firmly image her camping out by a train-crossing area, waiting for an old lady or a small child to pass by so she could run them over. Jayne was a nice lady therelike.

I blinked my left eye, which was a rather queer feeling, what with lacking an eyeball there and all. Regardless, my eyepatch was somewhere, though I knew not whither it’d gone, so I would deal therewith at a later date. Preferably after I gave this goddamn book to Snechta and then subsequently betrayed her. I only needed her to use its dark magics to heal my body, then I would have to do something to end her and her plan to work with Korweit, because that was a no-no, like when Elkington tried to teach me the bad touch.

So, I pulled the knife out of the craftling eye and licked it because I’d always wanted to lick an eyeball. For some reason, I didn’t like the idea of leaving around body parts just anywhere, so I put the eye in my bag before leaving the dark room deep within the Crystal Castle. And I only knew it was the Crystal Castle for sure because the Calêrhos book had basically said “Yeah, this portal thingy takes you to the portal other-thingy in the Crystal Castle”.

Then it occurred to me that I had no damn idea how to escape this place since, you know, I’d just sort of been teleported hereinto. In fact, I only knew how to sneak in through a side door and get into the library of this place, zilch more. Really, knowing only parts of dangerous places I went to was part of my career as a would-be hero. I needed to hire a travel agent or something. Or get a business card that read “Have sword—will travel—but please give directions!”

I adjusted my leather duster and hat, then fidgeted with the red bandana around my neck. My weapons were all here, as well as my gear and other such things. I was just standing there in the hallway, which was lined alternately with soul-crushingly empty walls or weird boxes, equally empty or else just filled with really random and worthless things. I found in one a box of used sheep-intestine condoms that appeared to have been mummified. No, thankee. There were a number of other random odds and ends but none that warranted my attention enough to even think of them after the first glance. There was no good loot here, methought.

Logically, when you were standing in a dark hallway in the depths of a castle—it had to be the dark depths, as I didn’t know of many tall buildings with scary, windowless, and very dark upper floors—the best thing to do was to wander aimlessly in the hopes of finding something, like an exit sign. The dark tunnels under Songnam, as I recalled, had been kind enough to give exits signs, and also directions as read by a chibi-chibi Elkington.

Plus, as all knew, standing around in dark places was wont to end with a terrible fate accosting me. After having been forced to let Cards die to feed mine own greed and wish for mine own body to be healed, and then cutting out by goddamn eye, I was in no mood to end up in a cheesy horror novel.

’Twas only the natural order of things that this ended up screwing me. Probably. I didn’t know; I couldn’t tell the future. Although I could if only I had some waffles and syrup. Listening to the sounds of mine own hooffalls echoing in the lonely halls, I dwelt upon how I could likely no longer trust waffles ever again, not since they had betrayed me when they said that Social Grace wasn’t going to hurt Cards or whatever.

|— ☩ —|

Stairs.

They were a pretty neat invention, letting one climb up heights with general ease. However, any sense of ease ended when the staircase was large, spiraled, and went up so high that you could no longer make out if it even had a top. It coiled around a titanic column of stone at the center of the underground atrium, kept alight by the soft red glow of crystals embedded in the wall and the column itself. Still, it was a definite way up, and at least it had railings so keep me from falling to my death horrifically.

Looking around, I spied a certainly evil lever on the wall. Because it wasn’t like things could get much more painful, I logically had to pull the very scary thing. Something clicked hard, and there came the sound of machinery, of the hum of magic, and of a puma choking to death on a veggie-lover’s pizza.

I gasped at the staircase. Before my very eyes, the crystal steps of the giant spiral staircase just sort of moved. Baffled dumb, I stepped onto the stairs and nearly fainted as I started to ascend while standing perfectly still.

“Yeah!” I shouted, pumping an arm. “This is awesome!”

I proceeded to half-shout, half-grunt the word “Yeah!” periodically over the next few minutes as I rode on the moving stairs, a giddy grin on my face.

At some point I noticed that the top of the staircase just sort of ended in a crystal ceiling that was flat, featureless, and about as barren as Blackout’s womb. “Aw,” I moaned, my whole body slumping as I frowned. Nowhither to go, huh? Well, in that case, I turned around and—holy shit, this was awesome! As I walked down I actually didn’t move, since my speed was equal to that of the stairs. If I sped my pace up, I moved downwards. Were I too slow, I crawled upwards despite my movements downwards. Why it was so fun to alternately dash and crawl down the moving stairs was, uh… well, it felt as if I was breaking some sort of really hardcore rule.

“Aye, who’s the pony?” I singsonged to an invisible jazz beat in my head as I danced down the stairs. Then, twirling around and moving upwards thereby: “Oh, I the pony, ’tain’t fo’ show-ny, nor’m I ya crony? Seen my body? ’Tis svelte, ’tain’t bony.” I dropped to my knees and played a wicked air guitar solo. “So when I asks ya, ‘who da pony’, ’tis fo’ sho’ me.”

I lost track of the fact that I was moving as I closed my eyes and played a guitar solo so epic that it would have melted the faces of anypony who heard it and also impregnated every mare within a two-kilometer radius after giving them the best orgasms of their lives. This was relevant because, as it turned out, the staircase had an ending.

The ceiling actually opened up and deposited you into a room. Like, it creaked and slide back, creating an exit space.

And I only realized that ponies were staring at me when I opened my eyes, but not before I also dropped my invisible microphone and spouted an offense to Princess Cadance. Or at least, he seemed to take it as an offense. If it helps, the line (which I said in a blank, toneless voice) was, “You know, Princess Cadance’s throneroom sure does suck.”

When the hole in the floor wherethrough I’d come closed of its own initiative, I realized that the look on Shining Armor’s face did not, in fact, imply he wanted to have a one-vs-one air guitar battle me with. Rather, it was more akin to a look of “Oh God, really?” mixed with a show of anger that was more hollow than actual.

“How in Celestia’s name did you get in there?” Shining Armor shouted as he stood beside a large crystal throne, red in his eyes from what was either a lack of sleep or some heavy drug use. That might explain why his anger struck me as half-hearted.

I pointed at the ground. “There. I kind of just came in through there. Did you not see me?” The other ponies in this very well-lit and airy throneroom seemed to be guards, judging from their armor, weapons, and the looks on their faces that implied they wished to violently prison-rape me in the showers. Oddly, only half of them were crystal ponies in ethnic appearance, the rest appearing like normal Equestrians.

“Yes, yes, of course I saw you, but what I meant was—ugh!” He rubbed his eyes and stumbled backwards into the throne. Had he been sitting there originally? “And what the hay is with your eye? Celestia, can I just get one minute of peace and quiet?”

I stood and looked around the room again. Ah, and there was the door. “Look, Shining Armor—can I call you Armie?”

“No.”

“Look, Armie,” I went on in a most reasonable voice, “I totally agree with whatever you’re thinking, so I think I’ll just wander on out of this place and let you be angry at somepony else. Like him, for example,” I said, pointing at a random orange pegasus in golden armor. “He looks like a total douche.”

“Hey!” the total douche shouted back in a wounded voice.

I nodded sagely as I backed towards the door. “Just imagining him violently plowing your sister or wife or dog or whatever, and I’m sure you can take out all your anger on him.”

Armie growled hard, massaging his forehead. “Guards, arrest him!”

“Uh,” one intrepid guard said, “which one, exactly?”

“The one with the missing eye!”

“Wait, me? On what charges?” I demanded, standing a hoof as the soldiers rushed to surround me.

“You admitted to stealing a very important book from the Royal Canterlot Archives to me, remember?”

“Uh, no, no I do not.”

“Well, you did, and that was about two weeks ago.” Two weeks? Had I really been in the mirror world for that long? Or did time go slower in there than out here? “See, that’s a crime.”

“Lies! I demand a sexier crime, like being so sexy that a hundred mares’ ovaries imploded upon the mere sight of me! I’m pretty sure I have a constitutional right to know wherefore I’m being sexilly charged.”

“Constitutional?” he said as if it were an utterly foreign word. “A constitution? What is this, Oubliettes & Ogres? You don’t get to do a constitution roll to get out of this; you’re a known terrorist!”

“A terrorist?” I scoffed. “Say, sir, I am a max level bard! Just watch me roll a charisma check to stun your guard into falling in love with me!” I slugged the douche guard in the face, knocking him to the guard before I quickly rifled through his pockets and found several Bits.

“You just beat up and mugged one of my guardsponies!” Armie yelled, his purple armor clanking as he grabbed his sword and lumbered towards me.

I looked at the Prince of the Crystal Empire and frowned. “I rolled a one on my diplomacy check.”

“This is not a tabletop RPG, and I am too tired from dealing with dissent, guards resigning en masse, and that damn Elkington to deal with this at the moment.”

Duke Elkington? What’s that bastard up to now, and how does he think it’ll end with him getting some action with Celestia’s clittorcock? “Look, Arnie—”

“Shining. Armor,” he insisted.

“That’s what I said, Arnold. How’s about you let me engage you with some diplomacy, like me offering you something you want, or else I’ll ram my hoof so far up your urethra you’ll swear you were giving birth in reverse!”

“How is that at all an appealing offer?” he asked.

Rubbing my chin, I said, “Well, I was trying to use both intimidation and diplomacy to woo you. I like use them both at the same time. I call it intimacy.” The total douche guard on the ground groaned and ambled to his hooves, only for me to slug him in the eye due to another bad diplomacy roll. “So, how’s about it, Arnold MacSexually-Aroused-By-His-Father? Let me show you true intimacy.”

“I have a wife,” he replied, stopping a meter or two from me and holding up his sword.

“Well, she can watch,” I said with a frown. “Mayhap by watching how I operate in my courtly way, she’ll learn how to please a stallion.”

He snorted. “There’s no way that was on accident. That was literally the gayest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I tried to snap my fingers as I had as werekind, only to remember that I was a pony again. The action this attempted muscle movement performed was a twitch of some muscle that would have flicked my tail, had my tail not been removed as per military and police standards.

“You’re right,” I said, “I was totally trying to subtly imply that I’d blow you if you agreed not to let these ruffians rape me in the dungeon showers.”

He just blinked. “Okay, you have some serious issues.”

“Do I?” I asked in a seductive voice.

“Yes, clearly.”

“It was because Daddy never loved me!” I exclaimed, promptly dropping to the floor and curling into a ball.

“Um, milord?” one of the guard asked. He was of crystal blood. “Do we, uh… what?”

“I… I’m going to be honest here,” the Prince said, “I don’t believe there’s a page in the Royal Guards manual that quite explains what to do in this scenario.”

Around me, I could see the paltry number of the guards arranged around me a circle of sorts. Nopony protected the door. There was one directly behind me, within reaching distance, and one near him. Suddenly, there came unto me an idea.

“I kenn what to do,” I hissed.

“And that would be?” someone asked.

“You die!” I threw myself backwards, bucking the guard behind me in the jaw and using the momentum to lift myself to my hooves.

With a smile, I slugged the nearest guard to me in the leg as I bit him in the throat, clotheslining him into the ground with my face. What did you know, crystal pony blood didn’t taste any different from normal pony blood. By the time the other guards even started to move, I had scampered myself off halfway towards the now-unguarded door, though not before giving the Prince a little shake of my booty, thus ensuring he would have unfaithful thoughts of me for years to come.

There was a guardpony walking by the doorway on the other side. Also, a large and very pretty staircase leading into some sort of huge room with a vaulted ceiling. Logically, I grabbed the guard’s poleaxe and shoved it into the doorhandles as I closed the purple door.

“Hwê aẅrõ Alorim?” he asked in a confused and terrified voice as the stallions inside the throne room pounded on the door.

Then, also with great logic, I bodyslammed into him and rode the stallion down the stairs like a surfboard and cried out, “Tally-ho!”

Thereafter, it was just a hop, skip, and a jump out of the castle and into the city. Mostly because I saw the library, and thence kennt whither to go thanks to my previous trip into this place. By some stroke of luck (or because Arnie Sister-Raper suffered a lucky stroke), I made myself a clean escape with only three needless deaths.

|— ☩ —|

It was something of a mystery why the hell I’d buried my eyepatch so deep in my bag. I had to hide in a dark portion of the castle, safe and secure, while I searched after the damn thing. But, hey, about an hour or two of searching later (I may have dozed off at some point) and I found that wherefor I’d been looking. I no longer looked like an eyeless freak.

Of course, I had the feeling that Shining Arnold would still be looking for me. Hence why I needed a disguise. Here in my dark corner of the castle, all alone, I stripped down. I took a moment to observe mine own body, noticing that I was indeed missing a nipple. This had to be quick; if I wasn’t, fate would probably have some hot maid wander in here somehow and try to create awkward tension, and I was so goddamn sick and tired of sexuality from my experiences with Blackout. She would probably cry out, “Mon Dieu, monsieur!” And I would just beat her to death out of spite. Screw the universe.

I took out General Black Jack’s hat, which I’d nicked from Frosty after finding her in the hospital, because it wasn’t enough to leave her a cripple, I also had to steal her prize hat. Still, it went with the eyepatch. Other than that, I found my black poncho which last I’d worn on the train with Octavia. I mostly used that just to sling over my shoulders like some kind of cape. The shirts and pants were just something generically Gunslinger in appearance, minus the bandoliers and the three guns, which I stuffed into my bags. It wasn’t as if I could use them; it was just me and my hooves and sword from now on till I fixed my horn.

My outfit all suited up and super cozy, I continued down this little path until I reached that little secret exit and stepped out into an alleyway in the Crystal City of Côrint. My very first thought was, Holy shit, it’s cold!

Snow fell from the heavens, painting the roofs and the alley white. I saw my breath even through my nose. In a way, it made sense for Côrint to get so cold, what with it being so far in the north. Were I not a Teutscher, I might have been really bothered. But like I’d told that crystal stallion who’d lead me up the mountain up to Snechta’s temple, I’d lived and fought in the Dead Winter of the Dark Crusade, were the very act of breathing was likely to give your lungs frostbite. At least here in Côrint, you could still see the sun; there was no thick layer of ash blocking it, forcing a good fraction of the next generation to be born and raised in a world without a sun. I could take this kind of chill naked.

Overhead, I saw a wing of pegasi guards fly over, causing a bit of snow to jostle off the roof and onto my hat. See? It pays to be prepared. Snow in the eyes was no laughing matter—it can kill you. This little alleyway led into a proper alley, wherein my eyes fell upon a stallion who wore a thick winter coat, leaning against the dirty brick wall of a four-story building and puffing on a cigarette.

The buck looked at me. “What are you supposed to be, some kinda swordslinger cosplayer?”

“No,” I replied, walking over to him.

“Wha—bu—hey!” he shouted as I grabbed his smoke and tossed it into the snow.

“Smoking kills,” I said in a dead voice, staring straight into his eyes. Then I walked out of the alley as he howled curse at me in the crystal language. Mijôra, was it called?

The cobblestone street here was wide, flanked by large buildings of impressive masonry, and abound with crystalfolken. The snow here seemed well-swept, hence why I could even see the street. A gaggle of well-dressed ladies standing together and talking paused to look at me. One of them frowned before they resumed their chat. Something about this part of the city, just under the shadow of the great Crystal Castle, felt really ritzy, like I could just stab a random passerby and end up killing somepony really important.

I snapped out of my observations and went back to walking down the street when I saw a duo of winterized guards come around a corner. Trying to look nonchalant, I turned the next corner, which lead to a street which curved to the right slightly. I ambled on that-a-away till I saw that the street ended in a T-bone junction, and just before the junction was a military-style blockade, complete with snazzy wooden walls et al. Snow had been piled up against the walls like some kind of reinforcements, yet the alleys around seemed as if nopony had tended to them. There were a number of posters which all depicted the same thing, a drawn picture of somebody who vaguely resembled me but had this snide little smirk on his face that made me want to beat him to death.

In other words, yeah, that was probably me. Instead of trying to look casual, and thus ensuring I would look suspicious, I widened my eyes and glared at the guards checking ponies as they went through, fire in my eyes. It was just one of the things from deep within me that always kept me warm; mayhap a reason why I thus loved the cold so. Acting as conspicuous as possible, I kept my eyes locked on the guard with the fanciest hat as I walked left into a nearby alley.

Of course, the plan was an utter success. They didn’t even bother to stare back at me. Sighing with relief, I walked down the alley, bumped into a trash can, and scared some really freaky-looking cat/dog thing. It ran out and into the street, hissing and barking at me.

“Hey, someone scared an animal!” I heard somepony yell. “That heartless fiend! Let’s get ’em!”

“You’re kidding me,” I deadpanned. “According to those armored bootfalls crunching in the snow, you’re not kidding me.”

“Psst, stranger,” a mare hissed from a door in the alley. “In here!”

I didn’t need to sit around and debate whether or not this was a good idea. Quickly, I darted into the large urban building and shut the door behind me. Inside was a rather well-lit hallway with a well-traveled purple carpet, the walls hewn from that same crystalline materials as much else of the city.

The crystal mare—more a filly, really—reached up and tapped me on the shoulder. Her fur coat was purple, which struck me as odd, since I didn’t know of any purple animals that lived in the lands of the ice. But once she had my attention, she pointed down the hall. “Quickly, go that way. You can make it to the other side of the street without the guards noticing you.” She pounded a hoof twice over her heart. “May the Goddess be with you.”

I nodded and went down the hall. When I found the door she’d mentioned, I found it locked. More to the point, peering through the glass, I saw some sort of lobby whereinto a troop of guards were storming.

“Well, this is just perfect,” I muttered, turning around and finding a narrow set of stairs that wound back and forth as they went up. Sighing, I made for the stairs and ascended up to the third floor. I might have gone higher, but somebody had dumped a huge pile of rubber chickens in the way, and I couldn’t waste the time defeating each chicken to get past. There had to be another way down, another door.

I opened the door leading onto the third floor hallway. Down the way, there were four guardsponies knocking on a door. None of them were crystal ponies, I noticed. “Missus Tôlath,” the knocker was saying loudly, “we know you’re in there. We just wanna ask some questions regarding allegations that you’ve been stealing imperial funds and donating it to that crazy Shaingreyla cult. Missus Tôlath?”

A young mare stood in her doorway a few doors up from the armored ponies, watching as she bit her lip. As I approached the guards, because something about sneak attack quadruple murder seemed like a good idea at the time, I noticed she was dressed not unlike a French maid. The weirdly over-sexualized kind, too, belts and garters totally included. She looked at me as I neared, her face a melange of nervousness and anxiety.

“I might work in the castle,” she said, “but for what it’s worth, I hope the accusations are true. Snechta needs all the help she can get.”

I paused by her. “Is it just me, or has Côrint gotten a bit like a police state lately?”

“It’s been getting like this ever since the Champion defeated the Prince and got away with Calêrhos,” she replied. “Worse since he seems to have done it again only hours ago. The Prince is a bit of a sore loser—though don’t tell anypony I said that. I really need this job!” Then she gave me a puzzled look, as if for the first time actually taking a look at me. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before around here. Are you a new tenant or worker? They don’t make guards live in this building, so you’re not one of them. Why are you here, then?”

I glanced back to the guards. One of them made a slicing gesture across his neck, and in the next second they’d bucked down the door and charged in. “Ma’am, I’m just trying to pass through his building without these policeponies arresting me.”

“Why are they…” She shook her head. “As if they even needed proper charges anymore. But if you’d like, my place is connected to a few other rooms and houses down the way. I was about to put on my coat and head out to work, but they’d still let you pass through to avoid those royal thugs. We’re all sisters and brothers in this.”

The young mare took a step back, allowing me into the rather raggedy apartment or whatever it was. There was a tiny kitchen, a closet, a bed up against the wall, a bathroom, and a few other things that just only barely made this place a step up from POW camp. The main feature was a wooden door labeled with a large red V circumscribed by a black circle. Still, at least the heating worked-ish.

“Thankee, ma’am,” I said, moving towards the door. “This broken system of law is an Equestrian problem, I’m sure.”

“I’d still take it any day over life under King Sombra,” she replied to me, closing the door. There was a cup of coffee brewing in the kitchen. “Like, I would honestly kill if it meant getting to keep things like they are today and not going back under Ska’alorim. You Sejfêonar at least have that going for you.”

“I’m not an Equestrian, ma’am,” I said, stepping into the kitchen. “Whence I come, the Reich, this kind of police bullying would be utterly intolerable.” I put a golden coin onto her kitchen counter where she could see it, then swiped and drank her cup of coffee. “Sorry, I sort of needed the caffeine.”

She blinked. “Wait, gold and you’re not Sejfêon? But… but… are you the… the Champion of Côrint?”

“Mayhap,” I said. “Oh, and for what it’s worth, I really like your mane. Crystal ponies are really adorable.” Perhaps she blushed at that, but I couldn’t tell, since I went through the door and into the other room.

The room was empty. Spacious, mayhap, but empty. I actually knocked on the next door was had an old couple let me in. “Trying to avoid the pigs?” they asked, and I nodded.

“Hey, hey!” the one maid called out from the room over. The old couple had yet closed their door. “You stole my coffee mug!”

“I did?” I looked down at my hoof. “Huh. ‘World’s #1 Sister.’ Cheesy design. I’ll make sure to put it to good use, thankee much!”

I must have been near the last little apartment when the loud announcement rang out outside. It boomed somewhence far away, yet sounded so close, its vibrations agitating snow and icicles on the roofs of the buildings across the street. “Hail, good subjects of the Crystal Empire.” The voice was female, and a bit bubbly. “Strider, a known terrorist, is suspected to be in your area. Report all sightings to the local authorities. Or else run really fast because he’s a killer!”

“Strider?” the old stallion in the room asked, gesturing to the front door of his house. “They mean the Champion, they do.” Then he looked me dead in the eye. “You, in other words, ñar?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to avoid police violation as I delivered Calêrhos to Snechta.” I shrugged.

“May Chêngrêla bless you, Champion,” he told me as I slipped out the front door. “And take the stairs up, not down!”

“Hey, you there!” a very angry mare yelled at me. A policepony/guardspony or whatever, non-crystal. She was of the four who’d bucked down that door. “Stop right there, sir!”

“Actually, if it’s cool with you, I’m going to stop somewhere over in the stairwell,” I replied, and sprinted into the room. I should have gone down, but instead I felt as if I could trust that old timer, since crazy old folken were the most trustworthy of all. Upwards I went, onto a fourth floor which wasn’t actually a fourth floor but was actually some sort of attic-like room. I could tell that because the sign beside the door at the top of the stairs read ‘Attic-y Place’.

When the police burst into the stairwell, I threw the coffee mug at them and got a clean strike across somepony’s face. Then I opened the door and entered the attic. There was a buck thereinside dozing off in a dinky little apartment. He had the look of a sleazy pedophile who was also a respectable janitor.

“Hey, what the…?” he muttered as I trotted past him and towards a large window that lead onto the building’s roof.

“Police behind me, am Champion of Côrint, can’t talk!” I explained, breaking the window with a conveniently placed lamp and skittering on out. I climbed into the slushy snow of the roof, trying to get to my feet and press on as my hooves numbed.

A wing of pegasi flew overhead as I saw a wooden plank leading from the edge of the room to the wide ledge of an extended part of the apartment complex. Ignoring the shouts and orders for me to halt, I went over to the planks and—shit! The planks just sort of broke under my weight, forcing me to jump for the lip.

The ledge protested my landing with a creak and a spit of snow downwards, but I was a bit too preoccupied to care at this point for the feelings of a building. Although, I had to admit, the red-tile roofing here was really pretty.

“Up there! On the roof!”

On the streets below, policeponies were pointing up at me. It turned out that the snowy roof was actually a pretty terrible idea. The old man’s helpful advice had proven false! Plus, with all the snow reflecting light into my eyes, it was almost blinding up here. I squinted so hard it made my forehead hurt.

“Gah!” I hissed as a wooden bolt whooshed past me, hitting a heavy icicle that fell down onto my head. “Who shot that arrow at me? Who’s the asshat who did that? Because you missed!” Really, they must have sucked to miss me, what with my black poncho. Fashionable, yes. Practical, not in today’s case!

I scared a flock of—what the hell were they, white and fur-coated snow bats—off the roof as I ran past them, trying to keep my balance on the narrow lip. Here, there was basically a solid wall to my right, with windows into apartments right there. Was I on the next building or something?

A strong gust of wind blew a stream of snow into my eyes, blinding me as I fought to wipe it all off while trying to keep my balance. Another arrow hit the wall beside me. Swearing, I shook my head and gave my face a final wipe before trudging forwards. That wasn’t the last gust of snow-ridden wind, but it was the strongest.

At one of the windows to my right was a little filly standing. She screamed as I jumped through the opened portal and into her pink bedroom, her breath hitting me with a cloud of cold vapors. Her parents shouted in alarm, only to have me burst into their living room, accidentally knocking the father over. I took care to reach down and snag the smoking pipe from his mouth, saying, “Smoking kills, and I am an annoying public service announcement!”

The pipe I launched through the window before me, breaking it open just in time for me to jump out and onto another section of the roof. Ah, the joys of scarring a childhood. From there, it was a little hop over onto the ledge of the next building. The windows here were mostly boarded up, the rooms within looked ancient, unloved. Worse was how the ledge had broken just a bit further off. Maybe I could go around by climbing up the slope of the roof proper?

Of course, when I tried that, I slipped on a patch of ice, slamming into the red tiles of the roof. Then the roof caved in on me. Because of course it did. I landed hard on a wooden floor in a torrent of splinters and dusty snow. Mayhap an intrepid icicle tried to stab me in the ass, but I wasn’t sure.

“Ow,” I grunted as the floor squeaked and groaned in protest. However, it was a well-known fact that wooden floors hadn’t yet invented the concept of non-violent protest, hence why the floor broke again. I plunged down to the next story on a chunk of floor, a wooden beam or something smacking me upside the face. Of course, then its brother floor did the same thing again, in a moment I was choking to death on dust and probably tasty asbestos a story therebelow.

Ugh, was I on the third or second st—the floors crashed again, ripping a chunk of the building alongside as floor after floor broke and collapsed. A concrete basement floor kicked me in the gut and then stole my lunch money after stealing my girlfriend. I swear, I could see little Lightning Dusts circling around my head.

I lay on my back, staring up in a daze at the huge hole from the roof to the basement, marveling at the fact that I was alive, and also at the drool on my lips. Snow fell into the building and onto me. The cold felt warm. Nice. I could just sort of lay here for a while. Take a nap. Ignoring the wet pain in my back. The pegasi around my head. Just rest here for a while…

“Sejfêonar,” I suddenly muttered, a word that kept ringing in my mind somewhy. That was the Mijôra name for Equestrians, right? It felt funny on the tongue. I wondered if the name had somehow come about, one way or another, from the ancient King Fhǽonûr af Nûlkor Pendergast. I remembered that image from that play about him, “Glacies Irae”, forever etched into my memory.

The last emperor of the empire whereafter I was named, Imperium Jericuntis, was bundled up in so much winter clothing. He was at the forefront of a massive migration of ponies across the frozen wastes of the Thousand Isles, heading north for where it was warm. That place, the Íßin Miseriae, the Ice of Misery, saw the deaths of countless millions to the cold. But Fhǽonûr knew where the stars yet glowed, where the sins and depravity and greed of ponykind hadn’t entombed the land in a blistering ice.

The image that kept coming back to me as I stared up at the sky was the one wherein Fhǽonûr, not yet crowned as Konungrinn af Nûlkor, was simply walking on the ice. His hoofprints were bloody. The ice of the Íßin Miseriae was so cold that it froze tiny little parts of him off just by touching it, tearing them off as he walked. Then it came, the scene where his seventh and last child, his daughter Alimnor, was walking and then collapsed dead on the ground, frozen; Fhǽonûr merely looked down at her with sad eyes, and then walked off and onwards, leading his host of ponies to the north. Mourning was pointless when stopping meant death in the ice.

But at least Fhǽonûr did reach the lands that would become Equestria. It was there that they forsook the name of Jerichites and became the Nûlkor, with Fhǽonûr as their king for being the visionary to lead them to the promised land. And then all was well till the barbarians tribes of Nod followed him into the land, and brought with them the Dead Winter. Before I left Equestria, I had to see whatever happened to the ruins of Nea Jerikho, the city of the Reich’s primogenitors, if such a thing even existed anymore on this continent.

Coughing dust out of my lungs, I tried to laugh at the history. It had been Fhǽonûr who’d had the last laugh when, centuries later, his children crossed the Shivering Sea. It was funny because it reminded me of myself right now, in a way. Aloysius “the Lightbringer” Pendergast had gone across the sea and carved out the Kingdom of Prosía from barbarian tribes. One way or another, Prosía had become das Reich Teutschland.

Just like the Lightbringer, my blood was Nûlkor, my blood was Prosía, my blood was Teutsch. If ever I wanted to return home, to sleep in a true Teutonic bed once more, I needed to cross the Shivering Sea, a near impossible feat. I needed to wield the mighty sword Kaledfulch, purge this land of demons, sever the wicked from the just, and cross the sea. I had to be Aloysius Pendergast. Why not? We were of the same blood, he and I, so it was distinctly plausible.

And Korweit, I might be lying here and possibly have fluid in my lungs, but I would go against thee wickedly! You will repent when I send you to the Hell beneath, back to your dark mistress in shame and failure. I had brought Hell to this land, and Hell followed, but I was Jericho, son of Roland, dammit! And I will butcher and main and torture you, demon, just as Aloysius did to the Lord of Slaves!

Groaning and grunting, I pushed myself onto my hooves. I ascended the pile of rubble and junk, fell down, and saw a cellar door. Somepony was yelling from outside and above. Policeponies?

The door in the cellar I had to open with a buck or two. Coughing, I stumbled out into a dark alley shielded from the sky via the building itself above me. It seemed as if this area was cut out of the building or something, and there was no snow in here but for what must have been shoveled thereinto to get it off the streets.

“There he is!” policeponies yelled from one side of the alley.

“Well, that’s not whither I go!” I replied, spinning around and making a trot for the other side of the—

“Here, this way! We got him surrounded.”

“Aw, nuts,” I muttered as they came from the other entrance to the alley, wielding police batons. They reminded me of the kind Cards had used to bludgeon her mother to death.

A baton hit me across the chin, knocking me to the ground. I had already been a bit woozy, but this just about made me vomit. The six ponies rushed in around me, probably to draw stick to get to see who’d be the first lather the prison soap up in order to ensure that I’d drop it.

“Oh no you don’t!” a stallion yelled out. With my face on the ground, I couldn’t see him.

“Who are you?” a mare asked.

“Your grave, bitch!” he replied with a tremendous grunt. Grunts and generics sounds of a fight ensued as I lay there, my face in the cobblestone of the alley. If I didn’t know better, I'd almost have assumed they were having a rather noisy orgy.

But then it was over. A crystal stallion rolled me onto my back and peered into my eyes. “Champion of Côrint, I presume?”

I gurgled at him. This was the standard greeting amongst the plant-ponies of the Isle of the Non-Consensual Hoof-Holding.

“We seem to be a bit late,” he went on, gesturing to two winter-armored crystal bucks beside him, “but better that than never, nay?” He smiled. “We figured you didn’t want to have your hoof held and could just get back to Snechta on your own, see.”

“Ugh,” I grunted. “At this point, I’d be okay with hoofholding. Hell, I’d be cool with you reaching into my pants against my will and violently jerking me off if it meant getting out of this damn situation. My jaw hurts.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry, Sedhoas, I’ll take you to my mistress and we’ll hide you out there until the coast is clear. But we need to move fast if we want to give the law the slip.”

“Uh, who is your mistress?”

He frowned. “You don’t know? You only did champion her household in the arena.”

I blinked. “Oh. So you’re the Knecht of that one mare with the daddy issues.” I grabbed his hoof and used it to get myself back up. Then I thought about what I’d just said. “Because that description really narrows it down, right?” I shook my head. “Fine, whatever. It’s not like this day can get any worse.”

And that was how I tempted fate into what I was sure would end up as the cosmic equivalent to being held down and savagely getting punched again and again in the asshole.

Author's Note

Footnote: level up!

New Perk: School of Hard Knocks — Jesus Christ, man! How have you, like, not died of a brain hemorrhage or pulmonary edema or something? Or, in fact, how are you still alive at all? Probably because of this perk! With training from the School of Hard Knocks, are limbs are now 25% harder to cripple. Enjoy 25% more pain and beatings before your limbs give in, a total of 25% more suffering!

Also, does anyone want to play Brütal Doom with me? As I await IRL!Cards to show up on Skype, I have just been playing Brütal Doom. Oh, wait. I guess I should say the other thing first. Cards is real.

Chapter 36 — Rosenlied

Chapter 36: Rosenlied

“If you don’t expect gratitude, you’ll seldom be disappointed.”

—Eyor Dedonki, Memoirs of a Pessimist.

Roses.

There was some just deliciously cliché about roses, methought. A symbol of love and blood. Nothing in this room, not the couches or the doorways or the various paintings of crystal mares on the walls, held my attention as much as the coat of arms above the bricks of the fireplace.

Here in the warmth of the house’s den, lit by the grand fireplace wherebefore I stood, there was a coat of arms hanging on the wall. Those roses were the symbol of House Erysa, whose current head was the mare I kennt as Sênatris, for whom I’d fought in that arena place and nearly gotten my nuts literally torn off. Now, we were waiting for her to show up. That is, I and stallion in the armor resting against the wall were waiting.

“Do you like roses?” the stallion asked. I’d learnt that his name was Ilitwvar, who liked to go just by Ylv. According to one of the other crystal bucks who’d saved me earlier, this had something to do with the fact that his full name meant ‘He who has a certain proclivity towards the consumption of sweets en masse’. Roughly translated. He continued, “You keep staring at my lady’s coat of arms.”

I glanced at the window. Outside was a part of Côrint wherewith I was unfamiliar, far more wooden and dirty than any other part of the city, but still covered in snow. “It reminds me of home. And before you ask, it’s because the coat of arms for Haus Pendergast has a pair of crossed, thorny roses thereupon, with drops of blood on the thorns in some depictions. Well, they’re the background for the main crest of the family, which is a large, two-headed black falcon.”

When I looked to the stallion, he was just staring at me as if I were just explaining to him that time his mother, father, and I had that fourway with a goat. “What?” I asked.

“Pendergast?” Ylv asked in a thicker Mijôra accent. “Gens Pendergast?” He shook his head. “Gens Pendergast Nwlcorim?”

“Stop saying things I don’t understand!” I replied.

He stood up, his light armor clanking slightly. “You speak of House Pendergast of the Nûlkor. We kenn the Gens Pendergast. But it’s no more than an ancient myth. It was such even before the Crystal Empire was locked away for a millenium.”

My eye fell once upon his sword. The cross-point of the hilt bore an insignia of a purple pentagon. Either he was a super angsty teen, or that meant something. With my luck, it was the latter.

“Is that sword new?” I asked.

“What, this thing?” he replied, and I nodded. “Aye, it is. Snechta’s been receiving a few odds and ends from somewhere, finely made weapons and armors and spell materials. Why do you look so concerned all of a sudden?”

My mind had gone somewhither in particular. Years ago, the city of Zentrum. As the sky fell down upon the last bastion of the Reich this side of the Rhein, and its fall would mean the death of the nation, the death of millions, the end of world, and probably bad bedhead for life affecting all the survivors.

And as the legions of Chaos and Hell fell upon the most heavily fortified and defended city in all of creation, a hellish voice rent across what felt the like the worlds, brimming with magic malevolence and psychic superiority. It had been Korweit, speaking into the very minds of everybody, mortal and demon alike, wicked and good.

“Faithful, enlightened, ambitious brethren,” the darkly seductive voice oozed into everypony’s head. “In but a few small months, less than even the tiniest measurable fraction of eternity, we have gathered up a blood-sacrifice to the Dark Lady that will be made myth before this day is even ended. In mere hours, millions will die, innocent and guilty, strong and weak, honest and deceitful, all of them! They will scream, they will burn, and we shall do in an orgiastic display of piety and respect for the one true divine being who loves us all equally. And it shall be for no purpose as the unbelievers may understand, but one that Her true followers would remember as the act… which saved the world.”

Father’s voice, calm and fatherly for once in his life: “To each of us falls a task. And all God asks of us soldiers is that we stand the line, and that we die fighting. It was what we do best: we die standing. But we are Männer of the Reich; we are superior in mind and body, in morality and philosophy. In a world of purity and hatred, we stand as a mongrel people of mixed blood and race, of tolerance and acceptance. We of the Reich are a bastard people charged to be the protectors of this world. But if the universe is out to kill us, then it is our sworn duty to kill the universe first and protect the Reich, the last light of civilization in a word shrouded in darkness.”

“Sedhoas? Sedhoas?”

I snapped back into reality. “Sorry, Ylv, just had a really dramatic flashback for reasons only I may know.” I rubbed my face and sighed.

So. The Crystalfolken working for Snechta had weapons bearing insignia of demons? It had to only be them, for I was sure I’d’ve noticed if Arnold Armor had been wielding such gear. Those with Snechta likely had hard-forged hellish armor, too, designed to look as over-the-top possible. Demons, a part of me was always sure, were perpetually stuck at the maturity level on tweens and early teens, hence their often hilarious armor and weapon designs, menacing with spikes of teenage angst. I had once remarked that the only think the armies of Chaos were lacking were flags and banners depicting Super Serious Frowny Faces, to demonstrate how super hardcore they were, as smiling was for pussies.

This had to have been the doing of Korweit, or Corvaet, or however the locals were spelling his name down here. Corvite? Still, it was a serious wonder how any such materials could end up here. The Warforges of Chaos lay in the Wasteland, das Ödland, and the Reich stood between those and the ocean whereacross was Equestria. It didn’t make much sense how Korweit himself could be here, let alone the supplies for an army.

But forgetting for a moment how any of this was possible, I had to consider his aims. Was Korweit, the Voice in the Dark, trying to do here what he failed to do during the Dark Crusade? Presuming he failed, since the world was still here, and the Reich did sort of exterminate the Legions of Chaos pretty hardcore, Pyrrhic victory or not.

What, did Korweit want to raise an army in this land? Turn the northern reaches of Equestria into the breeding grounds for a new generation devoted to the forces of Chaos, to the worship of the Queen of Graves? So many questions, so little—

“Uh, are you still alive?”

I blinked. “Bu-wah?”

Ylv scratched the back of his head. “You, uh, you just sort of froze and stared ahead for, like, five minutes straight. Are you okay? Do you need a lie down?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” I said. “I was merely stuck in deep internal monologue, and forgot there was a world outside of my mind there.”

He glanced around nervously. “Well, um, I guess that’s interesting.”

“Yes, most interesting,” said a female voice. Ylv immediately spun to the doorway and bowed down. There was the early-forties mare in the dark robes, hood pulled down so that I could see her cocking a brow at me. “Not going to bow to little old highborn me?”

As the fire crackled, I shook my head. “Nay, ma’am. I would not be so belligerent as you insult you thence.” When she turned her head and cocked at me her other brow, I said, “Whence I come, bowing to someone in considered an insult. To bow to a leader such as the King would be like to call him a vile tyrant and enslaver, for only tyrants and the wicked demand that folken bow unto them.” I shrugged. “I could no more bow to you than I could pull your hair and slap hard the underside of your head, even if you told me that was the polite greeting around these parts, do you kenn?”

She nodded. “Your ways are strange, Teutscher.” Sênatris repeated this last word several times with various changes in pitch and tone, molesting it with her tongue. “When first we met, you said you were this, a Teutscher, not an Equestrian, not a Sejfêon. Now I understand what this means. You are Nwlcor.” Her expression said ‘Huh’ with dull amazement.

“Wait, what? I’m sorry, you might be talking about something recent, but I am totally lost on account of my huge mental thingy-thing thoughts.”

“You two were just speaking of the Nûlkor, and you stated that the ruling dynasty of your nation seems to be the mythic Gens Pendergast of legend,” she said. Redundantly, I might add. Legend and mythic? Talk about being really unique, these Crystalfolken. “I was just connecting the dots.”

“Oh, I see. And you pegged me for a distant child of the Nûlkor?” I asked.

The mare nodded. “Snechta once told us that the salvation of the Crystal Empire lay not in the hooves of our own but in those of an outlander.”

I yawned. “Yes, yes, Snechta this, Snechta that. Look, lady, I couldn’t care less. I’m here because I accidentally stirred up the hornets’ net and now a nutthurt Prince is trying to castrate me with naught but a mildly sharpened spoon. But the fact of the matter remains that I have what Snechta needs, and I want to render it unto her in exchange for using its powers to heal my ruined body. Yet now I question Snechta’s true motives, because I just realized that… what are you doing?”

Sênatris walked forwards and past me, eying me like a piece of good meat. “Ruined body?” she flicked her tail, its tip hitting me on the nose. I sneezed. And she didn’t bless me, the hussy! “You look as fine as ever.”

I sighed. “Please don’t start with the sexual harassment again, Sênatris. I mean, it was bad enough having to strip down naked last time with you just looking at me like that.”

Her tail dragged around my hindhooves as she turned and brushed up against my side. Oh, look, Ylv appears to have vanished into another room. “Aw, need you be such a spoilsport? You know as well as I that this is fun—”

“No,” I said in a perfectly flat voice, looking her straight in the eyes. “It is sexual harassment and I don’t have to take it.” I pushed her back. “Can’t I go somewhere just once without getting molested by mares? It’s like, God in Heaven, it’s like I sweat catnip sometimes, except for mares.”

She blinked and gave me a look of dire confusion. “Uh, what just happened?” she said after a moment. “You’re the Champion of Côrint.”

“So?” I demanded, backing away from her and occasionally hissing at her like a kitty-cat.

“I—”

I hissed loudly. When she tried to speak again, I repeated the action.

“Would you stop hissing at me?”

“Maybe,” I said with hard suspicion.

She shook her head and sighed, leaning up against the wall. The orange light of the fire danced upon her dark cloak and her crystal-like teal body. “You elected to fight for me, to become the Champion. You chose to become the most vaunted stallion in the Empire as part of a great tradition we’ve had since long before the Sejfêonar came to these lands and claimed it as theirs. We highborn are only to know those stallions who have proven themselves during Mançthwl. Even though Princess Mi Amore Cadenza might have tried to utterly destroy the festival when she found out all of its details, it is a part of our culture which cannot be destroyed. You achieved the most vaunted position.” She gestured at me with enough force to actually cause her to lose her footing and tumbled forwards a few step. “To even sleep in the same bed as you would greatly improve the social standing of any filly in town. But to know you?”

“I’m starting to get the feeling that you’re using ‘know’ as a synonym of ‘to have oodles and noodles of sex with’,” I said.

“Why do you think we use the word ‘to kenn’ when it comes to ponies, not to know?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Because Equestria suffers from a vast multiplicity of whacky accents?” I walked over to the couch, which was a strange off-white thing that looked like no expense had been spared to make it look like every possible expense had been spared. It reminded me of the design philosophy of the shoddy benches at the Sleepy Oaks train station. There, I took a seat and wished for some iced tea.

Erysa—not her first name, but it was good enough—walked over in my direction. “Highborn mares are only allowed to know stallions such as yourself. Especially yourself, being that you’re both the Champion and a great hero in the struggle against the Equestrian tyranny. Tradition dictates that this is to ensure all highborn are bred mighty and fast, born only by the strongest and brightest, to ensure that tomorrow’s leaders are as perfect as blood can be.”

“Ah,” I said. “So it’s like a user-friendly and self-imposed program of Eugenik?”

“Oi-gen-ick?”

“Ja, Eugenik.” I gave her nervous countenance a sideways grin. “Basically, what I gather is, because I fought for you, I am now basically some sort of sex symbol to your entire ethnic group?”

“Uh-huh,” she replied, nodding her head.

Groaning, I rubbed my forehead. “Allfather preserve me. It’s times like this I’m glad I murdered Cherry Berry,” I muttered under my breath. “God, now I’m the sex symbol for a bunch of weird folken who serve, one way or the other, Korweit.”

Quickly, I scanned Erysa’s face for any signs of recognition with the name Korweit. That perplexed look on her face seemed genuine enough, though. She didn’t know anything that would help me, even if she was accepting the wargear of the demonic lord. What was it that the Voice in the Dark styled himself? ‘The Prince of Whispers’? Again, the name followed that ludicrously angsty demonic philosophy.

Reclining back into the couch, I stared up at the relatively low ceiling and said to Erysa, “Ground rule number one: stay way from my genitals. Rule two: don’t think thereof. Rule three: avoid staring into that hoof-sized gem that shows you an image of your agéd self wistfully thinking back to the days when you were younger and looking into this very gem. And rule A—”

I grabbed my eyepatch and lifted it up. Erysa gazed into the unblinking hole where my left eye once existed, now just a gaping mass of infinite sorrow leading into a cavernous void in the hollow of my skull. She screamed.

I also screamed. “Do you still want to screw me?!”

“Probably, though maybe with a bag over your head!”

“Oh, for the love of God, Archangel Thor, and the Mare Laurentia!” I groaned, collapsing into an indescribable ball of pony misery on the couch. “When can I leave this place? I want to heal my eye real fast like.”

Still reeling from the horror of my left not-eye, Erysa steadied herself. “When the heat dies down, I’ll inform you, Champion.”

“But it’s really cold out there,” I replied with a puzzled look.

Erysa just gave me a look so blank that I felt the urge to give her an expression with a pencil. It was a moment before she responded. “That was so funny I forgot to laugh.”

“And nopony wants to squish their genitals up with somepony who’s unfunny,” I said with a knowing nod. Adjusting my black poncho alongside Black Jack’s hat, I sighed. “God, sometimes I hate my life. Mostly other people hate my life, but sometimes it’s me.”

The mare came over and sat beside me on the couch. I glared at her, trying to take up as much leg room as possible in order to mildly inconvenience her away. But she persisted on by sitting there, all cozy like in the heat of the fire.

“Also, could you stop calling me ‘Champion’?” I asked. “I have a name, you know. It’s stupid and would make more sense for a dog than a pony, but I have one!”

“Come now, cannot you see that the title suits you ever so well? You’re the eastern stranger and the terrifying Champion.”

“Eastern stranger?” I asked. “Please don’t tell em that means I’m going to get sacrificed to the God of STDs or something. Because I’m a smart pony; I advocate using condoms!”

She gave me a little smile. “That’s not what I mean at all, Champion. See, legends tell that in the days of eld, the south grew cold and icy, where once it had been hot and warm. Then a mighty host came north from those lands, led by a mighty king of the Gens Pendergast. They settled in the rich lands south of the Crystal Empire’s borders and came into contact with the old ponies of the forest, and the Coltic tribes, and the Underkingdom of Ûmodja, all old enemies of the empire.”

She looked at my sheathed sword and paused, as if something about it had just told her a joke so funny that it caused her a sudden brain aneurysm. “Dynh Faeonwr Pendergast offered to help us against our old foes. In exchange, we would engage in trade and diplomacy and forever be their friends and allies. When Dynh Faeonwr Pendergast destroyed the dogs’ underkingdom, obliterated the old ponies of the forest, and drove back the Coltics, we honored our word. Crystalfolk always honor their word. They would aid and protect us, as we would do for them. For this, we came to call these strangers from the south Nwlcor, which they came to call themselves. It means ‘trusted friend’, even ‘lover’ in certain dialects. ”

“I’m all for random history lessons—and for the record, I’m pretty sure it’s Nûlkor, not ‘nool-cohr’—though I find it odd that you even know anything at all regarding history and the like, even more so how you pronounce differently things which I kennt by certain other ways,” I said. “But why would I really care and how is this at all relevant?”

“Because it’s just like in the old treaty today,” Erysa replied, nodding her head. “In the Empire’s time of need, when we were all but destroyed and ruled by foreign powers, a trusted friend would come to our aid. And you look me in the eyes and tell me that when the champion who will save the Empire just so happens to be of the same ponies who saved us two thousand years ago, the very same ponies whose descendants disappeared into myth eastwards across the Sea of Lost Dreams, you tell me that this is anything other than fate and Chêngrêla Herself guiding us by divine providence.”

“If I’ve said it before I’ve said it thousand times to somepony else,” I replied, scooting away from her. This couch suddenly smelt of really old cigar smoke, I noticed. And not the good cigars, either, the ones that were made with slave labor and consist more of the shattered dreams of destitute children than tobacco. “Destiny is predestination is heresy. I refuse to believe any of this is due to the dark talons of fate. I just happen to all too often be the right stallion in the wrong place.” I shrugged. “When you’ve been accused of being the ‘prophesied stranger’ as many times as I have, you really begin to lose all faith in destiny and stuff. I must just happen to fit an incredibly vague set of criteria.”

She gave me a single dark chuckle. “Well, if you think it so, I won’t argue. I know what you are, and that’s good enough for me. I only hope that the Crystalfolk who aren’t yet with us will see the light as I have.”

“Okay, now you just took two steps towards creepy cult territory, ma’am,” I said with a warning tone.

Erysa flicked her tail, an annoyed look on her countenance. “I joined Snechta because I believe in the Empire, in the Crystal Heart, and in my fellow Crystalfolk. Cadence and her husband do not understand how we have operated for eons, and their ignorance will destroy all that made the Empire unique and beautiful. We need every sister and brother to help us overcome this last hurdle. But do we even know how we’re going to evict those two Equestrians from the Crystal Castle? That great and mighty fortress which has stood nigh invincible since before Chêngrêla even gave us the Crystal Heart? We don’t know, but we are resolute in our commitment that we can overcome.”

Yawning, I laid myself out across the back, arms behind my head. This sudden action prompted the mare to hop off the couch. “Well, Erysa, that’s all swell and all, but life’s a very confusing journey lacking answers to seemingly simply things,” I added, shaking my head. “Shame about the destination, though.”

She sighed and shook her head. “If that’s how you wish to act, fine. But don’t think I don’t know that you were chosen by the Goddess to be our champion.” The mare walked towards the door.“I’m going to make some hot tea, then,” she replied. “I’ll leave you to be insane on your own.”

“Hold up, wait, I wish to come with you. I love tea.” I lept up and off the couch. She gave me an expectant look. “What, you want me to say more? I just love tea. I really do. At this point, I woke up in a strange house, not to mention destroying Stronghold, messing with a demon thingy, sacrificing Cards, and then killing Blackout—so if I don’t acquire some soothing tea before resting for this night, I will set fire to everything in this house that is mildly uninteresting!”

“Alright, gosh! If you stop whining and make stupid threats, I’ll make you some tea, too. Deal?”

“Deal!” I said with a sudden grin.

|— ☩ —|

I sat at the large dining room table across from Erysa, sipping my tea. A plant on the table slumped over away from us as I thought back to my first night in Equestria, to Lyra Heartstrings. Here, in the halls of Erysa’s large manor house, I suddenly found myself wanting to meet Lyra again, just to see how she was doing.

“More tea, monsieur?” a little voice asked. I turned my eyes to see a crystal mare in the getup of a French maid, carrying a tray with a teapot on her back.

“What’s with the fetish gear, Lady Erysa?” I asked.

The Sênatris shot me a puzzled look. “It is French, a people of great culture. What is wrong with it?”

“Well, nothing’s wrong therewith,” I said, poking the maid’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch back or make any adorable noises, so despite being tiny, she was inferior to Cards. “It’s just a sort of fetish fuel, nay?”

“I… beg your pardon?”

As the little mare poured me more tea, I replied, “You know, it was nothing. Just an observation about you and your people’s weird obsession with French.”

“Right, well. More tea, please,” she said. “And now, what were you saying about magic? You just sort of spaced out.”

“All I was saying is that you can’t trust it, no matter if Snechta says the magics of her book can help.” I didn’t mention how the book itself noted that much thereof only applied to the realms of the mirror. There stood a pair of crystal guards at each of this room’s four doorways, with the sygwl of Gens Erysa emblazoned upon their breastplates. While I was about to continue, the pair at the doorway to my far left suddenly stepped aside.

“You are misguided to lack faith in the spell,” came the voice of a new mare.

Great, I thought, another heathen to be burned.

She walked into the room, clad in a dusty-no-color dress with reds tips at the sleeves, along with red highlights around the collar and where the dress ended. A thin white belt of cloth with indiscernible red symbols emblazoned all across was tied tight around her waist, keeping the dress on firmly.

The strange white mare tossed back her well-braided copper mane, affixing her gray eyes upon me for a moment. She didn’t regard me for long or with much interest. Instantly, I knew that any mare who didn’t want to sleep with me was not to be trusted. More importantly, something about her eyes themselves made me uneasy.

She reached the edge of the table and smiled at Erysa, who returned the expression. “It was quite the bother getting here, Maẅtl. This whole district is just a maze of buildings and urban decay.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” I asked, raising a hoof for attention.

Her gray eyes again flicked over me. Suddenly, I thought I kennt what was wrong with them. It was as if she were making a calculated look to appear disinterested in me.

“I am Solnyshko,” she replied curtly, but not impolitely. The name had a certain ring thereto that didn’t sound like it could be readily transcribed with a normal alphabet. When I asked her to spell it, she merely rolled her eyes, grabbed a piece of paper out of a dress pocket, and wrote down Cолнышко.

I looked at the writing and then up to the mare. “Ah. I see you are illiterate.”

Her eye twitched and she grunted. “When Maẅtl told me she had acquired somepony most interesting, I had figured they’d be a bit more polite to a lady.”

Then I looked her over once more and blinked. “Wait. You’re not a crystal pony.” Suddenly, the last bits of the nagging feeling of off-ness surrounded the mare vanished. “Why are you not a crystal pony, yet are seemingly friends with Erysa?”

“Because I am,” Solnyshko replied with a huff. “I am friend to Mêlenatra Snechta, but if you’re her supposéd champion, then she is in dire straits to kenn you.”

“Yeah, she probably is,” I replied before drinking of my tea. “But I’ve got her book, so all’s well, no?”

Solnyshko cocked a brow. “I see.”

“Aye, and all she need me do is use the book’s powers to heal my crippled body.”

“Interesting. And didn’t you just mention but a moment ago that you were distrustful of magic and—”

“Enough, you two!” Erysa barked. “By the Goddess, what is wrong with you two? You don’t even kenn each other, yet already you are fighting?”

“Sorry,” Solnyshko and I said at once.

Erysa cleared her throat. “Solnyshko, I sent for you because I managed to acquire the Champion of Côrint, and I believed you could help me and him out, dear friend, what with your knack for coming through with seemingly difficult requests.” The way she glanced at her towards the end of her sentence suggested that the last part was explained for my benefit.

“Perhaps,” Solnyshko said, tossing her braided hair across her other shoulder, “but it is something of a mess out there. The only reason I got here was because I managed to slip past the two checkpoints in this district. They really want their Strider.”

“Granted, but you’re good at this sort of thing, you’ve done not dissimilar before.”

Solnyshko sighed, leaning against the table and crossing her legs. “Yes, but that was before all of this police mess. That was when Snechta was just getting started, and I was helping her. Nopony was after her head then.”

“Please, Solnyshko? For me?”

The mare sighed. “Well… I might be able to conjure up some old ritual for help or something. I don’t know. Plus, the Strider is a jerk and I don’t like him.” She shook her head as she turned towards the door. “Give me some time. I left my bags out by the front door.”

We waited for her to leave, and then Erysa hissed at me. “Do not be rude to Solnyshko; she is a good friend of me and Snechta! She may not be a unicorn, but by the Goddess, she can still use ancient rituals to conjure up old magics.”

“In other words,” I said coolly, poking at the white tablecloth, “she is a witch.”

“A what?”

“To be unclean,” I replied in a stern voice, “that is the mark of the witch. To be impure, that is the mark of the witch. To be abhorred, that is the mark of the witch. To be reviled, that is the mark of the witch.”

She squinted. “I don’t, I don’t—what are you doing?”

In a stronger voice, I went on. “To be hunted, that is the mark of the witch. To be purged, that is the mark of the witch.” I gave her a smile, but then said through gritted teeth, “To be cleansed, that is the fate of all witches.” The creepy look went away as I drank some tea. “That was a training and mental-clearing chant, a translated excerpt from the field manual for all agents of the Reichskriminalamt.”

“That sounds… really brutal and terrible,” Erysa said with a shake of her head.

“Only because you lack the context wherefor it was meant.” I glanced at the doorway. “Um, would you happen to kenn where that Solnyshko mare is? I don’t want her to use some spell on me that will somehow magically help me out or something. I already feel unclean enough as is, ma’am.”

|— ☩ —|

I stopped outside the door. According to Erysa—whose name I now knew to be “Mau-tl”, yet was spelt as if it had been conceived by a dyslexic lunatic, Maẅtl—this entire little room was some sort of worshiping place, like for small one-pony prayers in private. A bit like a one-body confessional, I had thought.

The only reason I didn’t enter was not because of the stallion standing in this part of the hall, for this little closet prayer-room was in a small side room unto itself. The stallion was, of course, Ylv. In fact, I had pushed Ylv out of the way and he had not stopped me, hence why he was standing now by the darkly curtained window with a frown on his face.

My problem lay with the sounds coming from within the room. It was like distant whispers, the kind that muddle about in your head and either insist that you kill your family or buy that cake just to choke to death thereupon. The voice in my head took offense to these lame, wimpy whisperings.

I glanced at Ylv, pausing as my eyes settled on his sword for a moment. Hellforged sword of +3 Angst were still swords capable of cleaving a body in half in the right hooves. I just had this irrational fear that he was going to take out his sword while I wasn’t looking and throw it at me hilt-first, because he had no idea how to carry a sword very well, judging by the haphazard ways the sheath had been strapped and saddled to his body. Bruises were mean.

Then, of course, what really held my attention was that dark, masculine voice just at the cusp of hearing from within the room. It was deep yet smooth; and though I didn’t kenn what he was saying, his tones were slow and eloquent, as if he were seducing the mare inside. The only issue was, despite its tones, I couldn’t understand what was being said whatsoever.

“Ne shuti s nim,” the dark voice said. “Etot djerebets vse eshe yavlyaetsya nashei samoi bolshoi problemoi, a Tyomnaya Ledi predpochitaet, chtoby on ostavalsya sredi djivih.”

The language sounded at once utterly foreign and yet, in some ways, vaguely familiar, as if I’d heard it gutterally growled at me before. When I tried to pin down the exact place in memory whence that language sounded familiar, all my mind would do was dwell on a dark, calm voice much like this one, but speaking Teutsch. I kennt not the tongue, but the voice was almost eerily familiar to me. It had been the voice of chaos itself rending its claws through Anderwelt and psychically reaching into the minds of ponies in the Reich’s capital of Zentrum during its darkest hour.

“It must be… magnificent,” the remembered voice had said to everyone in Zentrum, myself included, “to see a nation writhe and scream. To feel it convulse beneath your own feet. Witness it dying with living eyes. Such marvelous spectacle. Death—it is my gift to you. In time, perhaps I may share this gift with every last living soul in the galaxy. Until then…” That voice had uttered a self-amused chuckle of pure malice.

“On nye dolzhen znat’ o nashei operacii poka ona ne voidet v zacluchitel’nye fazi,” the unkennt stallion was saying, back in the real world, “odnako ya ne nastol’ko glup, chtoby ne predpologat’, cho on uzje nas podozrevaet, chto on uzje chuvstvuet priblizhenie svoego kontsa.”

My lungs gulped in a large breath of air of their own accord. Logically, that meant either it was time to find out what a heart attack felt like, or for me to knock on the door. I did the latter, and I could actually hear Solnyshko jump.

“Hey, hey!” I called out at the door. “Solnyshko, stop consorting with dark, scary voices in there that give me war flashbacks—it’s not nice!” I pounded on the door. “Seriously, no use hiding it. I heard it all, and so if you deny it, I’m going to be pretty sure you’re evil. If you make something up, I’ll not only presume you’re evil, but I’ll also know you’re stupid. Come on out and open the door. Or, actually do that the other way around, because, I don’t know, but it can’t be healthy to phase through solid—”

The door creaked open and the mare poked her head out. Beyond her was rather claustrophobic octagonal room with stone walls which found light only from the wax candles glowing at the points of the purple star shape drawn into the floor with purple something.

“Oh, Strider,” she said. “What’s wrong.”

I gave her a skeptical look. “By logic of deduction, I’m going to go ahead and say that you were using magic to talk with Korweit, right? That kind of scary-sexy smooth voice sounds rather like his.”

“Uh,” she droned, a blank look of horror on her face.

I rubbed my chin. “So, logically, that means you are an agent of Chaos, probably a demon worshiper thus, and ergo are working to benefit this little resistance here in Korweit’s favor, so I probably can’t trust you worth a dime and by all reasons should execute you here and now for the crime of heresy. And also, ‘ergo’ is Latein for ‘I’m right’.”

“What are you, an expert in the occult?” she asked, stepping backwards into her little worshiping room. I pressed onwards, stepping into the room with her and closing the door behind me.

“Hey, look how much this little room was made for dark sorcery and mustache-twirling villainy. Got any ropes wherefor to use? I feel the urge to tie up dames to railroads tracks.” I poked at one of her wax candles. It fell over and rolled around aimlessly. “Oh,” I muttered. “I somehow expected that to end in a catastrophic reaction of badness.”

“If you thought that, why did you do it?” the mare asked.

“I have a fundamental inability not to screw around with shiny, glowing, sharp, tasty, or dangerous things,” I replied in the tone of a child sent to bed without its supper. But the supper was fish heads anyways, so it was only a ruse. Another night of anorexia, hot damn! “In any case, you’re clearly evil.”

“I’m evil?” she scoffed.

“Exactly, see, you just admitted it.”

“I did not!”

“No, I’m pretty sure you just did,” I replied, gesturing at her.

“Were I evil, would not I be trying to kill you right now?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m standing on your magical something or other, so you can’t use your evil attack magics. Oh, and that’s another thing: magic, you kenn it, which means you’re probably evil. Ignoring the fact that I’m going to use dark magics to heal my grievous wounds and make me a whole pony again. Yes, I know it’s hypocritical of me, so shut up. I’ve given this whole ‘magic is literally evil’ spiel so many times to so many damn ponies that I’m just going to leave it thereat and not explain it any further, okay? Okay.” I sighed.

“Hit me,” she demanded.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, hit me. Cause me pain and ill feelings. Strike me well.” She cocked a brow. “Were I evil, I’d fight back.”

“Yeah, that actually doesn’t make much sense, your argument there. And now that you’ve brought the topic up, you won’t fight back in order to prove your already-invalidated point.”

“Oh, what’s wrong?” she inquired. “Can’t hit me? Oh, I’m sorry, does your vagina hurt?”

“The doctor said nopony would notice that!”

Solnyshko just stared at me. “Oh, screw you.”

“Oh, and that’s another point!” I accused. “You don’t want to sleep with me. Clearly, you have some dark, murderous plan in store for me.”

“I… what?” She blinked and shook her head. “What does that even mean?”

“Ah, so, I take it you’re just not into guys? That’s cool, that’s cool. I won’t judge you for the way you were born.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying that either I’m a good girl and want to sleep with you, or I’m evil?”

“Or a lesbian.”

“I’m an evil lesbian?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve met such a creature,” I stated with a nod.

Solnyshko gave me the death glare to end all death glares.

“Okay, I’m no psychic or anything,” I said, “but that look in your eyes says ‘Yes, I do in fact love penis’, and ergo proves you are evil.” I blinked. “Or maybe you’re bisexual. That too is a distinct possibility. I mean, not that I’m going to judge you for how you conduct your life or anything. My motto is ‘safe, sane, consensual’—so long as it’s all three, I shouldn’t judge. Of course, magic is neither sane nor safe, and sometimes not even consensual, so it basically violates everything I stand for. Or stand against. I’m not sure which of those phrasings is the correct one.”

“Oh, and you are an expert on magic, too,” she asked in a voice that I was pretty sure was meant to be insulting, but just gave the impression she had caught Sudden Onset Downs Syndrome.

“Um, yes!” I spat. “I served in the Neuorléans 1st regiment Infantry Division under General Streng against the Chaosgeneral, Lord Tjarkhal, at the siege of Weißpunkt. The amount of magical devices we had to destroy, and the number of sorcerers we had to kill and execute was unreal there. Not to mention how I’m an expert on all things magic due to my training and experience as an agent of the Reichskriminalamt—which is to say, that I know what magic is and how to arrest or kill its users and supporters, thank you very much!”

I stepped up further, and Solnyshko backed up and pressed herself against the wall. It was about then that I noticed that her dress was actually off to the side, neatly folded. Equestria must have really been screwing with me if I’d taken me this bloody long to notice that a girl was naked.

“You listen here and you listen good, Solnyshko,” I said in a warning tone. “I have seen the black corruption of magic upon a land. I have seen cities and ponies gutted and flayed alive to serve the magical ends of the ruinous powers endemic to the spell. I may not care for Equestria nor its denizens, including those of the Crystal Empire, but as a Teutscher, it is my divine-appointed duty to oppose the servants of Chaos, those who would give their lives to the spell.”

“You fancy yourselves heroes, then?” she asked me. Her tone seemed oddly innocent.

“If by ‘heroes’, you mean folken who dedicate their lives selflessly to combating forces wicked, powers ruinous, and servants chaotic, then aye, that we are.”

“Evil is relative,” she said in a tone so flat you could put an oil-lathered ball thereatop and it’d remain perfectly still. “The ponies of the distant sea trade speak in whispers of the ideology you’re speaking about. To most, they’re simply the fables and legends of sailors, or scary stories the Neighponease of Songnam use to make their foals go to sleep.”

She slide past me and moved for her dress. I could see little white scars on her back as she hurriedly put on her attire. “They speak of a dark inquisition from the northern lands of ice and sorrow,” Solnyshko said, her words venomous, accusatory. “Bogeyponies in black with a hatred of magic, purging heretics of their faith by fire and sword, answering only to a black lord in hallowed halls of ghastly horror. The Neighponease call this land Hisan, they call it Misery.”

“Wow,” I replied blankly. “That was ludicrously melodramatic. Ever consider taking acting lessons? I think you’d make a great leading lady in a play or something.” I pointed a hoof at her. “Also, you’re off by quite a while with your time, with the Holy Inquisition. Der Heilige Orden der Inquisition des Reiches ended when King Viktor reformed it into the modern Reichskriminalamt. Everypony with a severe nerd problem knows that, knows it very well.”

“Les Misérables,” she said.

“Hey! No French here; this is a family environment, filled with wholesome family values, such as those explosives I still have in my bags.”

She shook her head, eying me steadily. “No, you and your ilk. Of Hisan, the Land of Misery. You say magic is evil, yet Equestria has so much magic and is perhaps the happiest land there is, sickeningly so. So I would have you wonder, what do you truly know?”

“Hey, that rhymed,” I pointed out. “Was that intentional? Because a part of me gets really annoyed when people rhyme on accident.”

“Question your beliefs, Misérable.”

“Nah, I’m good,” I replied with a smile. “In fact, you’re changing the subject. By my reckoning, your long line of transgressions—consorting with demons and generally being an evil lesbian—warrant your death, do you kenn?”

Solnyshka took a hard step towards me. I came this close to punching her really hard in the throat, but all she did was touch her forehead to mine. For a split second, her expression faded into curious concern as her eyes fell upon where my horn should have been, but that died when she took upon an almost dark look of mischief.

“So, Strider,” she said slowly, “are you trying to say that I must sleep with you to prove I’m not evil? That that is the only way to vindicate me of my dastardly evil lesbian ways?”

“I know most other stallions at this point would probably stumble verbally around in shock or something as they tried to explain this apparent misunderstanding,” I replied, “but I know you’re just screwing with me, so I’m going to say ‘yeah, sure, why not’ as my answer—just keep in mind that I’ll only sleep with you if you go out and slay a dragon in my name.”

Her hard glare fumbled. “I… huh?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said with a shrug, moving my head away from hers. “People I don’t know often ask me to do really weird and often murderous things for them, quests and the like, such as having to slay a dragon for them before they’ll be my friend. Mostly in my role-playing games, but also a disturbingly frequent amount of times in real life, too.”

Solnyshko blinked hard. “That… that’s stupid… You’re stupid!”

“Were I so daft, would I be so deft, so not deaf?”

“What?”

“Uh-nuh,” I grunted, universal cavepony speak for ‘I do not know’. “Those words just also confused me when I was younger, you know, since they sound so similar.”

“I…”

“You’re right,” I chirped. “While the smart thing to do would be to summarily execute you here for crimes against life—i.e., magic for a clearly nefarious purpose—a part of me just keeps saying that if I want to get to the bottom of this mystery, figure out what Korweit’s doing, and stop him, I’m going to need you alive.”

“Torture?”

“While I appreciate the offer, I’d rather not. As kinky as it is, I’m missing a nipple as of a few days ago or so. Still a bit drafty down there, do you kenn?” I shook my head. “Point is, I’m going to take a chance and presume you’re not nearly ready enough to act and finish your dark plans, and I’m not nearly smart enough to just kill you now and be done with the problem before I even know what exactly you’re up to and want, so be on your way. Go go, get!” I made a shooing gesture towards the door.

“I’m a dog now?”

“Yes. Bark like a tree, bitch.”

“What?”

“Boom! Dog jokes, girl!” I smiled. “I want no spells to aid me, especially not from a follower of Korweit, one of my many mortal enemies—not counting mares, both specific ones and in general. So, in laypony’s terms, I want you to leave. Now. Before I kill you anyways. In fact, I might just bite you so that you get an infection and have to deal with the local hospital, purely out of spite. And then I’ll get on my elbows and knees and pray to the Machine Spirit that it make all of the hospital equipment malfunction, because using magic instead of industry offends and dishonors it.”

The mare backed towards the wall. “You are insane!” she shouted, quickly grabbing up a pair of saddlebags of the ground and hitching them onto her.

“It’s a possibility I haven’t yet ruled out, but my the rapist hung himself after his first meeting with me, so…”

Solnyshko grunted and glared at me. “And the Father states you are some great threat? Hah!”

I gave her a dry look. “The Father of All Lies, Voice in the Dark guy?”

She blinked.

“Yeah, you just let slip you’re working for and speaking with Korweit.” I yawned. “I’ll ask Snechta what she knows, and you’ll say nothing to her of my intentions.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the fact that you’ve not yet tried to kill me, I must logically assume that the Voice in the Dark has made me a large part of his plans, no? I shall play his game as planned until I’ve gone far enough through the trees that I can form a mental picture of the metaphorical forest, aye? You should hope that takes me long, but it probably won’t.”

The mare stormed out of room, or at least she tried. When she attempted to move past me, I shoved her away from myself and the closed door. When she protested, I merely gave her a blank look. “Actually, I have an idea to test everything out,” I said. “Forgot most everything I said earlier.”

“Let me pass, you creep!”

Pahss, with the long A. Exactly why I paused to contemplate that eluded me. It was just a weird little thing.

“I’d like you to meet my friend, Mister Stabby,” I told her as she tried to press past me. “Hold still, please,” I commanded, tackling her to the ground and pulling out my knife. Then I stabbed her a lot in the chest, stomach, and probably the womb, because screw wombs. As she gurgled and muttered in pain, her throat cut so that she couldn’t speak but her arteries and veins intact, I used her blood to ruin her magical circle.

“See,” I said, wiping the knife of blood, “when I used to play tabletop RPGs, sometime my SM—Spielmeister—would have certain plot-essential characters.” She gurgled, trying to grab at her throat. “And so whenever I tried to kill these ponies or elves or trolls or orks or whatever, the SM would basically not let them die, no matter what. These characters were really rare and only with certain SMs, since without them, the story would end, even if they were bad guys I wasn’t yet supposed to kill. So, my theory is, if you somehow survive this, especially since I ruined your magic circle, then clearly you’re a plot-essential pony or something. If you die, then I’ve killed a magician, which earns me brownie points in heaven—all whereof I will turn into actual brownies and give to Cards, because she’s earned at least some sugary treats. But she had better brush her teeth thereafter!”

The blood bloomed from her many wounds, like the petals of roses. And as I stood there, I figured that look of horror in her eyes as the blood poured out of her body like it was going out of style was, in its own way, completely worth any trouble this would cause. One less mage, and also a really awesome postcard moment. I cursed the fact that nopony had one of those big, sort of portable cameras. I’d’ve loved to have taken one with the dying Solnyshko. Her blood reminded me somehow of the rosen sygwl of Gens Erysa, like really lame and pretentious versions of the Reich’s roses.

“And should you survive, a logical pony would take retribution out against me. Should you live and fail to do so, it would validate my theory that Korweit knows I’m here and wants me alive for the time being. Aye, make sense? Good.”

I stood up, yawned, and sighed. “Well, that was fun. Same time next week, if it turns out that powerful demons want to keep you alive, that is?”

She jerked about.

“Cool, bro,” I replied, and walked out the door.

Ylv seemed out of countenance as I shut the door behind me. “What just happened in there, sedhoas?”

“Oh, nothing much. But she’s dead now.”

“Wait, what?!”

“Yeah,” I said in a completely serious monotone. “Multiple stab wounds. Don’t know how that happened. Well, no, I do.”

“How?” he demanded.

“Well, see…” I fished around in my bag for a pencil or a stick of chalk or something, but instead only found a shit-ton of ketchup packets that I’d stolen from those cultists in that school cafeteria back in Calêrhos. They would have to do. I drew pictures for my narration.

“So, this is me, Jericho, voted ‘Most-Rapeable’ by Mare’s Magazine two years running now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And this is her, Solnyshko.”

“Right.”

“And now this is Solnyshko tripping.”

“Why is she naked? She was wearing that odd dress of hers earlier, and I’ve never seen her without it.”

“Bitch was touching herself to pictures of goats,” I snapped. My response only seemed to make him more concerned. “Now back to the story!”

“Aye, sedhoas.”

“Now, this is Solynshko falling down exactly thirty-seven times onto my knife.” Then I screamed and yelled a lot as I kept throwing ketchup packets at the wall, exploding tomato gore all over the place. There were a lot of packets. “Any questions?”

He rose his roof into the air.

“That was a trick question, Ylv, and you failed. See me after class in detention!” I glared at him. “And this time, I promise not to seduce your father when he comes to pick you up.”

“What.”

“Scout’s honor, mate.”

“Wait, wait, just… does she need help?”

“I wouldn’t do that, were I thou,” I said, drawing up close to him. I whispered huskily into his ear. “She was in there. Vigorously masturbating. To goats. Vigorously.” I pulled back. “What do you think she slipped on?”

“So she needs help?” There was panic in his voice.

“No.”

“But there’s blood on your cheek!”

“There is?” I wiped my cheek. Certainly, there was a splotch of blood. “Huh. Imagine that.”

“She needs help!”

“No, she was just on her period. Vigorously.”

“But, then, why’s the blood on your face?”

I blinked. “Vigorously. It’s on the walls, the ceilings, the floors, the windows.”

“There’s only one floor, one ceiling, and no windows in there!”

“Well, I couldn’t tell, there was so much sex lube and vagina blood!” I stamped a hoof. “Now, do you want to go in there and clean up that mess with your tongue, under the supervision of an angry, menstruating mare!? I didn’t think so.”

His eyes narrowed. “Wait, are you just screwing with me?”

“If I tell you the truth and say that I am, will you leave Solnyshko alone? Because she’s not in any mood to be bothered.”

“That is how it would be, sedhoas.”

“Then aye, aye, that is literally what is going on, I am messing with you out of boredom and because of anger that Solnyshko threw me out of her little hidey room thing so quickly.”

“Weren’t you in there for a short whi—”

“Moving on!” I jabbered.

“Still, you’re one helluva liar. I was convinced something was really bad or… I’m sorry, my Equestrian just failed me right now. Not sure how to word what I wish to word.”

“To me happens it the time of all,” I replied matter of factly.

“It has something to do with the way some sort of spell forcibly taught us all Equestria, but not exactly the knowledge of how to use its particularities, understand?”

“Yes, I kenn it well,” I said. And then: “Good. I’m glad we had this chat.”

I sighed, pushing past the guard. With my task here done, or so I figured, I had to prepare to wander through the city till I got to Snechta up her in her mountain temple. I could carry out my investigation there, mayhap after I became a whole stallion once more.

While trying to plan out what to do next in my plan to restore my eye and other parts of my broken body, I went to go see if Erysa had any fishtanks filled with exotic fish. I wanted to regale them with the story of the time I killed all of Social Grace’s fish with a crowbar, purely out of spite. Plus, it was getting night, and I needed a place to crash the night.

Also, I tilted every single painting and picture in Erysa’ house I came across slightly off center, laughing maniacally with each new victim.

I needed a hobby.

Author's Note

Footnote: 25% to next level

Quest Perk Added: Tilter—You now gain a +50% damage bonus versus painting, painting-based monsters, and also painters because they’re all pretentious jerks and/or literally will become Hitler.

This chapter brought to you by the letter H (it’s for Heresy!), and also Warhammer. Lots thereof. Did you know that I found that Cards has a twin of sorts in the Warhammer universe? Her name is Alice Boone, and she’s basically Cards to a T, only with psychic powers and no Jericho to ruin her life. Check out them links. And the drawer of said comics is willing to do a Cards/Boone crossover art thingy. He’s a cool bloke therelike.

Chapter 37 — Thinking

Chapter 37: Thinking

“Business, business, business, numbers.”

Thought.

Perhaps the single most powerful tool a sentient mind is capable of harnessing. Be it for ill or good, it can do so much if applied right. Sure, different races may fundamentally think different, from zebra to pony to the hellspawn of the Inferno that need to die die die right now.

But as I sat there on the balcony of Erysa’s manor, just outside the room I’d been given, my thoughts did me naught but harm.

Time seemed to grow still. I just sat there in the cold, half naked, sharpening my sword, praying thereat. Well, to be specific, I wasn’t praying to my sword so much as I was praying to the Machine Spirit of my sword. This blade was, however simple, a piece of technology, and the Allfather blessed each bit of earnest technology with a part of His holy Machine Spirit. I prayed that it would strike true, that it would be sharp, and that it would be as strong as I needed it to face the coming darkness.

Such thoughts theological were better alternative than thinking about today.

This day, I had let Cards die. This day, I had executed Blackout for her sins. This day, I had failed to achieve so much, not unlike how I had failed Taran, Dust’s mother, and let her kill herself right before mine own eye; and how just an hour or so before that, I had fed Frosty’s arm to the Terror Train, all for naught in the end, as the werekind Lightning Dust had still died. I had failed so much these past days, yet I had the book, Calêrhos, so I had won. My victory had technically been absolute. Yet the more I thought thereupon, the more my failures weighed me down.

The pain of the frigid chill against my scars, especially the white flesh where once a nipple and its surrounding area had been, was a good, cleansing pain, like the kind monks subjected themselves to, that they may be closer to God. Even if you weren’t one of those extreme monks, sometimes pain and sacrifice were needed for the good of all life.

But this was not such a holy pain.

A door opened. My attention languidly shifted from my sword. Whence I sat in the cold, I could see across a small, enclosed courtyard across the doors leading to another balcony. From the doors Erysa, a drowsy, sleepless look about her, which seemed oddly fitting, given her nightgown. Or was it some sort of bathrobe? Hard to tell when you didn’t really care.

“Champion? Is that you?” she asked.

“Well, that’s a better reaction than the last few folken I’ve met this night,” I replied slowly before going back to offering prayers to the Machine Spirit. May it give me strength of will and of swing, grant me protection, and bless my arms and armor. May it forgive me for using witchcraft to heal my broken flesh.

In the light from her opened door, I couldn’t see much of her face. She was a silhouette. Even then, the little cock of her head told me she was confused it intrigued or something. “Excuse me?”

“For the record, I’m going to start putting up PSA fliers.” I shrugged. “They’re going to read, ‘Jericho: I am not the Tooth Fairy’. I swear, you accidentally fall down a building and into a small child’s room, and that’s all they seem to ask. So I am forced to say, ‘Haha. Does the Tooth Fairy come to take fresh teeth with his rusty pliers? Now open your mouth and say ahh!’ And that usually petrifies them to sleep.”

I looked up at her. “I went wandering through the city. A lot of this district is in a state of urban decay. Lots of wooden houses with multiple stories. I was wandering around them on a midnight jog. Had a bad run in, see?”

“I… Why are you even out here?”

The answer was simple, and I gave it to her accordingly. I said it with such honesty, such open sincerity, and with the kind of great clarity one only gets from brooding upon a matter for a long time, that when she heard it, Erysa seemed taken aback. My humor was dead, and all that was left was an oppressive void of pure factual analysis.

“I am afraid to go to sleep.”

Erysa shivered in the cold, but just looked at me.

“Milady,” I went on in that exact same tone, “every night I do not dream is a good night for me. I have seen some shit in my day; and unfortunately, it’s hard to crack witty jokes and observations when you’re asleep. Humor can only go so far.”

A dim part of me noted that since Erysa wasn’t currently angry with me, she must not have found Solnyshko’s body. Else, that demon-worshipper did get healed by the powers of evil and was now perfectly fine.

I went on. “It’s easy to ignore the horrors of something if you don’t think thereof. Easy to laugh and smile when it’s not staring you in the face. But today, a lot did happen, and here I am, brooding thereover like some pretentious heroic twat whose life story was penned by an angsty tween.”

I shook my head. That deathly serious tone needed to be done away with. “So when you ask me why I am here, enjoying masochist the pain of the cold and cleaning and sharpening my sword for the umpteenth time, it is because it takes my mind off what I saw today, and because I know that were I allowed to sleep thereon, my dreams would be of what I witnessed this day. Do you kenn?”

She shook her head.

“I appreciate your honesty.”

Minutes flew by as I uttered prayer after prayer to the Machine Spirit, ritually cleaning and sharpening my blade again and again.

Erysa finally spoke up. “I was going to tell you in the morning, but some of my ponies found a way to bypass the upped security, since you seemed so hateful towards Solnyshko.”

I grunted.

“There’s some underground tunnels and ruins down there that lead to an exit near enough to the temple in the mountain. Royal guards stay away from that mountain, now, so if you go through the underground abandoned areas, you should be fine.”

“Oh, whoopee,” I deadpanned. “Sewer levels! Just what I always wanted—to catch all sorts of strange and exotic diseases and STDs by mucking about in strange poop-water.”

“Why would there be sexually transmitted diseases in shit?” she asked.

“Because I won’t put any act of sexual depravity past you Crystalfolken.”

“Is this news at least not comforting, Champion? And it’s not a sewers; those things are entirely unrelated to the old undercity.”

I have her a curt grunt. After one last prayer ritual, I said, “Erysa, you should leave me in peace. Assuming you’re out here because you can’t sleep, you’ll find nothing out here to help you but hypothermia.” I watched my breath in the cold air as I huffed out the carbon dioxide in my lungs.

“Trust me,” I told her: “right now, unless you want me to try to knock you unconscious, there’s no sleep aid. And I don’t wish to keep a bored mare company right now. Leave me to my prayer and ritual.”

And so she mercifully did.

Author's Note

Footnote: 30% to next level

This chapter is the shortest I will ever do, because it’s kind of a BS chapter. It didn’t fit with the chapter before nor after, so I just did this thereto. I know it sucks, but I promise you a new chapter. “When?” I hear you ask

inb4 noöne reads A/N

inb4 worst chapter ever

So, to make up for my worst thing ever, have this:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ff_zKZJ2eSn8w-izuPiz25fi3iUIe2mW6Cy6J2WyOO4/edit

Ever wondered what it’s like to know me and talk to me? This is pretty much it: the rambling of Team Jericho, coming soon to a mental hospital near you! It’s tons and tons of half-baked ideas, some whereof made it into Jericho, thus teaching you that Jericho’s canon is mostly made up of silly jokes that are by no means canon, but then become canon.

Chapter 38 — Depths

Chapter 38: Depths

“Do they not know who we are, my brethren? We are the chosen of God, the scions of Kain. We are dominion and we are righteous. We are war itself and the death of all who oppose us. We are Teutsche and we shall educate our ignorant foes as to the true meaning of that word!”

—King Viktor Pendergast, Der Weiße Mahlstrom

Clang!

That would be about how I would describe the loud noises coming from my companion, Ylv, as we walked down the dark tunnels of Côrint’s undercity. Still not having found out that I may or may not have brutally murdered a mare just inches from him the other day, he had decked himself out in some thick platemail armor—complete with giant pauldrons that should have broken his goddamn shoulders—and been assigned to lead me through part of this dark, damp place.

Of course, that sort of translated into a sound. “Clang, clang, clang, clang!”

“Would you stop yelling ‘clang’ while you’re walking?!” I snapped.

“It’s for echolocation,” Ylv said with a sad whine. “The echos bounces off stuff and you can sometimes hear holes in the tunnels.”

I stared at him hard. The light from the brightly glowing crystal I’d shoved into my left eye socket made him hold a hoof up to his face. Oh, did I mention that? Erysa had given me a glowing crystal light thing, and I’d summarily just tossed it into my eyehole. I mean, where else was I going to put the damn thing? I had to sneak through an ancient, underused underground of a city in order to get to that mountain temple, and damn if I wasn’t going to do so creepily.

“Oh, right. Don’t need that; we can see well.” He kicked at the ground.

“And, Ylv, for God’s sake, take off those stupid fake bat ears! You are no—know what? Give me!”

“No!”

I tackled him to the damp stone ground and ripped his bat ears off with my teeth. “I’m having these!” I told him, putting the ears safely in my bags.

The idea of Cards wearing them came to mind. It was such an… interesting image that I resolved myself to swing by the local gift shop, buy some wrapping paper, and then mail them to Cards with a letter reading, “There, now nopony will notice your horrible ear-lacking mutilation. Toodles!”

“Gee, that was rude,” he huffed, standing up and brushing himself off. His massive pauldrons broke into pieces and fell limply to the ground. They sounded wooden, despite having looked metal. “Aww, nuts. I spent all day making those.” When he saw me staring, he said defensibly, “Well, what of it? Big pauldrons make me look scary and tall, you know, like yourself.”

I just stared at him harder.

Ylv feigned a cough and rubbed the back of his neck. Somewhere, water was dripping onto the ground rather loudly and overdramatically. “So, uh, since we’re basically going to be traveling together down here for a short little while, is there anything I should know about you? Certain things I should or shouldn’t do. It might be a while before we get out of this place.”

“You know, Ylv, I’m glad you asked.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a strategically located pamphlet. ‘So, You Want To Travel With A Deranged Sociopath’, with the last two words furiously scribbled out and replaced with the word ‘HERO’.

He took it with hesitation. Looking down at it, he seemed as if going to ask a question, but I interrupted him.

“I made this back in Songnam whilst waiting for Cards to wake up after Social Grace fucked her over and forced me to cut off a little sharkbite out of her ear to save her life. And, man—” I paused when I realized I’d use a bit of the odder slang I’d picked up from Calêrhos, and that it might not make any sense. Hell, I hardly knew what it meant. I really needed to stop doing that. “I was still dealing with the mental trauma of a certain mare in the Modern Times who took a particular fancying to me, so this helped take my mind of things. I figured it’d also work in this scenario.”

“Um,” he said, looking up at me, “items one through three on your list are all variants of ‘don’t sexually molest me’, plus a footnote taking up half the page explaining especial times not to sexually assault you. And who the hell is ‘Cherry the Berry’, and why is her catchphrase, ‘Only you can prevent aggravated sexual assault on Jericho’?”

“Well, it’s just that, uh, I’ve not traveled with a guy in some time. For some reason, all of my companions in my adventures seem to have vaginas and are usually a ‘rather’ or higher in terms of that Arbitrary Scale of Hotness. I don’t know if all stallions also want to show me their personal interpretation of the bad touch.” I shuddered, and said in a weak voice, “Daddy and Duke Elkington were bad enough…”

“O…kay, then. Cherry the Berry demands I take a scout’s oath that I won’t, and a quote, ‘vigorously manhandle Jericho’s sexual organs, external or otherwise. Or else’.”

Then I made him take the oath. Doing so required surprisingly little murder.

“Right, well,” Ylv said, running a hoof through his mane as I put my pamphlet back. “That was certainly a terrifying glimpse into the heart of insanity. Now that we are officially bros, any plans on what to do after all this? I was going to grab some crystal berry wine. Have any desire to come with? I could totally use a drinking buddy who will, by his mere presence, make me look badass by association. ”

I shrugged and proceeded to continue walking.

“Well, after that, I was going to try to gather my friends up for another game of Oubliettes and Ogres. I once worked for Shining Armor, the bastard, and every other Saturday or so he’d organize O&O games for us guardsponies after work. I got real into it. Any chance you wish you join? Same motivation on my part, and—”

“Okay, I’m going to have to stop you there,” I said sharply, turning around and putting a hoof to his breastplate. “Obviously you’re new to this whole shebang, so I guess I ought cut you a mite bit of slack, but what you’re doing right there is what I like to call ‘expendable behavior’.”

“Expendable what now?”

“New guy to the party, about to descend into a cavern inevitably full of horrors, starts talking about all the things he’s going to do ‘when this is all over’. Only serves to make your death more tragic. I mean, the only thing stupider would be if you took out your wallet and started showing me pictures of your kids, and how you were about a week from retiring.”

I glanced back into the darkness of the tunnel. There were faint hints of painted blue lines by the tops of the walls, and likewise an almost whitish quality to the center of this tunnel’s stonework, like some sort of road.

When I looked back, Ylv was standing there with his ears flattened against his head. “I have a little picture of my cute girlfriend on my person. I keep it tucked into my armor for good luck.”

“You should take it out and burn it,” I offered sagely. “It’ll ensure you’ll survive for slightly longer by making you less of a tragic possibility.” I examined him closely. Closer. Then not as closely, followed by extremely closely.

“Do I have to burn the picture?”

I leveled a gaze at him. In a slow, controlled voice, I said, “You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

“No,” he whispered, looking at the ground. “All I have a drawing of my sun-elf girlfriend in my O&O game. She’s a ranger and super pretty and tall. I worked so hard trying to muster the charisma in order to get a shot at rolling to confirm a charm check against her.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “You are a sad, sad little pony, and you’d have my sympathies were I capable of having them.”

“Look, before Sombra and his whole mess froze the empire in time, I wasn’t a guard or anything; I was just a ganger, see? Heck, in normal Mijôra, my accent is so ‘ghetto’ that many ponies don’t understand me. It’s kind of funny that my fellow crystal ponies understand my Equestrian more than my own Mijôra.” He frowned. “So forgive me for not really taking so well to the ‘respectable mares’ that all of the sudden showed up everywhere when the world returned to us. I’m trying to make an—”

“Going to stop you right there, mate,” I snapped. “Stop having such a backstory. The key to your survival is to be likeable and not very tragic. You are failing at both of these. I mean, hell, look at me—look at me! Do you know why I go out of my way for this heroic stuff? It’s because any other career would kill me hard, do you kenn?” I make a slicing motion across my throat. “All I have to do is stay chipper and just above the line dividing good and evil, and my being a likable good guy means that I can literally survive anything. You can drop the moon on me and then put me naked and unarmed with a room filled with Cherry Berry clones, and I’d probably still heroically survive to fight the bad guys or whatever, kenn?”

“What?”

I shook my head and made a disgusted noise. “Just go on out and point the way through this undercity. I know now that you must have been sent with me because your ganger nature somehow led to you knowing these tunnels, but—”

“We’re going to a part of the undercity that hasn’t seen use in probably ever. I only know it from brief, undetailed maps. It’s all dangerous ruins. Scary stuff, I hear. Some say reality doesn’t work so well in this undercity. Something to do with what the Elder Gods used to do here.”

Elder Gods. When first we’d met, C had used that term. What had he said? That the Elder Gods were slain by the “One True God” when the One True God awoke from his billions-of-years slumber? C’s people must have really weird mythology. Still, something felt off that this term would reappear here, less that thirty-six hours since I’d last seen the skinwalker.

“Err,” Ylv stammered. “Elder Gods were the fathers and mothers who gave birth to the gods, of whom only Chêngrêla survives.”

I made a dismissive gesture. “Look, we’ve dallied here for far too long. I wish to move, get my eye back, save the world, and give Cards a goddamn hug! Move it, mate.”

|— ☩ —|

“Too many have died in this place over the millennia. I can feel their spirits. They do not know they are dead. They are watching us. This is a dark place. I do not like how they stare at me.”

Those had been C’s words once upon a time. Now, as I coughed up the dusty air this side of a wall of rubble and ruin, I felt as if I understood a part of that feeling. Ylv crawled up from a little hole under the rubble and joined me.

“Here we are,” he announced. “In the middle of nowhere. Where it’sdark and gloomy and leads eventually to the temple…ish.”

Something about this place felt wrong to me. It had been slowly building up for a while, from the barest hint of discomfort to this more vague but definitive feeling. Trying to understand the exact time and point whereat I noticed the feeling, however, was about as fruitless as Blackout’s womb. Bam! Staying topical, yes I was.

Still, had I not felt something like this before? It was like the raw energy of Anderwelt’s faintest hairs on its most minuscule tendrils had brushed up against my leg and then pretended not to notice my discomfort as it kept rubbing its leg hairs against me. It had all the charm of Cards trying to be seductive.

I cracked a smile at that thought. Whatever happened, I couldn’t lose myself; I had to stay happy, optimistic, and unaffected by the brutality of this world. “Do you feel that?” I asked.

“You mean that odd feeling? You’re noticing it now, too?”

“Noticing it was a bit like trying to recall the exact moment your body consciously becomes aware it’s come down with a cold, but yes. I notice it.”

“It’s like I said, sedhoas,” Ylv replied with a shrug.

He looked off down the dark corridor before us, with its two levels. The lower one was filled with a mucky liquid menacing with angry stalagmites… stalactites… with angry stalags and a dark feeling that just murmured ‘here be fish that swim up your urethra if you try to urinate in me’. The upper part, whereupon we stood and which ran down the seeming length of the corridor, reminded me of the station to an U-Bahn, a sort of underground in-city railroad we had back in the Reich. Subway, I though, might have been a decent translation.

“Reality doesn’t work so well down here. Some ponies can feel it. I’ve never been to this part, but it does feel a bit heavy. Jêl urji morghuên takarê.”

“What?” I asked.

“Jêl urji morghuên takarê, sedhoas. What the gods want, they will have.”

I grunted. “Oh, and for the record, you’re probably going to get eaten by a hellish demonic monster, since I’m getting that kind of vibe from this place.”

A little thing, at most no bigger than five inches, poked its head out from a crack in the wall. It was utterly pale, hairless, was clearly lacking eyes where its little head-structure would have suggested having them. Little red trees poked up from its neck, and a part of me recognized them as a form of external gills, although these ones were clearly interlaced with bits of crystalline materials. It shivered, looked towards us ponies, then quickly scampered into the water with a little splash.

Then a furry spider about as big as a saucepan squeezed out of the hole, made a low hissing noise, and charged into the water after the pale thing. I could hear the spider slapping the waters as it swam further down the cave.

“Well, whatever that was, I am now officially freaked out.”

Ylv and I continued down the dark path, the glowing crystal in my skull providing most of the light, until we came across wispy tendrils of faintly blue-green light hanging from the ceiling up ahead. For some reason, here the tunnel became like a massive cave, bereft of the artificial features of before.

“What the…?” I looked at Ylv, who shrugged.

“Crystal silk worms,” he said with a sigh. Had I not know better, I’d’ve almost thought it was a lusty sigh. Because, of course, the idea that my traveling companion had a lust for worms was just another reasonable thing to expect in my line of work. “Those threads are, uh, the light is natural, from body chemicals. I don’t know the word, but they use those strings of sticky silk to catch prey, like passing bats and other such horrors.”

Ah, so clearly crystalfolken were a cowardly, superstitious bunch who thought bats were horrors.

He continued on. “They can get really big, I hear. Never really seen them myself, although in the olden days, there used to be farms down here. Crystilk, as it is called, sold really well. I hear that wearing a pair of crystilk underwear felt like getting a constant blowjob for every second on every part of that part of the body.”

“Yes,” I said, “because what I really want is to receive fellatio on my thighs.” I let that sink in for a second. “Check the map. Are we lost yet?”

“Uh, allow me to see, and, uh… no, no we’re not lost.” He pointed off to a dark part of this cave system. “Over yonder ought be a way further down.”

“Further down? We want to go further down?”

“Yes, sedhoas. We did surveys of this area with ritual crystal magic and found that the best way through this area would be… Actually, I don’t know, but this way looks pretty cool, huh?” He showed me the map.

“Going to be honest here, mate,” I said. “I have no earthly idea how to read this map. But, I will at least compliment you on the fact that you managed to get a ketchup stain on your map.”

“Hey! That’s your fault, not mine.” He stamped a hoof. “And besides, much of the area up ahead on this level is flooded, though over yonder is not so flooded, and actually rather dry, understand? Let us go there; I do not want to get all soaking wet. Who know what’s in these waters?”

From somewhere distant, we both heard some kind of animal make a distant, hellish noise, like the wailing of the damned, filled with rage and hatred. Ylv and I exchanged glances. Perhaps we could argue later, and focus on trying to get to the other side of this labyrinth first.

|— ☩ —|

At least an hour had passed us by. I could sense in my ears that we must have gone down at least some three stories into the dark depths, moving by enclaves of strange flora, crystals a-glow, and deep but small beasts without eyes in the various levels of streams and ponds and rivers here in the underdark. Caves mixed with ancient masonry made this place feel hellish to me, a huge crypt of the ancients. And if Ylv was to be believed, creatures here mutated quickly into new forms, a strange curse and a blessing from long dead gods. Rubbish, it had to be.

But still, something about this place sat with me about as well as the idea of letting a bunch of kids play in yon pile of used needles. It was just a sense of wrongness. Who had built this, really? No gods, that was for sure. And why had it been built? More concerning, why had it been so seemingly abandoned?

Aside from the hellish aspects, it reminded me of the titanic networks of caves beneath the Reich, wherewithout it might have been impossible to wage massive guerrilla campaigns against the forces of Chaos so many years ago. The caverns of the Reich had entirely self-contained forests, even clouds and rain and other such weathers endemic of those dark depths; there were great beasts, hunters and hunted, in those places. Those caves had almost no signs of artificial tampering save for the occasional U-Bahn that cut through them, and the rumors of several military bases built into those dark realms.

As I was telling Ylv about the shadowy vista of the underdark one sometimes got when the underground railroads crossed their paths, I paused, sniffing the air. Thanks to the gem in my eye, I could see that the path we were on ended in a large buttressed doorway as wide as a street. “Do you smell that?” I asked.

“What, the wet rocks?” he asked. “Let’s go. I can’t imagine the surface is too far away.”

I glared at him. “We’re a bit too deep for that. You know, since the location of the surface doesn’t tend to be ‘three stories below where we were an hour or so ago’.”

“What?” he almost snapped with enough horror in his voice that I couldn’t help but grin. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Well, since Erysa assigned you as some sort of guide, I had figured you’d at least know how to read your own goddamn ears.” I shrugged. “But, hey, it’s not as if I could expect competent associates.”

His ears dropped. “Well, you don’t have to be so mean about it…” He sniffed the air, glancing around the dingy tunnel. “And now that you mention it, I do kind of smell something. Is it… is it…”

I widened my eye to the extreme and stared into Ylv’s eyes. “It smells of despair—my favorite condiment!”

“I was going to say it sort of smelt like a distant fire.”

I grabbed Ylv around the neck and pulled him in close. “Keep low your voice, I suspect there might be ponies up ahead, thus. Sad, probably homeless ponies. Expect terribly adorable little fillies to beg thee for change, but for them to turn out to all be evil Roboter.”

“What’s a Roboter?”

Rather than answer, I removed the crystal from my eye and tossed it into a bag. The darkness was all-consuming, and it bit me as savagely as a swarm of mosquitoes, if those mosquitoes were actually Cherry Berry. I got low to the ground and half-scampered, half-crawled my way through the large doorway and around the curved corner, Ylv trying to keep up with me.

When I finally saw what lay beyond, I honestly wasn’t really sure what to say. It was a monolithic room it the vague shape of a square cross with rounded edges, or so I thought. There were two floors here, the upper one with a walkway going around it and crossing the room’s massive center. It basically reminded me of a shopping mall, complete with ancient doorways and other such structures carved into the walls on both stories. I’d always known shopping malls were evil, and this pretty much proved it to me. Somehow. Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to see it very well were it not for the glowing crystals growing out of various places on the walls, floor, and ceiling—not to mention, more concerningly, the great bonfire at the center of the mall.

The mall was separated from my tunnel via a long bridge spanning what was a doubtlessly a bottomless pit, although I could distantly make out the sounds of a rushing river. It reminded me terribly of the bridge and river that stood before the way into the cathedral-like illusion that was the lair of the Devil’s Backbone.

But for all that, the thing that caught and held my attention was probably that lone figure. It was a pony of some sort, clad in heavy black clothing, like that of a terribly angsty firefighter. Then, of course, there was the matter of the tears in the clothing, wherethrough sharp-looking glowing crystals poked out, like some sort of tumorous infection. The pony stared at the fire before shuffling around, just sort of ambling about with neither purpose nor care, always with its head slouched forwards, as if it had just been subject to the most thoroughly unsatisfying oral sex in history.

When at last the figure shuffled my direction, though it was still a great distance away, I could see that its face was all covered up, reminding me of the Atemschutzmaske I had somewhere in my bag. This was odd to me, since I specifically recall First Aide not even knowing what such a device was when I’d brandished it to save her life back in Songnam, so to see it here struck as anachronistic. And yes, that was the word that popped into my head, whether it was accurate or otherwise.

“Should we… should we say hello?” Ylv asked. “Maybe he’s friendly.”

“Or maybe it is some horrific monster that wants to rape you in the ear!” I hissed back. I paused for a moment, examining the mall. “Past the bridge I can see staircases on either side of the main area that lead up to the second floor. We can look down at the fire and that pony thence, don’t you think?”

“If you think that the guy down there is so dangerous, why not just go back and try to find another way around?”

I gave Ylv a glare so vile it would make a wooden crate shatter in sheer terror. “Because shut up, I don’t want to go back there.”

And with that said, I tried to cross the bridge as quietly as possible, sticking to the darkness and shadows, keeping my eyes on the shuffling figure. As we got nearer the figure, the louder and louder came a faint noise. It sounded like quiet, muffled crooning, not unlike a mother trying to coo her baby to sleep because its cries would alert the murderers outside to their presence. As we had crossed the bridge and were basically crawling up to the staircase to the right, I could hear words for sure. Not Equestrian, and coming from a feminine voice that ebbed and flowed as the haunting figure shuffled around her part of the mall, between ruined piles of indescribable junk and stone.

Ylv evidently hit something, one of the odd piles of ancient, rotted junk and crumbled stones that proved that this place was an ancient ruin. He inhaled sharply, and I snapped my attention to him. My eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness enough to see what he’d hit. And amongst the possible things I’d thought he’d bumped into, none of them involved a screaming mummy.

It was if the stallion had been frozen as he was howling in pure, unadulterated, bowel-evacuating horror when he’d died, and the look had stuck to his face as he was slowly mummified by the environment. He was hairless save for his still-green mane, his eyes eaten by bacteria, revealing the almost jerky-like texture of his inner eye sockets.

My companion met the mummy’s gaze for a number of seconds, before letting out a muffled cry of delayed horror that he only barely stifled. But there was another, more pressing matter, caused as a direct result from Ylv’s noise.

“Sir, please tell me, have you seen my daughter?” asked the ghastly figure, sounding unsure, even nervous. I slowly looked down the mall to see the pony, which I knew to certainly be a mare, staring at us. At me. “She’s such a beautiful girl; I’d do anything to find her! Only, they took her from me; they told me they came from King Sombra. I don’t know where she is. But she will return! She's smart, and strong, and she will find me, no matter how far away she is…” The mare’s voice slowly trailed off as she hung her head down once more, just staring at the ground.

I felt a hoof on my shoulder, and I damn near screamed and threw myself to the ground. But it was only Ylv coming to speak to me. “Sedhoas, it’s a ghost!” he whispered harshly. “She’s one of the lost souls!”

“Excuse me?” I asked, looking at the bonfire that the ghastly mare was slowly getting further and further from as she shuffled. From here, it looked as if there were a huge pile of clothes scattered around the edge of the fire, as well as random piles likewise scattered around the mall. And… were those blood stains? They were sparse, and I’d mistaken them previously for dirt, but I was sure there were scattered marks of blood on the ground floor of this place.

“This place is weak! Sometimes the dead come back here, their souls trapped.” He tugged on my shoulder. “We need to leave—this is an unholy place.”

Though she wasn’t looking at us, I could hear the mare’s low croons. “Oh, hello… what’s your name? Do you know where my daughter is…?” She sounded so desperate, as if on the verge of tears. “Why are you here? Who is Duke Elkington? Does he know where my daughter is?”

The hairs on the back of my neck, which amazingly seemed thoroughly bored by yon scary lady, suddenly stood on end. In her non-Equestria jumble, had she just mentioned Duke Elkington? I had to know.

“Duke Elkington?” I inquired, and she snapped her head up at me. I had the sudden idea of a poor book about to be violently devoured by a savage librarian, as librarians were the most brutal of all monsters. “Why did you say his name?”

“They told me he knew where my daughter was. I helped them. They were liars!” Her tone frothed with murderous intent as she gave a single twitch of the head. “They wouldn’t help me find my daughter! They didn’t want me to have my daughter—they wanted her all to themselves!”

Something stirred. I looked over to see a stallion, dusty and clearly hacked up badly at some point, rising from under a pile of dirt and rubble. He wasn’t looking at me, but still I could see the pink glow from his eyes. I almost did a double-take at his uniform. Despite its ragged, dirty state, I couldn’t shake the notion that it was some form of the Carolean uniform I’d seen back in New Pegasus.

Despite the death rattle that somehow bribed enough health inspectors to let it pass as a species of breathing, the stallion opened his mouth. His body looked almost like that mummy, only if that mummy had been exposed to nigh lethal amounts of pruning. “Do you know why the locals say this place is weak?”

His mouth moved as well as it could, teeth dancing as he spoke. Only, he wasn’t speaking. The voice had come from the mare, and sounded like an incredibly aggravated parody of a real voice.

From far away, I heard a series of low, echoing growls.

“Sedhoas, please! We must leave!” Ylv tugged harder at my shoulder, but I only shoved him back. He yelped as he fell onto the mummy.

What I’d originally taken for weird piles of clothing around the fire stirred, slowly ambling up to their hooves. Not all, just some. They were clad in the same dark outfit as the mare with all the crystals poking out of her body. Breathing hard and heavy, as if struggling terribly, they proceeded to slowly shuffle about. They would occasionally cast glances at the mare, but were otherwise just… shuffling.

“We were sent to investigate supernatural rumors and the dark feeling Duke Elkington’s empath sensed,” came the parodic voice, again with the Carolean stallion’s ruined mouth making all the motions to imply it was speaking. “No, we don’t know where your daughter is.”

“Liar!” she roared, the little other pony-things making questioning grunts and moans as they looked at her. “How dare you play with a mother’s bleeding heart!”

I glanced back to Ylv, who had scrambled from the mummy and was now mouthing words to himself. It looked like frantic prayer. It made me pause, not for his sake, but because until then I hadn’t noticed just how hard my heart was pounding. It was enough to shake me side to side ever so slightly, or so it felt like. I was actually afraid to swallow, my heart was so high in my throat.

Then the ghastly mare cried out, “How dare you hurt them! How dare you try to burn them all! They’re just trying to help me find my daughter!” Her last word echoed in on itself with a sound not unlike a thousands mothers screaming as they futilely try to save their child from death: “Die!”

The puppeted Carolean stallion let out a groan, and I watched as his body twisted in ways that a body shouldn’t able to twist, tearing and pulling under unnatural, mind-boggling forces. It was like a psychotic little filly playing with a frog, with every intent to rend it limb from limb so that it could fit snugly into her doll’s dress.

Stale blood spurted from new gaps, and it crumpled down to the ground in a fit of crushing blows raining down from the aether. It seemed to last forever, the snaps echoing throughout the mammoth caves with deafening loudness. The strange ponies in dark clothes and gas masks paused to looked upon the ghastly mare, seeming to ignore the brutalized figure.

Ylv stared wide-eyed at what had once been something resembling what might have not been a pony. His eyelid twitched as his hooves shook, Ylv’s mouth moving as if trying to form sounds but just remaining silent. It seemed like somepony who’s just spectacularly failed their sanity check.

Instead of saying anything else, that damn mare with the crystals coming out of her body just hung her head and went back to shuffling about. “T’agradas jogar?” I heard her mutter in a language that wasn’t Equestrian, her voice strangely echoing.

I grabbed Ylv by the collar and hauled his ear up to my mouth. He did not resist. “We need to go. Now,” I whispered, indicating the staircase. “I don’t want to go back, and I don’t want to mess around with these guys, but there’s clearly something interesting going on here, and I’m fixing to find out what’s up.”

He gave me a sad little whimper that sounded like it’d be more appropriate for Cards’ lips than his. We crept to and up the stairs as quiet and as fast as a stallion trying to steal a pile of hamburgers from an enormously fat but snoozing mare.

When we got to the second floor, I glanced over the solid railing to peer at the ghastly mare, who was continuing to shuffle about without any real purpose. Those other ponies, if I could call them that, were slowly stopping, some even just collapsing to the ground. From up here, I could see that a few of them had little inklings of crystals poking out from holes in their black, all-encompassing clothing.

Ylv nudged me, pointing to what looked like a door. In fact, this upper level was filled with doors and what did indeed look like long abandoned and glassless shop windows. Somehow, I felt that this was probably some sort of ancient temple, yet much like the idea of cancer the sun plants in your skin every day, the thought that this actually was once a mall was growing.

Of course, the one he’d been pointing at was a large double doorway hanging ajar, with a swastika carved into the stone of the closed part of the door. The icon had been painted blue at some point. I recalled back to the swastika, the so-called “manji”, that the Carolean Proud had worn around his neck when I’d met him in Caval. He’d mentioned it being a Songnam symbol of good luck, and when I’d asked him, he told me it was also the coat of arms for House Elkington, a symbol which had been passed down his line ever since Elkington’s great great grandfather or whatever married a refugee princess of Neighpon.

I tapped a hoof to the Iron Cross I wore around my neck, nodded to Ylv, then moved towards the building. It was a ways away, past many façades of old buildings. Passing by one, I glanced through a window and asked Ylv what he saw. When he looked, he got even paler and said, “Some whispered in the darkest corners that King Sombra used to do the worst, most horrible things possible to ponies. I heard once that his wizards knew spells that could turn a pony into paper.”

“Looks more like a desiccated husk,” I said, but Ylv refused to say anything more.

When we got to the door, I pushed the swastika portal ajar and peered in. Tthe place reminded me of a military campsite. There was evidence of a fire, which was odd considering how deep we were, until I looked up and saw a chimney hole in the ceiling, which only raised further questions; boxes of supplies, many whereof had been opened, but a distressing amount whereof had not; and other assorted odds and ends reminiscent of a campsite that had been hastily abandoned, with stuff just strewn about the ground and in ruins. Hell, I even saw a good few tents, one whereof seeming to have been torn to shreds.

I quickly closed the doors behind us, noticing that the backs of the doors looked thoroughly scratched up. Not as if from constants usage, but as if some clawed animal had been trying to get out from this room.

“Sedhoas,” Ylv whispered as he walked up to the fireplace, “this place is evil.”

“What gave you the first clue?” I snapped, attempting to still be quiet. I walked over to one of the closed boxes and opened it. The rather small thing was filled with cans of food. Next thereto was an opened box filled with little tubs of water, which was weird, as I’d never before seen water transported in square tubs.

As I was about to go check on another box, Ylv called out, “Sedhoas, what’s this?”

“Is that a…” I asked as I walked up next to him. He was standing by the entrance to the largest tent. “Oh my God, it’s a Voixson!” I shoved him out of the way and tackled the air, grabbing up the Voixson and cuddling therewith. The interior of the tent had a little writing desk with an inkwell with the feather pen still therein, plus a little sleeping bag bed.

I rolled onto the bed, laying on my back, as I held the Voixson to my chest. “These things are awesome. It’s like they’ve got some magic spell on them that compels ponies to tell their deepest, darkest secrets.”

Before pressing the on button, I noted the luggage tag had the black-and-white of a stallion in what appeared to be Carolean digs, the words “Jorn 1, Rapòrt de la situacion” written thereby.

“Capitani Quinzen Sanhargués, onzen batalhon de Carolingians. Personalament, compreni pas perque lo manual recomanda de comolar los rapòrt Voixson—ni perque me cal emplegar totes aqueles nom estupidasses. Mas coma capmèstre d’aquesta expedicion, me cal crear un precedent.”

I pressed the off button with a frown on my face. “What the shit-eater spidermonkey cocks was that? That wasn’t Equestrian—I don’t speak that! You are worthless to me!” I tossed the Voixson off to the side.

“Sedhoas, pleeease!” Ylv whined. “Not so loud.” Then, with a helpful smile, he added, “It sounds kind of like French.”

I scoffed. “But it wasn’t. It sounded similar, but was all sorts of different.” I had a thought, back to Felicitat. “Mayhap it was the language of the Red River Valley. I recalled they had a very weird name therefor. I think it was… I think it was ‘Valada de la Ribièra Roja’.” I emphasized the last word, ‘roo-zho’, for effect. “I think were it transcribed I might sort of understand it, but I speak only a little Hochfranzösisch.”

He repeated, in a rough approximation, the word in his own language, frowning. Standing in the doorway of the tent, he did a quick check of the outside before turning back to me. “I do not understand.”

I rolled my eyes, standing up and going to the desk. “Hochfranzösisch, the language some speak in Reichsmark Kadien, the state that stands on the border and only land border the Reich has with the hellish Wastelands to the west. Imagine the French you probably know, only set it back a thousand years or so, possibly more.”

“Excuse me? I still do not understand.”

As expected, the little journal was similarly noted to be in that not-French. But when written, it was… really hard, but I thought that I could almost sort of read it. “Well, while Reichsstaat Preußen was founded by Nûlkor crusaders, Kadien was founded by… Look, it doesn’t matter. Just know that Kadien once spoke French, then Teutsch overtook it, but then two hundred years ago it had a renaissance and so now that area speaks the French as it was recorded about a thousand years, okay? I’ve seen modern Equestrian French, and it’s damn weird, but I can understand it better than this. Now let me think!”

I studied the journal for a short while, taking out a pencil I had and using it to scribble the teutsche translation above the words in a tiny font. When I was satisfied, I came to the conclusion that the Carolean here had a very weird name. It was “Captain Fifteen Sanharian of the Eleventh Carolean Battalion”, roughly translated.

From a military standpoint, that was odd, being that a battalion could be in upwards of 1,300 strong; from another, it took at least three months or so to train a soldier back in the Reich, and I doubted it could have been more than two months time since I sort of was labeled as “the Butcher of Songnam”, which was the event that let Elkington get away with his Carolean pseudo-military.

However, being as the journal was really only one page long, the only other thing I got out thereof was that he didn’t like this place, but something was something or other, and an archaeologist lady was something-ing a whatnot.

Okay, so my translation sort of flubbered out there at the end, but dammit, I tried!

Because giving up was the first step to admitting you have a problem, I groaned, kicked the desk, and found a weird spike of joy when a drawer rolled up and revealed a newspaper article, missing most of the rest of the paper. It consisted just of the headlines, and then the part inside the paper that dealt with the headline. The headline read “So Long As There Is a King in Songnam…”

The article itself, written in a place called “Canterberry”, and really bothered me because it spelt words all weird-like—such as “honour”, “manœuvre”; and bafflingly enough, “horrour”—was a simple enough read. In short, it was a critique of the recent policies of Duke Elkington, calling him a variety of fancy-sounding insults, like “a cocklorn with a lickspittle-like fixation on Princess Celestia not three steps away from worship”, who was neverless an “utter snollygoster”.

It noted that the Viscount of Canterberry, one Lord Petticoat II, volunteered his opinion on Duke Elkington’s procedures. Lord Petticoat II voiced hesitant support of Duke Elkington, claiming that “at least somepony in power is doing something to try to better this country, not just keep the status quo pro bono”. The paper then notes with some bitterness that Lord Petticoat owes a sizable sum of money to Duke Elkington.

I glanced up to see that Ylv had wandered off and out of the tent and back to the campsite. Knowing him, he was probably being eaten to death by a cardboard box or something. Worst come worst, I supposed that I could always use him as pony-bait and throw him at those monster things down there.

With a sigh, I folded the paper into a tiny bit, planning to put it in my bag and save it for later, but that’s when I noticed the very back of the last page in the article. It was seemingly a normal side, but someponies had been writing thereupon. Or so I had assumed, as it seemed like a secret note written between two ponies, like Caroleans.

“Do you think the crystal pony’s gone mad?”

“Yes, she’s an utter loon all of the sudden. What do we do, Cap?”

“Tell the others to arm themselves. I doubt anything that physically grows out of the equine body means anything good.”

Nevertheless, I tossed the folded newspaper into my bag for later reading, then trotted out of the tent. Then I saw that Ylv was pawing helplessly at a strange Voixson, and then tackled him to the ground.

“Mine!” I hissed, jumping off him like a wild antelope and bounding for the Voixson.

“You’re a dick,” he moaned.

“You were going to hurt it,” I retorted, and then pressed the play button. There was a moment of silence, filled only by the crackling of the audio recording software, and I prayed that the recorded pony would speak in proper Equestrian. I looked at the thing’s handle and found another luggage tag; it read ‘Field Observations’, with a picture of a crystal mare’s head attached via paperclip.

“Right, so. That’s how this thing works,” said a mare with in a hesitant voice, her accent ringing of somepony who had an irrational fear of the letter R following a vowel. “When I heard that a troop of those odd Caroleans was here in Côrint, I didn’t know what to think. Not that it mattered much, being that I’m a professor of archaeology. Although when I heard that they were in the university, asking around seemingly on their own authority, I was a little bit intrigued. Somehow, now I’m on a ‘fully paid vacation’—don’t ask me how they bullied the administratum into allowing that—and I’m working in these old ruins way beneath the city, trying to uncover something.

“All I know is that I’m an expert at this sort of thing, at least that’s what the documents say. And…” She hesitated, as if checking over her shoulders. “Well, that this was the place where they took her. I miss her, and I’ll do anything to find them. Shining Armor and Snechta can be damned for all I care, but… maybe down here, I can find clues to where they took her.”

I glanced around as a weird tapping and crackling noise afflicted the device. Vaguely, I recognized that as the sound of the recording being turned on and off. Ylv was getting settled in to listen, still casting me harsh glares every now and then.

“I told them today about the rumors. Captain Sanhargués gave me this really weird look. He said that back home, there were some scary legends. His people had a particularly scary tale about a mythical figure he called ‘lo Violonista sus l’Èrba’; and he had hunted vile monsters as a child with his father, so-called ‘pofranga’, a sort of half-crab, half-octopus thing.” I nearly did a backflip when I heard that. She was speaking of the bogtopi, wasn’t she? I liked my name better! “‘But in all my years,’ said he, ‘I’ve ne’er seen nor heard such a horrific tale.’ And Captain Sanhargués said that he would help me accomplish my goal alongside the goal Duke Elkington has them down here for.”

There came that click of the Voixson going off/on again, but this time I actually pressed the pause button and looked up at Ylv. He had found a strange little bundle of small blankets in one of the tens, and had pulled it out, revealing therewithin to be a small wooden box. We met each others eyes, nodded in that way stallions do whenever they meet eyes, and he set the box down by me.

“Do you wish to open it?” he asked. “I feel that if I open it, something will jump out and stab me in the throat. But not if you open it.”

I shrugged. His logic was entirely sound. I opened the little container, with some minor trouble trying to undo the little latches, and revealed an interior stuffed with yellow straw, the centerpiece holding a glowing crystalline shard that seemed as if to hum with a red aura. I squinted my eyes, and I swore to God that it looked as if the crystal had tiny bits of veins and possibly the small ends of arteries running therethrough. It was almost as if it was organic.

The top of the box’s inside had a little noted taped to the top, which read simply, “Sample #4”.

I let the box alone and turned back towards the Voixson. Its message had to be finished.

The voices sounded more distant, as if the Voixson had been turned on to record, yet had been placed in a hidden location. “…not usually,” came the archaeologist mare’s voice.

“So, you are implying that this sort of phenomenon is not unheard of?” asked a stallion, a trace of a decidedly French-ish accent in his.

“Well, nor am I saying that.” She paused. I heard scuffling, a distant gasp for ragged breath. “The crystals that grow down here are caused by bacterial colonies; the crystals and their glow are sort of a natural byproduct. They grow off cave walls, eating little… well, we don’t know, but they do, and these things are the result.”

“You’re deliberately dodging my question,” the Frenchpony stated with a forceful undertone, as if he was pressing the mare up to a wall and was this close from mauling her to death. “I asked what in Fiddler’s Green it was that caused that.” Somepony screamed off in the background, and the buck swore under his breath in what was likely Occitan. “And perhaps more pressingly, of all the ponies in that tunnel, only the Carlean buck got affected, while you crystalfolk are just fine.”

“Because the Crystal Heart protects us!” she blurted out.

“Come again?” Slow and methodical, like one who is skilled in how to coax information out of someone during the classic game of ‘good cop, serial torturer cop’.

“Look, I don’t know what those things were, but they felt… wrong. Okay? I told you, this place is where reality is weak from the works of the Elder Gods. Bad things happen here. That’s why King Sombra was so fond of these dark depths!”

“So, you’re saying that so long as that giant crystal thingy that the local Princess is so keen to defend is working, my good Caroleans need suffer and die, yet you and your ilk are fine?”

I heard her take a breath, something getting knocked down and falling to the ground. “In effect, yes. Whatever’s wrong with those… organic, bloody crystals that’s infecting your stallion over there won’t harm us here.”

There was a long pause.

The Carolean sighed and spoke in a hushed down. “Then we’re going to destroy the centerpoint of all this wrongness. That alter/pillar thing in the center of this place? We’re going to burn it and seal off this vile curse from afflicting anypony else.”

A slight hesitation. “But I feel it may already be far too late…”

Click off, and then somepony putting it back up. A tired, husky voice muttered in a language I didn’t understand at all, then choked up a date and time. “If anypony should find this, may Celestia and Luna have mercy on your souls—run!” And then I heard the wailing of the damned, filled with rage and hatred.

And that was all there was. I looked down at the red crystal and closed quickly its box, latching it up good. Something about that last recording, the date and warning, was really running through my head again and again, as if I’d missed something crucial.

“Sedhoas, is that it?” Ylv asked. “We are not here to solve a mystery. We just must pass through and onto the temple. Please, I think we can get there if we’re quiet.”

“You’re right, you’re right, you’re right, and I’m not going to tempt fate by trying to figure this out. I can save the day down here when I get my body back to normal, aye?”

“The stallion sees reason! Ah, praise be!” He pulled out his map, but I just kept thinking to that last Voixson entry. “I think if we go this way, we can get out of here. I admit, I had not believed anypony had been down here in many years, but… I guess I was wrong, but I do not think I am wrong about this, no.”

Then, like a child wondering why that black dot in the sky was getting bigger and more cinderblock-looking, it hit me. With haste, I pulled out my pocket watch.

“What? What is it, sedhoas?”

“You heard that last recording, right?”

“Aye, sedhoas.”

“It had a timestamp.”

He nodded.

I showed him the time. “It was only made an hour ago.”

Author's Note

Footnote: 30% to next level

So, Occitan this chapter was provided by the newest friend of Team Jericho, Simocarin. If you want to add Occitan to your story, learn some cool stuff about the land of Occitana, or want someone to help to translate your comic into French/Occitanian, he’s your bloke. Say hi to him for me!

Chapter 39 — Back in Black

Chapter 39: Back in Black

“I have an idea about how we can literally blow away our competition.”

Lights.

After so long so deep under the hellish earth, I still really didn’t care. Sunshine, happiness, and also the apparent inability to do fun things. There was probably a witty observation therein, but I as crawled up the ancient wall of rubble, overgrown with stupid green plants possessing annoying thorns even though it was bloody winter, I couldn’t care less.

This place seemed as if it’d been hit with a pretty bad party—we’re talking the kind where all the girls are half your age, all the colts were terribly androgynous, and where “eating glass” was the hip thing that all the kids were doing. It’d once been underground, but the roof had long since collapsed, and now it was just a weird dent in the ground. Little pools of ice were scattered all about the lower area, with just tiny little puddles thereof wedged between some of the rocks, which was still enough to cause me to slip and fall twice. But that was okay because I landed on Ylv, and he clearly wasn’t interesting enough to actually survive for very long in my line of work.

It was a well-known fact that only interesting ponies got to survive if you were an adventurer.

There was a small outcrop of ancient buildings up here, tucked away in a thick nooket of forest. My hooves made crunching noises in the snow as Ylv shivered. I just looked at him before dancing around to show my superiority for not getting cold.

The stone structures all had their roofs collapsed under snow likely hundreds of years ago. Yet, there were still signs of animal life around here, little tracks from tiny, barely edible animals. Also, there were the signs of an animal Ylv called a “wolfspider”. When I asked him why a creature that was clearly as big as a wolf yet clearly had been walking on eight legs shared its name with an adorably harmless spider, he only shrugged.

Eventually, our trek through the woods led us to what had once been a mountain path, with stone stairs only partially covered in snow leading upwards. Wind whipped past, moving my duster in that incredibly badass way, so of course I took point and walked as badass-ly as possible up the stairs, with a dramatic swagger to my step. Ylv asked me why I had suddenly gained a limp.

One way or the other, this trail led to a little passage alongside a steeper section of the mountains. From here, I could see Côrint in all its splendor, from Little Equestria to the rich central districts, to the parts of the city clearly showing the telltale signs of urban decay. From what I’d gathered, the Crystal City was massive by Equestrian standards.

I wasn’t sure where, but I recalled reading something that amongst the biggest cities in Equestria were Manehattan, Canterlot, the Crystal City, and Songnam. The source really hadn’t been very useful, as I couldn’t recall anything about populations or actual size, but… hadn’t someone, perhaps Duke Elkington, said that Songnam was the biggest city in the South?

In any case, I thought as the wind buffed me, rushing through the pine trees and kicking up snow, Canterlot, Songnam, and Côrint all paled in comparison to massive industrial cities of the Reich. Zentrum alone had around ten million denizens, a full tenth of the population of the pre-Crusade Reich. And as I could see whence I stood, Côrint utterly lacked that terribly organized, and most certainly boring street and city layout/design that your standard Teutonic city had.

Satisfied in my random pool of national superiority (go misplaced nationalism!), I trudged through the pass until we ended up in a little canyon. And by little, I mean it was more like a giant axe had struck into to the earth, and then he’d taken his axe and gone home because rocks were boring. Far above I could see a long stone bridge connection on side of gap to a mountainside. I recognized this place, although the sound noises of many, many ponies bustling far above was new.

Ylv panted as we climbed up the side of the gap. “How are you not panting, sedhoas?”

“Well, considering how one of my lungs got stabbed and is now a really shitty lung, I’m going to chalk it up to the fact that you just suck,” I replied casually before taking in a long, calm breath just to agitate Ylv further. Despite being nigh vertical, the many roots of long-entrenched trees made it easy enough to find purchase until the ground leveled out far more. But by then, I could see what all that noise was coming from.

Here, just before the bridge, had been erected a large shantytown. It stretched onwards to the far point where the hill began to tilt downwards, and then even beyond. I recalled vaguely how there were enough flat little—for lack of a better word—terraces just beyond this incline, so I could imagine this little city could have extended for quite a while.

“Ylv, what is this?” I asked.

“Uh, wow. This is bigger than I’d thought,” he replied, brushing dirt and pine needles from his armor as we stood at the very edge of the camp. “I’d heard that a bunch of ponies had gone up and left the city for the temple, but this is much more. This is a whole town altogether.”

“More like a colony,” I said with a grunt.

“Or that, yes. Ponies coming to claim new lands in order to escape tyranny.” He said this through winded breath, the light-weighted bastard. Did all crystal ponies suck this badly at endurance? Had not Ylv, a former member of the Royal Crystal Empire Guards, had any basic training beyond ‘See the stick, boy? See the stick? Go get it!’ And then the large stick was thrown at his face as his instructor spat in his eye and called him a bitch? At least, that’s how I remembered Basic Training.

“I was thinking more along the lines of bacteria.”

“Oh.” He looked at a gaggle of screaming foals, slobbering and probably foaming, as they chased a ball around. A kind-faced mare in robes which I recognized as priestly ones was overseeing them. She looked familiar to me. Ylv heard me pull something out of my bag, and turned his head to look at me.

“I was saving these for Cards, but you’ve earned it,” I said, pulling the little star off the sheet and pinning it to his armor. “That’s for surviving the horrible death sewers.”

He looked at it, and perhaps I was going looney, but he seemed to appreciate it. “But, uh, who’s Cards? You keep mentioning here. Is she the girl you love?”

“Love? Well, if call murdering her BFF before her very eyes, blowing her mother’s brains out with a bullet, and sawing off part of her ear and feeding it to a would-be rapist as ‘love’, then I suppose. Ich hab’ Karten gern. Sounds wrong in any language. I don’t think Cards is allowed to be liked. Even ich hab’ Karten zum Fressen gern sounds off; I doubt Cards can even be enjoyed as a cannibalistic meal. To speak naught of female-exclusive pseudo-cannibalistic lines that somehow imply a form of sex, as the language would kenn it.

“I mean,” I went on, articulating myself with a bunch of pantomiming gestures, “the last time somepony ate a piece of Cards, his body proceeded to liquefy, downright melting before getting mysteriously thrown through a window. And don’t even get me started on the last time somebody pictured Cards having sex.” I made an exploding noise to accompany the gesture of trying to convey a head erupting into a thousand bloody pieces. “It wasn’t very pretty.”

“Wait, you just made the gesture for… head exploding?”

“Good!” I wiped fake sweat from my brow. “I was afraid you’t take that to mean the stallion or mare had an uncontrollable orgasm because they thought Cards was really hot. Glad nopony is confused. But yeah, you’re dead right and I’m not even joking.”

“How… how is that even possible?”

I shrugged, then licked my hoof and used the spit to smooth out Ylv’s windswept mane. As he tried to avoid me, I explained, “There may have been extenuating circumstances, may it do ya. But rest assured, that man would still be alive today if not for inappropriately timed thoughts of Cards.”

“Stop that!”

“Fine, but don’t blame me if all the girls refuse to speak to you because your hair’s a mess.” I paused to ponder. It was preposterous, the conclusion I drew. “Now that I think about it, I killed her father, her mother, and her best friend. That’s like some kind of homicidal hat trick.”

When I looked back up at the shantytown and I saw that priestess talking with what was clearly a pair of mothers. When she stopped talking to them, she bowed her head, and then she glanced my way. Our eyes met.

“Nooo!” she suddenly screamed, turning tail and sprinting away from me as fast as I’d ever seen a pony go. She tripped, rolled in the dirt, and got hit in the face by the ball. It didn’t stop her from scrambling up, looking up at me with terror, and continuing to flee from me.

“What the hell was that about?” Ylv asked as I thought back to the first day I’d spent in Côrint.

“I seem to have a habit of traumatizing mares. But in my defense, she attacked me in a dark alley.” I gave Ylv as a push as we walked into the shantytown, the foals and those two mothers staring at me with confusion.

“Really?”

“Well, I consider all forms of asking for donations to be assault, and respond accordingly.”

“Sedhoas, are you insane?”

“Bitch, if it took you this long to wonder that, you’re the loco one, not I.”

We brushed by a stallion carrying a ton of lumber in a cart, clearly to be used for more impromptu construction projects. Ylv cleared his throat. “So, what, you’re telling me you just wander around the countryside, traumatizing nice mares while pretending to be a hero?”

“Hey, you said ‘hero’, not I,” I said, wondering if that mare I stabbed ever got out okay. For the briefest moment, I forgot which mare I was thinking about (it was Solnyshko), but the mere fact that I had to clarify to even myself was probably a very bad sign. I glanced at the neatly shoveled snow off to the sides of the large road, and all the crappy little shacks just built every-which-where.

After another few minutes or random banter, we finally got to the bridge. The door on the far side was open, and pilgrims were bustling to and fro across the bridge, with a number of armed guards standing watch on either side. In fact, of the two nearer me, one whereof was a big, scary-looking brute with a badass scar across his eye that I was so jealous of. How come he got a super sexy scar, and all I got was to watch mine own eyeball slough out of my skull, eh?

He was the stallion what looked at me and stated in a terse voice. “Pilgrim, none may enter the shrine carrying weapons.”

“Yes, but I can,” I replied, pretty much the utter antithesis of a good idea. “I’m a special snowfluke.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘snowflake’?” he asked in a dull voice.

“No, snowfluke. It’s like a snowflake, only it punches you straight in the dick if you annoy it.” Because, clearly, violence would solve my problems. And yes, I knew that the perfectly reasonable thing to do was explain who and what I was, but sometimes just being a belligerent dick was fun for its own sake. There was always something fun about not properly explaining things to someone in order to eventually make them look like idiots.

He just glared at me. “Let me guess, you’re the Champion of Côrint everypony’s talking about.”

I felt as if I had been a really bitchin’ balloon that just got popped by a sexually confused porcupine. “Wait, what? What’d you know?”

“Well, praise be, they say it be true and I had my doubts, but it really is.” He gave me a smile that should have been considered a war crime. Seriously, had they never heard of ‘toothpaste’ up in the Crystal Empire? “It just stands to reason, what with your attitude. Plus, he does sort of have an official badge of high status within the ranks of the priesthood, though it’s odd for a stallion to have such a rank.” He gestured to Ylv.

“Wait, you mean that little stars?” I asked with incredulity, and he nodded. “For the Allfather’s sake, I bought that from a party story like a month ago!”

The guard shrugged, stepping out of the way. “Well, I suppose we got to get our symbols from somewhere.”

“Somewhence, I glowered as I trudged slowly past him, glaring at him for being reasonable, minus the whole cultist symbol thing.

The ancient bridge was crawling in crystal ponies, and I sort of felt weird not having that unnatural rock-like look to my coat. But at least the bridge had safety rails, which was actually really nice, because for whatever reasons, ancient civilizations (you know, the ones that tend to leave behind grandiose ruins) seldom ever pay any mind to basic safety.

Par for the course, I supposed, murmurs and susurrations doubtlessly about me surfaced almost immediately. I mean, yeah, I did kind of stand out, with the eyepatch, the duster, the hat, and the fact that I was a normal goddamn pony, but still. Even before I got to the doors leading to the interior of the mountain temple, I got the whole shebang of the usual crop of “That’s him!” and “It’s him!” whispers that were wont to come whenever you happened to accidentally fulfill some vague prophecy.

Inside was somehow worse. The first room, large and circular in design, was lathered in ponies. There were some seeming to be engaged in prayer before strange statues of folken I couldn’t care less about, for none of their idols here were as cool as the saints we Confessionists worship—holla, Sankt Pyotr, the stallion granted sainthood for his discovery of liquid fire. Hooray for religious elitism.

Many other ponies looked basically like tourists, just here for the sights of so many ponies in so cramped a space. And yes, even though it was large and airy, it still felt cramped. Here, the whispers, which would have been respectful on their own, had multiplied until they came across as a thunderous chorus of voices. The sea of colors, from manes and coats, and from the occasional outfit, gave me the certain feeling that Snechta’s little insurrection was not so little, and I at least had reasonable certainty that her followers ran the gauntlet from beggar to rich.

So many folks fighting for their beliefs, but no doubt being manipulated by the Voice in the Dark, a primus inter pares demonic prince whom legends held to be directly responsible for the devouring of all the other demon princes. Of course, he’d been dumb enough to basically get all of his old followers slaughtered when they invaded—and nearly toppled—the Reich, so he still had a bunch of kinks to iron out in any master plans he came up with. And unlike the Reich’s own Chancellor and King, Korweit probably couldn’t raise money for his army by selling pin-up calendars of himself. (That also serves as my perfectly legitimate explanation of why I have a sexy calendar of Chancellor Bismarck somewhere in my bags.)

Nevertheless, I was fixing to understand the big picture of his plan here so that I could foil it, and that meant I needed to find Snechta. Which meant I had to wade through all the damn ponies slowly coming to realize that I was their blah-blah-blah hero who also blah blah blah sex symbol hurr durr durr boring, uninteresting awed greetings mixed with childish attempts at flirtation.

Through the room I waded, Ylv following along. At this point, I didn’t truly know why he was still with me, since his purpose had been achieved shortly after we crept past though monstrous horrors in the dark depths and found our way to the surface. Although, I reasoned, should any ravenous fans come up at me, I could always just throw Ylv at them, wish them bon appetit, and make a run therefor, so I supposed I’d keep Ylv around for a little longer.

We made our way up the massive staircase into the large rotunda-like cavern. The little central lake with the tiny island in its midst was still here, with the baby tree growing proudly up. Various roads and tunnels and even the façades of buildings—which actually struck me as looking disturbingly similar to those of that underground mall, come to think—promised me a thousand different ways to proceed, each one filled with pilgrims. And only one whereof having Senchta.

“Yo!” I called out really loudly. “Anypony know where Snechta’s at? I got her save-the-world magic thingy, and I want to turn it in for my quest rewards plus the experience points. I’m only three hundred XP from my next level, and I was hoping to hit it by the end of the night.”

The blank stares gave me the idea that mayhap these folks didn’t quite know. “Also, next pony who gawks over me being some sort of mythic champion is going to get one straight to the ear,” I added helpfully, shaking my hoof in no particular direction. I got a weird phantom muscular sensation, that of trying to ball a hand into a fist.

So, I of course did the most rational thing possible: I wandered off, found a door, and kicked it down. “Alright, you sons-of-bitches, I’m looking for the King’s sexy daughter, and I know you terrorists kidnapped her!” I accused in a voice so gruff that I exploded into a coughing fit.

Beyond the door was a sizable room which resembled some sort of small library. There had been a number of ponies in robes writing down in books, so I supposed they were scribes. Of course, they stopped writing them I burst in and then immediately shattered a large clay pot with my hooves.

“There’s no random stash of free money in these,” I declared dramatically. I grabbed another pot, threw it against the wall, and said, “This is how people earn money whence I come! Hi-yah!”

I dodged a vicious blow from a nothing and rolled on the floor. Then I rolled again and out of the room, shooting up to my hooves. “Well, that was a bust. Anypony up for a game of eenie, meenie, minie, die?”

Welp, those stares looked even more baffled. There were so damn many thereof that I felt I could just line them up and use them to ascend to a higher floor. When I elaborated this thought to Ylv, he just shook his head and stated he was feeling pretty darn embarrassed for me. I told him we Teutsche call that “Fremdscham”.

It also had a verb form, Fremdschämen, which I then used. “Ylv schämt sich fremd für dich.” Of course, by that point I’d returned to my normal way of speaking, but I swore that my voice always got a noticeable bit gruffer when speaking Teutsch. Or perhaps speaking Equestrian just made me more soft spoken.

Or mayhap I was just hearing things. That was always a possibility I’d never felt safe to rule out.

Eventually, a crystal mare—wearing a hat that had clearly been designed for rabbits—stepped forth, her mauve mane done down in several visible braids. “Sedhoas,” she said, her mouth clearly moving to tell me something useful, but the only thing that came out next was, “ummm…”

That had something to do with me putting a hoof to her hat and slowly pushing it over and onto the ground. “There. Now you look much better,” I added offhandedly as I nicked the hat into my bag. I had the strangest premonition that it would come in handy at some point.

The mare, however, didn’t seem to notice, as she was too busy blushing and suddenly acting really shy. I supposed that, given my apparent status as some sort of “sex god” or whatever prophesied thing I was supposed to be this week, that absent-minded, utterly meaningless remark must have meant a lot to her.

I cocked a brow. “Going to assume you came to inform me where Snechta is, aye?”

She nodded.

Then I smiled and said in a low voice, “I’ve always wanted to say this!”

“Um, say what, sedhoas?”

I sucked in a deep breath and shouted as loudly and authoritatively as I could. “Mare, take me to thy leader!”

|— ☩ —|

The large stained glass windows of this chapel allowed in copious sunlight, the light taking on in places the colors of patterns of the mastercrafted glass. Despite being a part of a mostly underground fastness, parts of the high levels of the temple did indeed stick out of the mountain. But with the mountain covered in snow and tall trees, one could be forgiven for forgetting to scrutinize every odd bit of color one might see upon the side of the great mound of earth and rock.

Ylv elected to remain outside as I entered the inner sanctum. At the end of the little red carpet which marked with room’s center was a statue dedicated to whom I supposed was Chêngrêla. The supposed goddess came in the form of perfectly sculpted mare with glowing blue crystals in her eyes, a grim look on her countenance, a staff held in one hoof, and a oddly snake-like tail poking out from her robes. At the foot of this statue knelt Snechta. The mare had engrossed herself at some point in her prayers—or, I supposed, had fallen asleep—and didn’t react at all to my entrance. I noted a door off to one side, near Snechta, but otherwise my focus fell mostly on the glass.

I figured that if Snechta was waiting for me to speak, I could at least mildly inconvenience her by refusing to do so. Likewise if she was asleep, I would just refuse to wake her, and instead root through all her things for that inevitable Voixson she must have kept that detailed all her secret plans, which, knowing how smart ponies in this part of the world had proven so far, would be labeled “Top Secret Plans: Do Not Listen—This Means You!” But this pony played by nobody’s rules!

Of course, whatever thoughts I had trailed off as I recognized a fair number of symbols and things on the stained glass. There was an image on a tired-looking stallion leading a great host of ponies from a icy land, and another with that same pony settling down, with castles and cities springing up. I saw crosses. This all followed by this same stallion, now in armor, shaking hooves with a crystal mare in red regalia, corpses of defeated foes surrounded them. “Nwlcor” was written on this glass

Then I saw the pale stallion with a mane so blond it appeared white pictured in one, wielding a mighty blade and driving back strange beasts of hellfire and darkness. A name had been inscribed above him in the glass. “Alowichys.” It was an odd way of a name I kennt well, Aloysius, and pronounced as Ah-loi-zee-uws.

The rest of the glass, most of the windows actually, seemed to be dedicated to this stallion and other figures in his story. A golden horseshoe flew above a happy kingdom, the stallion resting in a steel throne, crown on head, sword hoof.

Then one of crystal ponies looking on in apparent apprehension of a white mare with whites and horn, Aloysius stand betwixt them, defiantly facing the mare, all with a dark symbol and figure off in the corner. The symbol three legs, curled as if running and with dark crystals sticking out, the angled limbs forming a rough triangle. Thereby stood a crystal pony figure in dark robes. This frame had two lines, one reading “Sol Invicta”, which struck me as grammatically incorrect Latein, and the one below it being simply “Naîtecer”.

“Studying old art?”

I didn’t jump. Jumping would have been dramatic, and that was clearly the exact reason why Snechta had chosen that time to speak. “Studying? Nay,” I said. “More like staring blankly thereat.”

“I figured this room was not inappropriate for a meeting of sorts, no?” the white mare with the raven black mane asked, nodding to the glass. “A little three-eyed birdie told me a little something of you: your blood runs to the Nwlcor, our ancients friends and brothers-in-arms. And the Goddess sends us faithful an unbelieving champion from time to time, as a way of redeeming those cursed to spend eternity in ignorance of Her truth.” She then basically rehashed Erysa’s bit about that connection have some prophetic meaning while I imagined myself trying to defeat a hamburger in a battle of wits, and losing.

I only paid Snechta mind when she gave the art a wistful sigh and said, “They, your ponies too, I suppose, had such interesting symbols and ideas. I heard they had these great wooden crosses they would erect, dually in a form of service to their God and to punish the wicked. They used to do this to traitors and other vile scum.”

“You know what, I’m just going to stop you there.”

“Why?” she asked with obvious puzzlement.

“Because if you go any further on that tangent you were clearly about to be gone on regarding you appreciate for a torture method of torture/execution, you might as well throw your arms wide apart and shout, ‘I’m evil!’ It’s like saying, ‘Castrate… Castrate… Man, I love the sound of that word’.” I shook my head. “Read a goddamn book, Snechta. Also, your big holy thingy has a pretty annoying typo.”

“What?” This was clearly not going as she had envisioned it. Good.

“It says up there, ‘Sol Invita’. Soul een-week-tah. And that’s wrong. Sol is a masculine noun, but your glass-maker declined the adjective in the feminine gender.” I nodded sagely. “Therefore, it should read Sol Invictus, the invincible or the unconquerable sun, which might be the latter, given as how I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be Princess Celestia. The word sun, however, is a feminine noun in Teutsch, and,” I went on with a shrug, “I suppose the same is true for Old Equestrian, since the two languages are really close relatives. Odd that she’s wearing clothes here, as I’d pretty much come to think of her as bare-ass naked, like nigh everypony else here is.”

Snechta took a step back. She had apparently gotten rather near to me as I was staring at the windows, so it really didn’t mean much. I simply cocked my head a few degrees and said, “But enough about that business. I’m here because I just spent a few days in a magical doorway thing and it left me something’d or other, but now I have it.” I pulled out the Calêrhos book and offered it to her. She quickly snapped it up with an expression that was somewhere between a grin, laughter, and a grimace—and whatever it was, I didn’t want to see it ever again.

“You found it! The holy Calêrhos!” I swore I saw drool.

I raised a brow. “Yes, now keep your panties on and your crotch dry, I’m here strictly for business.”

“But… I don’t wear panties,” she added with confused dismay.

I threw my hooves up. “Great! So we’ve failed step one already. Are you happy with yourself?” She just looked at me, and I shook my head. “Look, keep your happiness to yourself, and if I so happen to smell a leak, I’m taking that book and going home, capiche? ¡Bueno! Now use your witchcraft, allow me to revel in my defiling all I’ve held sacred, and make me whole once more.”

“Whole?”

I jabbed a hoof at my eye, raised my hat to show the nasty forehead scar, and then made some odd gestures with my hooves. “You know, I once was a unicorn; and once upon a time, my right arm wasn’t technically on loan from an unholy abomination the likes whereof your pitiful little thought-box you term a ‘head’ wouldn’t even be able to comprehend! So, I have been through enough shit to get this far, I just want to get my body all back to normal, take a nap, eat a bagel, and then probably get forced to save the world from, I don’t know, a throng of sentient, pony-eating thongs or something equally retarded.”

“Umm, that might be a bit hard.” When my glare intensified, she shrank back. “I mean, I don’t exactly know how to do that.”

“What.”

“Well, y’see… Uh, heh…” She opened the book and randomly thumbed therethrough. “I can read it, and I know that a great healing spell is in here somewhere, no doubt, but I actually need to find it first.”

“And?”

“And, that may take a while.”

I walked up to her, pressing my chest her. With my height, she practically had to stare vertically upwards to meet my lone eye. “Then make finding it thy highest priority,” I said in a low, slow voice, that kind of voice that just radiated threat despite sound only too calm.

“Y-you don’t understand—”

“No, I kenn it very well, do it please you.” I grunted. “I am a very patient stallion, Frau Snechta, and I’ve come too long to blather away. You will find this spell, today. You will use it on me, today. I will become as I once was, my limbs good, my horn working, and eye reborn, and nought else. Are we clear?”

“I… yes, yes we are.”

I sighed. “Aww, now I hate you for ruining all that buildup.”

She swallowed hard. “Wait, why?!”

“You were supposed to answer with crystal.”

It took Snechta a second to register all thereof. When she did, she gave me the single most forced laugh I’d ever heard. “Ah, so, you’re not so, so upset?”

“Me, upset?” I said with a smile, and laugh. My hoof came down on her throat as I swept her arms out from under her. In an instant, I was pinning her to the ground. “Oh, I’m positively livid, can’t you tell?” I went on in that same jovial tone, my countenance bearing a jolly expression. “Because if you can’t find such a spell in your book, I’m going to flat out murder you. Slowly. With a spoon!”

She squeaked in terror.

“Now then. I prithee say me and say me true: are we clear?”

“Cr-crystal, Champion.”

I pattered her twice on the cheek and stood up. “Good girl.”

|— ☩ —|

Water was nice on damaged flesh. Hot water, sometimes so, often not. But right now, as I relaxed in the large hot springs chambers, its doors barred to the public, the water kept absurdly fresh via little talismans, it did feel so good. It was well lit, that much I could see, aside from the steam rising up, which felt good on my recently self-sewn left eye. See, in order to keep nigh-boiling water out of my skull, I had to sew up my eyelid all good and watertight again.

My gear was all up on the the dry, solid side of the room, and so I rested naked in the water. It felt good to cleanse oneself after so much grime and sweat and blood. The only downside was that all this peace and lonesome quiet gave me too much time to think, which was an act usually reserved for moonlight balconies, as hot springs were traditionally used for checking out mares and experiencing poorly written dialogue laced with thinly veiled sexual tension.

I took a moment to reflect on my pleasant loneliness, and it dimly occurred to me as I sunk my head lower and lower into the water that, given my apparent status amongst the crystalfolken, were I a weaker stallion, my life would have gone from stupid possibly heroic quest all the way into a stupid excuse for a porn novel. I was glad I was me, and doubly so that I wasn’t Cards. Likewise, it was good to feel so clean.

Then came the sound of the door opening up, a door which shouldn’t have done that, as I had left instructions not to let anyone else in here, and then I had put Ylv on guard with the nerdiest, most adorable looking guardsmare I could find, ensuring hours of them just standing there together in awkward silence.

“Look,” I called out, semi-submerged, my eyes closed, “if you’re here to kill me, please take a number and wait until it’s your turn in line.”

“I’m not here to kill you,” said an all-too-familiar voice, that refined, upper-class Southern accent. “You know, Special Agent Faust, you’re an exceptionally hard stallion—”

“Duke Elkington!” I charged, flailing around in the water like a dying porpoise. “You’re not in the script!” I looked up from the water to see the white coat and amber eyes of the Lord of Songnam. His black mane looked as it always did, clean but with those two braids that suggested that wilder side, which made sense, seeing as how his demesne capital was also hight Song City. “And now you’re a… a crystal pony? Well, there’s a plot twist.”

“Just a bit of trickery, a few abuses of spells here and there,” he said as he climbed into the water, leaving his towel on the dry lip of the springs. Being that we were both now naked in a hot spring together, I had the strangest notion that this whole ordeal had been concocted by fangirls. “Felicitat is ever so wondrous with that. My, am I glad you sent her on my way.”

The springs in this cavern were very large, clearly going deeper the further you went into the cave, with bits of natural pillars prodding into the water here and there. I was resting against one such stalag-thingy, facing Elkington now. I could have gone deeper, even hid from the Duke, but I just remained there.

“I must say, I do prefer you with your eye and horn, Agent Faust.” He smiled at me in that lordly manner which doubtless would’ve made any mare feel the need to put on a new, dryer pair of panties. Elkington shrugged. “But if that’s your style, who am I to judge?”

Tilting my head to the side, I asked, “What are you doing here, Duke Elkington?”

He popped his neck joints, and his smile grew at least four notches creepier. “Well, you know me, always endeavoring to save my country and the ponies within her. I may have had to work with the vile and do evil, but the secrets we uncovered from the Devil’s Backbone proved rather helpful. Wherever the wicked are, rest assured, we will purge them. And see here…” He leaned forwards, and I had the sudden mental image of a mare with a short skirt sitting backwards on a chair in order to expose something. It wasn’t very pretty, because it actually had scaly tendrils, but my mind came up with the most routine of things.

“All’s not right in the Crystal Empire. And try and persuade and even threaten as I like, Shining Armor refuses to cooperate. You’d think that a stallion whose wife and sister are both princesses would listen to the nice Duke telling him there’s darker forces at work here, but no. I personally believe he simply holds me in contempt for whatever reason.”

“Elkington,” I said flatly. “You’ve made it clear you hate me very much. You’re here for a reason. I prithee say it me.”

“You sound so much like our fair Tsukihime,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve just been conducting my own investigation of this dark spot in the north, and very disconcertingly you show up all too often.”

I threw my head back and let out an exaggerated yawn. “Snechta is getting supplies and help from the Voice in the Dark, Korweit, who’s basically the closest thing to the metaphorical Devil as there is; Snechta noted something about him promising to conceive with her some dark messiah after all is said and done; and I’m just here to fix the body I ruined fighting the Devil’s Backbone.”

He blinked. “Well. I had… expected needing to coerce you before you told me anything.”

“Why?” I asked with a shrug, emphasizing the hw sound in mockery of his accent. “In almost every case in fiction, withholding information from someone with a similar agenda has disastrous results. I’ll just tell you flat out that unless I can stop Korweit, the Crystal City is going to be the crown jewel in a demonic empire or something. I’m just trying to get deep enough into Snechta’s whacky cult so that I can figure out exactly what Korweit wants. You want in?”

The good Duke let out a long breath, blowing away the steam around him as he leaned back in thought. “I knew there was something dark deep under the city, Felicitat felt it, and I’d be an idiot if I didn’t immediately connect it to the fairly rapid rise of an insurrection here. I’ve been running fields ops to try to gather information, but this… is… unnerving.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot. Usually from mares,” I added helpfully. We both sat there in awkward silence. Obviously, Ellie here had had something he’d been fixing to say, but whatever it was, I’d utterly derailed it.

“And you’re sure about this involving a demon?” he asked. I made an expression that told him just what I was thinking. “Right. Then…” He tapped a hoof to his noggin. “Were I to confront Cadance and Shining Armor about this bit of pertinent information, well… Shining Armor has a certain thing against me, probably something to do with me having offended him a good many years back.”

“I get the sense he’s easily offended. What’d you do?”

“Oh, well, I insisted upon the factual truth—”

“As opposed to the factual lie and the disingenuous truth?” I prodded as he spoke. He ignored me. This saddened me.

“—that my Caroleans were better than his royal guards. Er, this was back when he was captain of the Royal Canterlot Guards, and so he took that as a personal offense.”

“Like a bitch,” I added helpfully. Then I cocked my head to the side. “What’s your plan here?”

He gave me an odd look. “To prevent harm to Equestria.”

“Bo, that’s more of a mission statement than a plan. Try again. Be specific.”

The Lord of Songnam jostled himself in the water, popping joints. “Fine then. I have my elite-most Caroleans doing secret assignments in the city, trying to uncover proof of things here going wrong. There’s a crisis brewing here, and I am to prevent it. Shining Armor doesn’t know how to play the game he’s playing, and for the same reason he sucks at chess: he plays defensive too hard. It was his fault the Royal Wedding, his own damn wedding, went so bad. And he only barely scraped by when he and his wife attempted to hold the Crystal Empire against King Sombra.”

“Whereas you like to attack,” I stated.

He shrugged, then hauled himself up to the lip of the springs. “I defend offensively. That policy of being highly proactive has averted countless crises. When Armor receives a threat, his idea is to turtle up, letting the bad guy do whatever he—or in that case, she—wants. When I get one, I investigate who sent it, where it came from, and we eliminate the threat with extreme prejudice. I call it ‘Search and Destroy’.”

I cocked a brow. “You want to put on that towel? Your dick’s kind of just staring at me with this really dopey expression.” He put on a sudden look of horror as he stood up and wrapped the towel around himself. “In fact, why’d you even get in the springs? You could have just stood up there and chatted me up.”

He just avoided the question. Like a bitch. “I wish to do things all legally here, and I need official permission to carry out any operations in the Crystal Empire, which I am already sort of doing. With some evidence, I might be able to get Canterlot to force Armor and Cadance to work with me, thereby allowing me to take a proactive stance from the shadows. You know, being able to legally detain folks and carry out interrogations, search and seizures, break into bad guys’ houses and investigate—stuff that’d be illegal for me to just do without local sanctioning.”

I swam up towards the lip, a frown on my face. “And my part in all this?”

One of his ears fell flat against his head. “Well, truth be told, I came here to basically get by force if needed the information you just up and told me. You’re in the middle of all this, and I figured that was no coincidence. I suppose, to my chagrin, we’re on the same side now.” There was visible disgust in that tone, which made me giggle like a schoolfilly.

Oh no, Jericho-sempai, I totally don’t like working with you… I don’t… It’s not like I like you or anything, because I totally don’t… I imagined a suddenly cartoonish Elkington in a skirt saying to me, a blush on his face.

“With your information, though,” he said as if to himself, “I can focus my investigations less on proving something funny’s going on here, and more on finding out what this Corvite fellow is after.”

My eyebrow twitched. Korweit sounded odd in his Equestrian accent.

He went on. “I don’t suppose you’d help me, or even supplement my efforts, with a letter to Canterlot about all this?”

“I’m not going to help you write a love-letter to Celestia!” I snapped. “But if you want my help, I recommend you stop being really creepy towards the dame.”

“I am not creepy towards Celestia!” he shot back, and then quickly recomposed himself. “Actually, Celestia was… not my exact intention. I had hope to reach the younger sister. While I always trust in Celestia’s judgement, her usual methods here, I feel, wouldn’t work so well. Twilight is Armor’s sister, so she’d likely listen to him more than me.”

“I don’t know what a time of day has anything to do therewith,” I said in a blank voice, “but what I gather is that you think the younger sister—Luna—is either more manipulable, more stupid, or both, and will let you basically have you way with Côrint.”

The good Duke, to his credit, made an effort to cringe at that statement. However, it didn’t change the fact that he then gave me a hesitant nod. “Luna is a bit more rash and impulsive. My methods, I feel, would be more appealing to her, and should I explain to her why I wish not to consult her sister, I’m sure she’d agree.”

And so it came to pass that Elkington and I wrote a pair of letters. Because I was a subtle dick, I made used bits of mine own language in the letter, usually rather informal phrases sure to offend her, if she spoke any Teutsch (such as opening the letter with “Liebe Fräulein Luna”, and ending with “Viele Grüße und Küsse Ἰεριχώ A. Φαυστ”).

Elkington had a number of Caroleans on staff here with him, all of them like him done up to look like crystalfolken. I even got to see Felicitat again. Briefly. I got too close to her all too suddenly and she jumped up like a cat and skittered around to behind the Lord of the Song City, shivering as she looked over at me.

I was informed curtly that Ellie boy would be keeping in touch if he found out anything, and that the same was expected of me, hence why I was given a PO box number in the city. I guessed it was to deliver notes or something, but I was already planning to fill it with strawberry jam and freshly shaven squirrels.

When all was said and done, we went our separate way. I found Ylv, bitchslapped him for about three-and-a-quarter minutes straight for letting Elkington get through the door, and then set about reading a collection of books dedicated to the flora all over Equestria as I waited for Snechta to find that damn spell.

|— ☩ —|

I was finishing the last book in my botanical set for the fourth time when the escort arrived. The official library in the temple was impressive, and stocked with fairly recent tomes, many whereof even in Equestrian, like those I was reading. On the little table left to my reading-chair had originally been some book about spellcraft, and after about an hour of staring thereat, I’d tossed the book away. The last thing I needed at this point was to poison my mind with dangerous knowledge.

Mayhap a few times I’d fallen asleep whilst reading, and since this room had no windows, I wasn’t sure of the time. And for some reason, I didn’t check my watch. But at least now I had a comprehensive understanding of plants from the Crystal Empire to the Wild West to the southernmost reaches of Equestria and the Thousand Isles: I knew what to and what not to eat, which plants to use to create deadly poisons, and, most importantly, which plants looked hilariously like penises. What? Those things exist and they are the best things ever.

“Sedhoas,” the mare said. It was the same one whose hat I’d stolen earlier.

With an interested look, I set aside my reading glasses. Then I realized that I had perfect 20/eyepatch vision, and that I didn’t own a pair of reading glasses. As I was fervently wondering whose glasses those were, why I’d stolen them, and when I’d put the pair on, the mare went on.

“Mêlenatra Snechta has requested your presence. She says she ‘has the spell’, but that there’s a slight complication.”

“Of course there is,” I said with a sigh, taking the glasses with me because I felt I looked nifty in them. “If this requires some sort of sexy ritual, I’m just going to stab her a lot until she finds a better way.”

|— ☩ —|

“I prithee say me and say me true,” I demanded in a gruff voice as I stomped into the ceremonial room, “what be thy complication?”

The room was kept surprisingly well-lit via a great number of candles. Runes had been inscribed all over the floor and walls and ceiling, and there was a very clearly indicated star in the center of the room wherein I supposed I was meant to stand. I avoided stepping thereinto like the plague as I spoke to the High Priestess of the Cult of Chêngrêla.

Snechta wasn’t the only pony here. And as the door closed behind me with a heavy thud, I looked at the six other mares, each clad in robes and wearing ceremonial masks that just gave me the urge to up and murder them. Snechta was the only one whose mask was slid up so that I could see her crystal face.

“Spell, rusty, shaky, but performable,” she spat out in a pleasantly laconic tone. “Need reagents. Rare ones. I was getting everything ready, and then I saw this part. We need blood. Special blood for healing normal blood. See?”

“So go out and buy your rare animal, kill it, and heal me. I’ve got the dosh; I can fund you. Just do it!” My eye twitched. As cool as the eyepatch was, I was getting tired of the cyclops look. At the thought of having to spend much more time on this endeavor, I felt phantom muscles trying to clench hands into fists as I grit my teeth.

She took in a breath, held it for five seconds, then exhaled hard. “We require a pony’s blood. From a particular kind of a pony.”

“A syphilitic pony with a clown wig and a scar on his face in the shape of a banana?” I pounded a hoof into its twin. “I knew I should have kept Jojo around!”

“We need royal blood,” she said, refusing to meet my eye.

“Okay, so just give me a bucket, and I’ll go beat the shit—er, the blood, I’ll go beat the blood out of Shining Armor and then milk him. We’ll get dairy products and royal blood.”

“He’s only a prince by marriage, not by blood.” I grunted, and she went on. “We need proper royal blood. Like… that of an alicorn or of a king or an heir to a throne.”

I cocked a brow. “Going to guess that Celestia doesn’t donate to the blood bank whenever it rolls into down, right?”

“What’s a blood bank?”

“It’s a shadowy cabal run by Dracula and his minions,” I dismissed.

Snechta fidgeted, pawing at the ground in shame. She was acting like a domestically abused housewife, and that wasn’t cool. “Sombra,” she muttered. “His blood would be perfect. The ritual demands that kind of blood specifically.”

I was so goddamn close to fixing myself. I was gnawing on my lip in furious thought. “And if you just had that one thing, you could do the ritual?”

“I… I think so, yes.” She bit her lip.

I threw my hooves up. “Aw, to the ninth level of Hell therewith!”—and took out my knife and slashed a deep furrow in my shoulder. I holstered the blade. “There,” I said without flinching from the gush of crimson. “Take mine and use it.”

“But you’re no—”

“Look, it’s a stupid book. Blood is as blood does.” I snorted. “Mine’s nothing special, just… I don’t know, I am the king of hats by right of sexual conquest.”

“That’s not good enough, you’d need to really be either a king or the heir to a throne!”

“Use it, you infernal witch!” I snarled. “Use it or I’ll ensure your little cult here dies by fire as is the fate of all sinners!”

My tone was enough to jump her into shaky action. She stepped forwards, and so did the six other mares. They pressed their hooves, one at a time into the wound. I won’t bother going into detail about the blood or how it was pouring all down my arm. Snechta, her hoof bloody, made a cross over her lips. The other mares raised their masks and did the same.

Although I wasn’t aware thereof at first, there was a vile, toothy grin on my face caused by their looks of terror and fear. I could just taste the horror of the others, witness in their subtle, hesitant motions, and of course their faces betrayed the emotion all too well.

I took up a place on the central little star without having to be told. Snechta consulted her book, then looked back up at me. “Please, I implore you, Champion, don’t!”

I grabbed my eyepatch and threw it to the ground. It didn’t really do anything, but it felt cool and dramatic. “Perform it. Or die.” I glowered, and she swallowed.

The mare burst into quiet chants and stilted, nigh-mechanical movements. Heathen dances, of course. Then I paused, reflecting on how impatience seemed to suddenly turn me into a racist. Bad Jericho, bad.

Snechta’s words came clearest to me. Her voice quaked so much it was as if she was experiencing the vocal hells of puberty. The words she spoke had a certain cadence and rhythm that didn’t quite work in anything but her own tongue, Mijôra. But, through the magic of pagan witchcraft, I somehow understood her. Or maybe that had something do with all this blood I was losing. Anypony else feel woozy?

“Blood of heroes,

Selfsame of kings,

Life of sinners:

We’ll bleed the wicked,

Begin anew;

Pass through thy head

At just the right angle.”

The spellforce made the runes glow with a hellish light. It encircled me, and I felt myself rising into the air, because a dramatic spell wasn’t complete without it causing utterly unnecessary levitation.

“See anew,

Die again,

Burn in fire,

Purge the liar.

Let thee alone

The sanguine of our betters

Filled them with pride,

Taught them the Fall,

Now mends thee true.

Arms and legs, stake we precisely through.”

I let out a scream mixed in rancorous laughter as hot, eviscerating waves of purest agony shot through me, from the tips of my mind to the broken ends of my hooves. It felt like being crucified mixed with being frozen to death on the moon. It coursed into my left eye socket and my horn with ardent fervor befitting of a mad beast.

“Now erupts pain,

Slows thy time,

’Tis how all life ends.

They cave in.

And now we pray:

Let he be as was.”

In a flash of power and light, it was suddenly all over. I fell to the ground, blinking as parts of my body seemed to steam and come off in hot vapors. It felt pleasant. Like the feeling of finally finishing that goddamn quest.

And then were was nigh silence. Just me, my gruntings, and the hiss of cooling steam.

“It… did it work?” Snechta asked in a timid voice.

Did it work? Well, there was still that issue of blood. I’d said that blood was blood is blood will be blood. That wasn’t exactly true. I’d read enough to know that even though there was no way of telling blood apart as far as I could kenn regarding royalty or whatever. But somehow ancient spellmakers were the masters of being dicks, and so their magics knew whether or not the blood they had really meant anything. And odds were that this spell knew whether or not it had its sang real.

But that doesn’t answer the question. Did it work?

“Oh, he’s stirring?” She gasped. “By Chêngrêla, I can’t believe you’re even alive! I was sure that would kill you, even before we used the wrong blood! Uh, it worked, right?”

“Thanks for informing me after the fact. But you want to see if it worked?” With a wicked laugh, I stood and locked eyes with the High Priestess, flexing my right arm. “Well, let’s find out, as C’s arm always did refuse to do one particular thing.”

I slugged her straight across the jaw with my right arm.

As she clattered to the ground, her lip busted, I had the strangest feeling ever: an overwhelming urge to apologize to her. Then came the white-hot pain that ravaged my skull. I grabbed my head and fell to the ground screaming.

Usually, this is the point whereat the hero goes black; they pass out.

But of course, being real life, that didn’t happen. The pain didn’t go away, I never lost consciousness, and I screamed until my throat was so raw that I was hacking out blood.

Author's Note

Footnote: level up!

New Perk: Teutonic Resolve — Stacking with your racial bonuses as a Teutscher, you now have a 40% resistance to being knocked down or back. Similarly, you are less likely to be rendered unconscious due to combat, torture, or mind-fucking magical backlash. I imagine that’d make being burned alive a real treat to endure.

New Quest Perk: Thy Flesh Restored — Thou’st faced down Hell and made it blink first, thou’st survived sexual assault at the hooves of mares, and thou’st survived weird alternate realities. Now, after that shitstorm, thy body is… Oh, screw this archaic BS. With your horn restored, you can now taunt small children and Cards by levitating their favorite toys just out of reach. Plus, you can see out of both eyes again (+1 perception, +1 charisma). And all your limbs are once more your own, removing any effects from lacking body parts or replacements: +1 agility from knowing your body, -1 strength from lack of super evil right arm, +1 constitution from no longer dying of skinwalker infection, can no longer liven up any party via self-inflicted multiple stab wounds. All in all, you’re now a regular old boring pony.

Chapter 40 — Penrose

Chapter 40: Primrose

“I do not regret the things I have done. My only regret is that I had to do them.”

Average.

It was at that precise moment when I realized that my definition of a ‘fairly average night’ was sitting in my living room, half-naked, with the walls covered by pictures of dead and mutilated girls, and that mayhap there was something wrong therewith. And there was no help to be found in the dull ache in my head, a throbbing as if a tiny gremlin were trying to shag a vagina into my skull.

I took a sip from my glass of iced tea (sans actual ice because I was a rebel) before putting it back on the long table before my couch. Not that I was on my couch, but rather I found it more comfortable to claim the middle of the room as my sovereign territory.

Before the couch I had poster boards with more crime scene photos of the same macabre type, thumbtacks with colored string connecting this clue to that one, and that one to yon clue. The other walls were closer to me, and I could see the photos of faces and hardly identifiable body parts I’d taped to them or the poster boards I’d hung up on the wall and decorated likewise.

As if in a trance, I slowly looked around the room, from photo to photo, drinking in the sight. Both there and absent. Lost in thought. All the girls had been cut up in a similar fashion so precise that it had to have been ritualistic. Nothing a sane pony would do. And being sane included a fearful hatred of magic, as per regime standards. Body parts had been sawn off, likely with the same tool. Most of the girls went so far as to have the exact same expression. The kind that said, “For the love of God, stop sawing my limbs off!”

There’s got to be connections! a voice in my head shouted, upsetting the dull ache attacking my skull.

From what we in the Reichskriminalamt could tell, the earlier vics had belonged to the world’s oldest profession. Later, it seemed to just be attacks of opportunity on random young girls. I looked to the map of Neuorléans, my home city, and to all the dots on the map that marked whence the mares had been abducted and killed, for the two were often one in the same. I’d circled with a marker the local cathedral. It was not equidistant from all the scenes, but I kept coming back thereto.

“Father Müller,” a voice in my mind recounted as I held up in my hoof a necklace, a chain of rosary beads.

The middle-aged, kindly, bespectacled pony had leaned in. “Ja, I suppose that is one of the necklaces I’d had commissioned for the parish. Well, insofar as we have the children help make some as part of the games and activities of our Sunday school.”

“And where’d you come upon these… stylized and easily identifiable beads in the first place?”

“Hmm?” the stallion had hummed. “Oh, they were donated to the parish by a faithful zebra. A kind old chap and friend of mine. When he died, he left his possessions to us here. And we were sure to make use of them so as to honor his memory. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason, Father. Only curious.” Then, after a timed hesitation: “And to cover all of my bases.”

In truth, it was an object which had been found on all the victims. They’d all been wearing one, and from what we’d gathered interviewing friends of the girls, they’d been wearing them before they were murdered. But the most damningly strange part of the beads had been their centering, the bead whereupon the cross had been hung. Each and every one of those particulars beads, I could tell from a few examinations even before the boys at the lab confirmed it, had been hewn from equine bones.

A sudden knock at my door broke me out of my thoughts. I grit my teeth and looked in the direction of my door, which was around the corner and down a little hall. Ignore it though I tried, the knock came again, this time more hurried.

With a grunt, I downed my iced tea, stood up, and made for the door. My headache got worse and worse with each step, though I kept it from showing on my face.

Trying my best to seem sane and presentable at twenty-two hours, I opened the door. The pegasus standing there immediately fixed upon me her amber eyes. Maiya. Before I could even gasp out her name, she looked down and said, “Hey, Jericho. I know it’s late, but can I come in?”

|— ☩ —|

Blue.

The first thing I thought when I saw those blue eyes was, Ahh, the tiny gremlin’s plunged through and is sodomizing my brain! Because, really, even if the blue-eyed mare was here with me in this too-damn-bright room, it didn’t matter, since my head was sort of in a lot of pain. The thoughts and memories of years past were long gone. There was only the room, the mare, and the agony.

When I tried to move, I screamed as a fresh wave of pain erupted in my head. My vision was blurry as all hell, and when I thought thereabout, I had no idea where I was nor how I’d gotten here. The familiar but unknown mare walked towards the side of my bed, a bed I hoped was the kind endemic to hospitals. But knowing my luck, Snechta had tied me up here and was planning to break all of my bones until I told her I loved her or something. Mares on this side of the world were perfectly sane like that.

“Last time we met,” I half-mumbled, half-screamed, “I ended up listening to a Voixson describing a crazy bitch touching herself vigorously to me. Please don’t have any more of those on hand.” Of course, what came out was a close approximation to the noise of a babbling baby being throttled by a reindeer, so I had no idea how much she understood.

The mare reached me, bearing an expression that reminded me of the look you’d give an upside-down turtle lying on the road. You know, before you ignored it and the wheels of your carriage crushed it into oblivion because you were a busy adult with many important things to do.

She brushed some foam from my mouth, looked thereat, and shrugged. “Sadly for you, we’ve invested far too much into you to just lose out due to the impressive incompetence of Snechta.”

As she raised her hoof and slammed it into my newly reaquired horn, I flinched, closing my eyes. The movements sent the sensation of being hit by ten thousands pounds of force from a rubber hammer through my skull.

The sensation of the room being too bright suddenly ended. For a moment, I wondered if the old cliché of passing out from pain had finally occurred. Only when I realized the pain in my head was rapidly dying away did I hesitantly open my eyes to find a black space. But I could still feel the bed below me.

“What… the…?” I muttered.

A massive clack erupted as the lights flipped back on. I flinched slightly and found no pain in my head. And then came the loud voice. “Okay, folks. That’s a wrap. Great work there, Altair.”

I put a hoof over my eyes—holy shit, having two natural eyes was awesome!—and squinted. The light was coming from my right, the other way from the blue-eyed mare. Looking that way, I saw three ponies sitting in tall folding chairs. Then I noticed the other, less important looking ponies walking about and operating a dizzying array of machinery whose purpose I couldn’t even begin to fathom. The blinding light was coming from two fixtures atop pony-height poles.

“Oh, well. That’s probably not a good sign,” I mumbled to myself, shakily rolling out of bed. I hit the ground hard, but was back on all fours in the blink of an eye. Those three important-looking ponies were talking amongst themselves as folks occasionally stopped back to ask questions and to give them little things.

I nearly stumbled out of the room and past the wall that no longer existed before I realized that the space beyond was neither Heaven nor Hell, but instead a giant warehouse. Spinning around, it appeared to me that the room I stood in was…

“Was that a stage set?” I asked.

“Ah, Mr. Penrose,” a plucky little mare said to me. I continued looking at the stage, as if expecting it to leap up and declare itself the brand new Cherry Berry, now with gold-plated rape boots. “Uh, Penrose.” She poked my shoulder, and I jumped back from her.

“Who are you and what have you done with my…” The words just died as I saw her momentarily look concerned. But that just as soon went back to her previous expression.

“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” she said with a roll of the eyes. “Now come on; we gotta get you all spiffied up before your interview.” The plucky thing grabbed my hoof and tugged.

“What interview?” I asked dumbly, and she gave me an incredulous look.

“You know, the one you and the director scheduled,” she said as if I had just asked her how exactly to eat food. She gestured to one of the ponies in the tall chairs. When I looked that way, said pony—who looked to be a well-off stallion in his fifties—smiled and waved back at me.

While I had more questions, nothing came out of my mouth. So, I just let her lead me through the absurd range of complex equipment, past arrays of wires, and up to a row of chairs before a set of mirrors.

She sat me down, and I looked at myself. In my professional opinion, I was a mess. My face was covered in specs of dirt and blood, the latter from a few nasty cuts on my countenance. There was also the matter of me being naked but for a shoddy hospital gown.

“Here, let’s just clean those cuts off,” she said, grabbing with her unicorn telekinesis a washcloth.

“Wait, but—” The last word never made it out as she just wiped the very deep and nasty looking cuts off my face. I sat in dumb silence as she cleaned the rest of my face. She gave me a skeptical look, then put on some makeup around my eyes, explaining how I looked a bit tired from all the filming, and how I’d thank her later when I see the interview.

She pushed me up, and before I could ask what was going on, she tore off my hospital gown and tossed me my usual threads: my hat, duster, white undershirt, and my incredibly well-worn and faded blue jeans. She even handed me that bandana, the one I’d gotten from Lightning Dust in the mirror world.

“There. Put those on, Altair. Stat. The reporter’s already here and waiting.”

“But I…” I tried, but she grunted and gave me a weak elbowing.

“Oh, you bloody… Fine. Use your dressing room if you really don’t wanna do it here, ya prude.” She smiled at me and pushed me along in the direction of a door with a large gold star.

I went thereinto and found a narrow hallway with doors aplenty. At the end, though, one labeled ‘Altair Penrose’. “Am I… do they think I’m an actor?” The face in the mirror had been mine alright, so… what the hell was going on? I wandered into the room at the end and, sure enough, it was a dressing room. It was cold in here, and I could see bits of outfits and getups that looked familiar. There in the corner, for example, was that poncho I’d worn back on the train to the Crystal Empire, the one whereupon I’d met Octavia.

Regardless, I was naked. And that was weird as hell. I got myself back into my duster and gear almost in an instant, but it all felt wrong. Like, this outfit looked damn near identical in every possible manner, but felt lighter, as if it lacked the protection and armoring my duster had. It was more like wearing a perfect Jericho costume than actually wearing the stuff that I wore on a daily basis.

There was a mirror in the dressing room, and I just kept staring thereat. I continuously poked and prodded my face, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Was I dreaming? Was this another area within that mirror? Had I finally lost it? Who were any of these ponies. And for that matter, what in God’s name was an “Altair Penrose?”

I almost didn’t hear the knock at the door. “Huh?” I called out.

The door opened up, and quickly a pegasus mare holding a microphone and two stallions with large things hefted over their backs entered. “Ah, good. You’re dressed.” She looked me over and cracked a smirk. “Boys, set up the cameras. And, Mr. Penrose, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. May I say that you do look much better in person than on camera?”

“Cameras set,” one of guys said, each of them hefting those lumpy things over their shoulders as though they were flamethrowers. They encircled us, reminding me of lions (my only natural predator, besides the now-extinct Cherry Berry).

“Testing, testing. We coming in good?” she asked as one of the stallions held some sort of thing above us I vaguely recognized it as one hellishly weird version of a boom microphone. “Okay, good. Aaaand rolling.”

“Altair Penrose, thanks for taking time out of your day to meet with us.” She smiled and offered a hoof to shake, but all I was doing was staring at the cameras. “Uh, are you okay?”

“Well,” I said, “you try hopping out of a magic mirror, uncovering details of an evil conspiracy, stabbing a bad mare to death, getting your broken body restored, and then suffering absurd pain all before waking up in whatever fresh hell this is.” I gestured to the room.

“Oh, you mean how the shooting of season four of Jericho is already well under way? Yes, your fellow crewmembers tell me just how tirelessly you work. Do you even sleep?”

“Sleeping is for the weak,” I replied absently. “I have spent years perfecting the exact amount of sleep I need in order to be just on the cusp of dying, thereby maximizing how much of my day I can spend being unproductive.”

She hummed approvingly. “Well, we can certainly see how much love you have for your job. How do you get into your Jericho character before a recording?”

“Get into character?” I scoffed. “Lady, I am Jericho.”

She turned to her camera. “Ooh, that’s a good line. Keep that one.” Back to me. “Rumors abound that there’s a partially related show also being recorded set in the Jericho universe, one featuring fan-favorite character Cards.”

“Hold up, wait. People actually like Cards?” I laughed at the absurdity. “That’s weird. This place is weird.”

“Well, fan theory states that you, Mr. Penrose, have a role in that story, even though it takes places during the same timeframe as season four of Jericho.”

“I’m still trying to get over the idea that anybody would want to watch Cards in her native habitat,” I said in a dull voice. “I mean, same goes for me. Who in their right mind would want to watch a show about me?”

She never gave me a satisfactory response. Instead, she went, “You said something about Jericho finally getting his body healed. If you don’t mind, what’s next on the agenda for everypony’s favorite psychopath?”

I frowned. “You say ‘psychopath’, I say ‘freelance selfless hero, some collateral damage’.”

“Um… so what do you think of substance abuse, then?” she asked in the way of somepony trying really hard to bring sense back into the story. “Two major characters, Cards and Lightning Dust, have been noted to have been substance abusers, namely alcohol. What’s your stance on this?”

“Lady,” I said plainly, “I used to be a heavy addict myself.”

She leaned in. “Really?”

“Aye, so I was, to the most dangerous substance of all: so-called ‘food’.” At this, she blinked hard. “I was a complete junkie: I was unable to kick the habit, and total withdrawal therefrom is entirely fatal. Worse yet, my abuse sucked in my friends and family, and soon all of them were doing ‘food’ too, at least three times a day. In fact, last time I saw a pony who wasn’t me try to kick the habit, they succumbed, screaming ‘I’m starving’ whilst bleeding profusely from all orifices. But do you wish to know how I kicked the habit?”

The reported mare nodded, as if in a trance.

With telekinesis—having a horn was awesome! Suck it, pegasi!—I lifted up my shirt and duster, exposing my stomach and ribs. “Do you see what happened to me?”

“You got incredibly fit and svelte?”

“I forgot to eat. I haven’t eaten in, like, days.” I leveled her a glare. “This is how I cured my addiction to food: forgetfulness to adhere to the tenants of my addictions. Cures all such conditions.”

She frowned and did a quick glance at her stomach. “How in the hoof do you forget to eat? I think I’m speaking for a lot of us when I say I wish I could forget to eat for a day or two.”

I looked at the reflection in my dressing room mirror. “Oh, don’t say that,” I told her. “You’re a perfectly fit and attractive lady: there’s no need to have self-confidence issues. Take it from me, an arrogant, over-confident fuck-weasel.”

The reporter blinked, then took little looks at her cameras. “We’re going to gave to bleep that out.”

A pause as she gathered herself up. Then: “They say that a lot of Jericho’s character is actually improvised, so in a sense a good deal of Jericho is you,” she said, evidently trying to move back to topics that at least had a superficial resemblance to reality. “But that begs the question, how does that relate to you and mares? A little birdy told us that the first time a mare was to come on to Jericho, he was to have gone along with her, but for some reason you didn’t like the idea. Why is it that Jericho seems so paranoid about having a girlfriend?”

I sat back and thought.

|— ☩ —|

I didn’t really have a response to Maiya’s sudden appearance at my door and her request to enter. She took my momentary silence as consent and stepped in. Dumbly, I closed the door behind her as she put her coat up on my hanger and a little overnight bag down at its base. Her mid-length black mane seemed ruffled up, as if she’d been in a fight with a particularly vengeful tomcat.

She rubbed her face hard with a hoof and thanked me in a voice like a mare who’d just ran a marathon and was trying to keep cool. Despite how hard she’d rubbed, I noticed no make-up on her hoof. In fact, her face was bare. Not that she wore much besides mascara or the occasional dab of lipstick when she was feeling adventurous, but it was noticeable.

I noted that despite the coat she was wearing, her attire underneath left little to the imagination. The cut was only a few centimeters short of getting her mistaken for a prostitute at this hour.

“Maiya,” I finally managed to spout out, “what are you doing here?”

She smiled. But to me it felt forced. I believe it was the slight quake in her knees that put the final nail in the coffin. “What? A girl not allowed to drop by her boyfriend’s house and stay overnight?” Maiya pouted at me, feigning the picture of purest innocence.

My face betrayed no emotion. “It is at least unorthodox.”

“Really? Nopony ever told me that,” Maiya replied happily with a little sway of her hips as she slowly made her way down the hallway.

It wasn’t hard to suppress a groan of frustration. But on the other hoof, I honestly had no idea if she was being cheeky or was dead-serious about the dating etiquette of the modern mare. Personally, I probably could have done completely without her.

I suspected that she thought I fancied her for her body and series of peculiarities which she passed off as a personality, and such was a reasonable thought. But I could see through her façade and view deeper. It was subtle, but in her own special way, I could tell she was as broken as I was. Well, no, she didn’t have the habit of killing people. Her problems were in other, more wholesome ways.

Lazily, I strolled down the hall to catch up to her.

“What the hell?” Maiya blurted out upon reaching my living room. My glance went from Maiya to the nigh countless pictures of mutilated girls. Somewhere it occurred to me that Maiya was staring and that I was half-naked.

“Can I interest you in a glass of tea?” I nonchalantly offered. When she didn’t reply, I went over to the center of the living room and downed the rest of my drink.

The mare looked at me as though I was a lunatic who’s drawn her into his lair before he chops her up into little pieces and has sex with them all in alphabetical order. “What were you doing?”

“Well, you showed up unannounced,” I said, gesturing my glass-in-hoof at her. “And may I remind you that I’m a somewhat obsessive federal agent with a particular knack for meditatively getting into the minds of deranged psychopaths and ghoulish monsters come to slay good folk?”

“So…” She raised an arm as if trying to lean in for a better look. “This is part of your job?”

“Being really creepy by my lonesome in order to catch a monster? Ja.”

“O…kay.” She glanced around. “I’ll just be in the kitchen. Making myself some tea. And wondering about just what it is I still see in you.”

Maiya went off as I headed back to work. Thinking and piecing things together. Although the priest seemed a plausible suspect, to be perfectly honest, neither Agent Rosen nor I had entirely ruled out a supernatural cause yet. The only problem with the idea of it being a vengeful spirit was that the area surrounding the killings had been spread far too wide apart to have anything to do with a haunting. Ghosts weren’t known to wander around this far.

I almost didn’t notice when my girlfriend came back into the room with a glass of tea. She set herself down on the couched and stretched her tan wings out, fixing her amber eye upon the photos. “Why do you have things circled on some of them?”

“They are important clues.”

“Okay. So why does this old guy here have… are those penises? Did you draw dicks all over his face?”

“Important clues!” I said firmly.

After a moment, Maiya got back up and went over to the kitchen. I could see her rummaging through the cabinets. “Your food is all weird. What’s with all the salt and… is this corn? In the husk? Why are your shelves filled with nothing but corn and salt?”

“Agency discount,” I called out. “Salt is dirt cheap since it’s useful in fighting spirits. And for some reason, demons have a mortal weakness to corn.”

“Yeah, well, why can’t supernatural horrors ever be killed by pies or burgers?”

“I think there’s some eggs in the icebox, in case you want some of those.”

“Uh-huh. gotcha.” As I watched from the couch, she popped the box and rummaged therethrough. When she turned around, it was with a carton of eggs in her hoof and a look of betrayal on her face. “It’s empty! Who puts an empty egg carton back in the icebox?”

“I do, apparently.”

“You’re a monster!”

I cackled like some witch in a bad play. “You’re not the first to tell me that!”

Maiya groaned, threw out the carton, and eventually plopped herself down on the couch. She rolled over onto her stomach. Ddly swaying her legs, she propped her head up on a hoof to watch me. I could see bits of the strapping of her underwear poking out from her shorts. Her eyes followed to where I was looking, and a devilish little look gleamed in her eye.

“Jericho,” she declared, “I’m bored. As my boyfriend, it’s your job to entertain me.”

I could only snort. Gesturing at the photos, I said in vibrant tones, “It’s my job to hunt serial killers and psychopaths and inequine monsters, like the one who did all this, so that ponies like you can sleep soundly at night.”

With some effort, I pretended not to notice as her ears dropped. Her body seemed to deflate. She very quickly found herself a spot in the couch wherein to hunker down at the very corners of my vision.

I was observing pictures of the rosary bead necklaces when I spoke up for her to hear. “You don’t need to creepily stare at me like that.”

“Well, what should I be staring at?” she inquired.

I offered her the picture I was studying. Cracking a little smirk, I replied, “Here, look at these wholesome and entirely undisturbing images which I have pinned obsessively to my walls. Tell me what you see. And if you say ‘I see two bears high-fiving,’ I’m going to remind you that despite what it looks like, that’s all blood and gore.”

She looked at me, and after a moment finally took up the picture. I allowed her enough silence to study it. “Why’s that white bead been circled? Is… is that…?”

“The main bead, see, was carved from a pony’s bone,” I finished for her.

There was a bead much therelike in every picture. The carver of the bone beads had done a good, controlled job thereof. It merely looked like a highly stylized ornament rather than a macabre implement. There were only a few mistakes here and there. On this one, there was a cut upwards next to another one, with one slightly wavy cut seeming to connect them.

“I still can’t wrap my head around the idea. Why kind of person would do something like this?” she asked.

“The kind whose minds I specialize at getting into. The ones we burn.” I spoke in a calm and reasonable voice, without any sense of doubt or trepidation. It was a simple fact.

“I can think a few ponies the world would be better off without,” she added quietly. I said nothing. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “You know, Jericho… I do really like you.”

“This is generally what is implied when we are boyfriend and girlfriend, yes,” I replied, looking at another picture of another necklace. There were likewise were only a few flawed cuts, different and more random than those of the previous.

“But you’re still a federal agent. That means you take cases all over the Reich, right?” she asked, and I wonder where she was going with this.

“Yes, often we agents do get shipped around to lend a hand in other states’ investigations. There’s never enough agents, it seems. Doesn’t help that Mulder, Rosen, and I have a reputation for being good at handling the weird cases, too.”

She sat up sharply and gave me a serious look. “What do you think will happen when you catch this guy?”

“I suppose I’ll be assigned the next strange case the RKA finds. Serial killer if I’m lucky. Supernatural if I’m not. I hear there’s been something up in Esztergom that the RKA wants looked into.”

Maiya took a slow breath and sighed, her ears drooping, her wings with more than a tad of sag to them. “Okay,” she said quietly, laying her head down, like a dog that had accepted it has to die this day.

|— ☩ —|

“Because I once saw a vagina with fangs and now I never trust a strange vagina,” I said absently as I snapped out of the memory.

The interviewer glanced at a camera, rubbing her nose and sighing. “What does Jericho think of Cards? One theme fans have observed in the show is how Jericho’s feelings for Cards change between when they first met and his return from Calêrhos. What is your take on that?”

“Cards is…” My mind’s eye flashed to when I’d killed Glasses, her seething hatred for me; then to the werekind Cards tracing her fingers across my scars, her childlike awe of me. “Complicated. I really don’t know much about her, now do I?” I said, miming my exact thoughts.

She shrugged. “Common fan question number two: can you describe your ideal mare?”

“Alive; does not have penis.”

She turned to the camera. “Well, speaking of which, this should be a good time to take a break. When we return, we have a special cast interview who’ll tell us a little something about Luna and will help us once and for all settle the infamous… ‘clittorcock’ theory. Stay tuned!” And then, in a lower voice, she grumbled, “Sometimes I really hate my job.”

And with that, she went for a coffee break. I, on the other hoof, vamoosed the hell out thereof.

|— ☩ —|

Out the door. Back into the narrow yet strangely lengthy hall. I sighed, rubbing the side of my face as I stumbled down the path, as if in a daze. At the moment I came to an intersection, with the correct direction being to go right and thence to the set, a pony came from my left carting a wagon filled with dark fetishes of the occult.

On a normal day, that would have grounds to summarily execute him for being generically evil. But today, I wasn’t sure what was real or fake. It felt like what I’d always imagined a midlife crisis to be like, except with far less hot young girls surrounding me.

I looked to the right, whence the pony and cart had come, and heard a feminine “ooooh!” My first thought was that since this was theater filled wih no doubt famous ponies, somepony was getting laid in the back, and that I should find that room and then barge in and ruin it for all parties involved. Because being passively inconsiderable seemed like a fun way to get back in the spirit of things. But a momentary thought made me realize that the voice didn’t sound very sexual, just highly intrigued.

Still, mayhap somepony was having fun and I could ruin it. That thought put a smile on my face. I went up that part of the hall and very quickly came to an open door. Inside the room proper was a tall, svelte mare standing before a dressing mirror, playing with an outfit. On the room’s far wall was a poster featuring me at the center, a very sad Cards to my side, and… Huh. It was the very mare in this room, down to the very same outfit.

“Hoodies are awesome!” she said to herself with a giggle. “I should wear these things more often.”

I just stood there with a blank face, staring silently. She spun around in her swivel chair fast, seemingly oblivious to my presence even though I was very slowly waving at her. I had to clear my throat before she noticed me. And when she did, the mare nearly shot up to the ceiling as she yelped out a gibberish mix of what were probably meant to be words. Then, of course, she prompltly landed on the ground.

The girl’s eyes locked with mine. She gave a little grunt of frustration as she leapt back up. Wasn’t her name Selena? At least, it had been in my usual setting. No idea if that applied here.

“Somehow I imagined you as being more mysterious and less goofy,” I said.

She frowned hard. “You can’t expect everypony tove serious all the time, Altair. We’re not you,” Quickly, she pulled up her hood. It did rather impressively bathe her face in a cloak of shadows, although her clear teal eyes still shone through, breaking the illusion.

She stared at me in silence for a moment or two. Then, in a dark yet almost sultry tone, “You look like something is troubling you.”

While I almost admonished her for trying and failing to act all mysterious, I could at least see how she was trying to act serious. And if she worked here, mayhap she knew a thing or two that could help me. Sure, it was a long shot with little chance for paydirt, but what the hell? “Hey, suppose for a moment that I were Jericho. Actually him. Like, I woke up this one day in Altair’s body. My body. His. Whatever. And say too that I wanted to return to not being in Altair’s body. Any ideas?”

She looked at me as if I had just asked her if she takes her blowjobs with one lump or two. “Excuse me?”

“Look,” I said, “can you just help me out for a second? Please?”

“Uh, sure. But I’ve got an interview in a few minutes, so make it snappy, if you don’t mind.”

I nodded. “Say, for instance, that I were actually Jericho. I woke up one day in Altair’s body. My body. His. Whatever. And I wanted to find a way to return to not being in Altair’s body. Any ideas?”

The mare eyed me. “Of course.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “With you, it’d never being something simple, like ‘so there’s this girl I like’. Honestly, I thought you were gonna be all, ‘Help me! I just had fun for the first time and it was awful’.”

“Answer the question, please!” I insisted.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, a hoof to her jaw, “what’s the last thing that Jericho—you—did?”

“Snechta did a dark ritual thing to me. Then I punched her. I suffered pain. Now I’m here.”

She nodded, leaning against her dresser. “I’d say, knowing the show’s logic, that there’s the problem. Jericho—the show—is a big fan of convoluted-seeming problems with fairly simple solutions or answers. I think it’s ’cause the writers aren’t smart enough to think up anything too, too clever. But whatever. I’d say Jericho’s still involved with the ritual.”

“That really doesn’t help me out here,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

“Sure it does,” she said with a shrug. “You get home whenever the ritual thing ends.”

“But it did end! And only thereafter did I wind up in this hellhole!” I snapped. Then I recomposed myself and tried to act natural as I said, “Or, well, that’s the plot of the story so far. The writer is, uh, confused. Trying to help him out so the show doesn’t get bogged down.”

She gave me an oblique look. Tjen, with reluctance, she said, “Well, you could always try backtracking and look for clues. The writers all like to interweave seemingly irrelevant things into the plot for whatever reason. So, that’s what I’d guess. Just look back in the scripts, find something interesting, and bullshit something out of it like they always do.”

Suddenly, the interviewer mare called out and entered the room. She gave me a wary look as she and her crew went past me, as if expecting me to douse her in mashed radish in an attempt to please the rabbit gods.

“Oh, don’t go too far, Altair,” the mare formerly in the hoodie called out. I recalled that I hadn’t quite picked up her name. “We still have that train to catch in an hour.”

I quickly slipped out of sight and went back down the hallway, thinking about my next move. At least I had some new semblance of direction to look after.

|— ☩ —|

“Well, this is problematic,” I said in a dull voice. Backtracking, she’d said. Like in a poorly constructed dungeon. The kind with a princess at the end, to whom I ask, “Come here often?” when I rescue her, whereto the answer is always a shameful “yes”.

Head to the set, I’d thought. Sure. Seemed reasonable. Back to whence I’d come. And hey, guess what! Either I was in some hellish haunted house or they’d gone and changed everything. Where once there’d been a dingy little bed in a dark room was now just wooden walls and a door.

I rubbed my forehead and sighed. My movement just so happened to jostle something in one of my many pockets. It took me nearly half of minute of searching to even find the correct pocket. And before anyone asks, tons of pockets were cool. A definite advantage of pocket-obsessed male-centric outfits over pocketless female garbs. Like the symbolism behind military chevrons and their relation with rank, the more pockets I had were directly equated to how masculine I was. Science fact!

Of all things I’d expect to have in my pockets, this was not amongst them, which was an impressive statement if you thought thereabout—it was a list with possibilites from “snozzberry-flavored condoms that doubled as birthday balloons in a pinch” to “a vial of orphan tears” and everything in-between. Yes, those two things were related. No, I won’t go to your birthday party.

It was a packet of cigarettes. I know. After all, to a heroic adventurer such as myself, who regularly gets mutilated in new and exotic ways, what should most concern me is the threat of lung cancer. Although on a list of fears, brain aneurysms are way up there—they’re the silent killer! But yeah, I just didn’t carry cigarettes.

There was a lighter somewhere in the pocket, too. Nifty if I suddenly felt like an arsonist, and believe you me was the temptation there, but otherwise useless. Did Altair smoke? Something about the pack made it looked a little worn and agéd, and opening it up revealed only two smokes gone.

I put the stuff back and sighed. Mayhap if all went terrible, I would succumb to alcoholism and nicotine-ism and resort to being a hot-headed but cool cop who didn’t play by the rules, not even his own.

Seeing no real course of action here, I just went up and opened the door. A bucket fell down and, unfortunately for whomsoever had set it up, did not hit me in the slightest. It reminded me of the time Maiya had entered my house through the opened back door.

“Is… is that a bucket full of corn syrup?” she’d shouted.

“And salt. Just to be safe. Now then,” I had said, ignoring her low growl. “About why I wanted you over.”

Maiya had glared at me in that little way of hers. Equal parts ‘I’m going to bite the head off your dick’ and ‘I’d rather kiss and make-up; my day’s been hell enough’. “Jericho,” she’d slowly enunciated, “either this is the prequel to some outlandishly kinky sex or I’m going home.”

A blank stare had met her.

“I’m going home!”

Chuckling, I kicked the bucket aside and resumed my search for a way out of hell. Of course, then I noted what the room before me was. Were I to describe it, I’d say it was like the ritual room Snechta had used, but now decorated with a menagerie of dark candles and curious fetishes that clearly served no reason but to look dark and mystical. As if your local five-and-dime were having a fire sale on all things dark and spooky.

The room had been built around the vaguely glowing purple pentagram on the floor. At its center lay a pony. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to do. So I sat there and let my eyes adjust until I could better make out the dark fetishes and the pony’s body. Mutilated ritualistically. It was interesting, in its own little way. And it gave me little thoughts back to my days in the RKA

As it happened, I bumped into one of the fetishes and found that it just felt fake. Horrible. Like a… like a stage prop. Yet the whole scene looked so real, as if I were expected to find this place and that Solnyshko mare back for revenge. I was sure that a more introspective pony would have partially broken down and wondered if this meant their whole life was a lie. But I was no super angsty pony. I was Jericho! And that meant I blindly wandered ahead, never learning from my mistakes.

With all the grace I’d picked up from my spare few years in the RKA, I approached the body. There was a lack of a smell, the kind one’s innards tended to have the aroma of. If that wasn’t a red flag for something I didn’t understand, I didn’t know what was. I knelt by the corpse and poked and prodded. Unlike the things around the set, this felt real. Somepony had been murdered.

“Let’s see,” I muttered to myself. “Male. Early-mid twenties. Earther. No apparent birthmarks, but there’s a strange tattoo here on. Hmm. Cause of death: lack of internal organs. And… is that a knife where the heart should be?” I picked up the blade. Its hilt seemed to be ivory at first glance. But from its give, weight, and general feel, I surmised that it was more like a pony’s bones.

“Right. Duster, packet of cigarettes, and a dead body. All I need now is a damsel in distress who’s hiding altogether too many secrets.” I held the knife in my hoof and thought. In fact, looking at the body and the way everywhere here had been arranged, it sort of reminded me of the ways wherein those prostitutes—

|— ☩ —|

Maiya just continued to lie there. As aloof as I could sometimes be when it came to mares, even I had to take notice thereof. She didn’t look angry or upset, just tired, almost without hope. I set my eyes went back to the pictures and sighed quietly.

Closing my eyelids, I set the evidence to the ground and thought. Otto, who’d helped me write the Code. What would he say? For one, his advice was why I even allowed myself to enter a romantic relationship. I bet he’d say that as important as it was to save lives, it was more important to ensure your long-term survival in society via social normality. It was easier to be normal if one had friends and lovers.

So, were any other pony to look at Maiya and reflect upon my situation, they would put her first, wouldn’t they? While I’d come to understand that to get emotionally involved could spell doom, so to did the appearances thereof make for a normal functioning member of society. Even if for Maiya I didn’t inexpressibly feel pangs of guilt or sadness or whatever it was that a normal pony might feel in this circumstance—would rage, anger, even annoyance have been appropriate?—normal ponies did.

It all came down to one of the golden principles of life: fake emotions and normality to fit in.

“Hey, Maiya,” I said, standing up and moving towards her.

“Hmm?” she hummed, looking up at me.

I sat down next to her on the couch and ran a hoof through her hair. “Are you hungry? I don’t have much to eat in the house, but there’s a nice place a few blocks over we could go to.”

Her eyes lit up, then dimmed. “Wait, what about the killer?”

“Technically, I’m off duty at the moment. I can finish up in the morning.” I smiled warmly. “You’re more important to me that the job, by far.” I had to stop myself from adding ‘And who cares if this ends up costing somepony her life?’ Even for me, that sounded cruel and petty.

She sat up and pecked me on the cheek. “Thanks, Jericho. I’ll go get my coat. And, uh, I know how much your jobs means to you, and I promise you won’t regret your little sacrifice.” As she left, Maiya poked her tongue into her cheek and winked. But I hardly even noticed, let alone cared.

Sacrifice. Sacrifice! The arrangements of the prostitutes’ corpses, despite being sloppy and never quite the same, fit a specific type of ritual. And there had been only one pony I could think of, the only pony who’d’ve been a position to know about such a ritual and be behind the distribution of the bone-rosaries. Things and ideas were coming to me like lightning, little leaps of thought and intuition painted a picture, not exactly complete nor entirely sound, but enough to make sense.

I had to go—”Jericho, are you coming?”

Solve the case or please the girl.

“Touché, arbitrary universe constantly stacking the deck against me,” I said with a sigh. “Touché.”

|— ☩ —|

“Ritual of sacrifice!” I blurted out, looking at the corpse here on the dark set. The poor buck had been sacrificed; the power of his soul used without his consent. Blood magic was one thing, a mortal sin. But this was beyond that. The killer from Neuorléans had been sloppy and hadn’t known exactly what he was doing, but this looked more… refined. Practiced.

Bitterly, I recalled where I’d become most familiar with these rituals. It had not been a killer or a predatory beast therelike. It had been the symbol of the army. Carved into the body of each Niedervolk, those ponies who had followed the demons and had invaded during the Dark Crusade, was a small symbol like the one around this corpse. And worse, imprinted into the few landscapes surrounding the proud cities of the Reich, those cities that were little more than empty skeletons when the Mobile Infanterie got there.

But then what did this imply here? What did the ritualist want and to what end? What was it even doing here?”

Before I could think further, I heard somepony whistle. I jerked my head up to see a mare with a hat and t-shirt both labeled ‘crew’. “Oh, come on, Altair,” she said, “we all know how serious you take this stuff, but at least give us a chance to set up before you go traipsing on in here and touching things.”

I thought for a moment. “Translation: hold on, the ritual room will be ready for you soon?”

“Um… yeah, sure, I guess,” she said with a shrug. I noticed then the cart full of occult paraphernalia behind her.

“Hello, darkly ominous foreshadowing,” I replied.

“Cool story,” she grunted. “Now would you just skedaddle? I’ve got work to do here.”

I just started at her.

“Look, please?”

Quickly, I scanned over the scene for anything I was missing. Nothing stood out. But still, the body. Something had to be done thereabout, not that I could do much. And I suspected whatever police they had here would want to detain and question me were they called, which is what would no doubt happen if I pointed out that this was a corpse. I did look rather suspicious, didn’t I?

I had to keep on the move. Try to learn things and whatnots. And also, get a drink: my throat felt like kitty litter left out in a desert that was also on fire and decorated with pictures of squid. All I did was rub a hoof against part of the gore around the body, trying to smudge and ruin the circle. Not that it likely meant much, but it was a symbolic victory. Take that!

“Right, sure,” I said to the mare. “Just one last thing: where’s the train station?”

|— ☩ —|

As I stepped up the stairs onto the train platform, I held up the packet of cigarettes and read all the words thereupon. Ah, Equestria, where not even the smokes had warning labels. I put the pack back; it had been good food for thought. This was still Equestria, at least according to the nicotine. So I had that for a fact.

Standing far away upon the platform, alongside seemingly hundreds of other ponies, was that mare whose name I hadn’t caught. Selena, as I knew her. “Well, doesn’t this seem familiar?” I said, quietly humming the tune of Non, je ne regrette rien.

I moved towards her, only to stop as I saw a wall with a poster thereupon. All I had to do was maneuver around the thing to get to the station proper. But it held me intrigued. It was a poster of a shadowy face, one filled with a kind of malevolence, as if to say “I’m certainly no monster” in the most subtly monstrous way possible. There was no mistaking that this pony was me. If nothing else said so, it was the way my name had been written across his smiling face in fresh blood.

I found myself stirred out of my thoughts as I heard a train whistle and the telltale steam and clang of a locomotive. Momentarily thoughts of Jayne and how I’d fed Frosty’s arm to her struck me, but I forced myself to brush them off. Dwelling upon things never helped nopony.

“Ah, there you are!” Unlena called out—it was the name I was now calling her in my head. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up.”

Nothing came from my lips as I watched the train and the seething masses boarding it.

“Altair,” she said more forcefully with an underlying current of concern.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry; I was just imagining how awesomely dramatic it’d be if I were to wait for the train to start mov—”

“No,” she firmly stated.

“But I want to!” I totally did not whine no matter what Unlena might have said to the contrary.

“Not happening! I am not having a repeat of last time!” Unlena opened the door to the car before her, which oddly nopony else was entering, and grabbed me. “Come on, you.” She pulled me into the car by the collar.

“Help, help!” I shouted. “She’s trying to ruin all of the fun I get out of recklessly endangering myself!”

Once er got in the car, she closed the door behind me. I was hit by a breath of almost frigid air. That gave me enough pause to stop struggling and look around. Seats, windows, and… was that a minibar?

Of course, of more pressing attention were the three ponies in the car besides Unlena and I. The eyes of Lightning Dust, Cards, and Duke Elkington were upon me. I pushed Unlena off and looked at each of them individually.

“Hey there, Altair,” Elkington said. “Take a seat, why don’tcha?”

I blinked. “Is this some kind of intervention? Because I’ll have you know that murder is not an addiction; it is in fact the solution to a disturbingly vast menagerie of problems.”

Then, of all ponies, Not-Cards spoke up. I noticed that she had a pair of seats all to herself, her only companion being a bottle of wine that had a mustache taped on. “Sorry, Altair. Train ride’s only half an hour. We don’t got time to work through all your issues.”

I sat down in silence at having just been basically talked down to by Cards. Even if it wasn’t her, the image would haunt me for forever. The ponies left me alone for the duration of the trip. Next stop, the station, and then to wherever the train line ended.

It ended, it turned out, with a convention center.

|— ☩ —|

“Look, I didn’t mean it! I can’t tell if you’re a girl or a boy! Really!” I told the long blond-haired pegasus stallion with the elf ears. Here at the convention, I supposed he was another actor or something, especially considering how we were both in some back VIP room before the events began proper.

Unlena had been with me earlier, and in fact had basically had to explain what everything here was. She had noted at some point that it wasn’t her job to “reign me in”, then went to the bathroom alongside Not-Cards—why did girls always go in pairs? Did they need somepony to spot them when they peed?—and never returned. I still wasn’t sure what time it was, and most of the ponies here had nothing to do with my life/TV show, so messing with them was the best thing I could do.

Of course, the major group of other ponies here were super fantasy-prone. Ponies dressed like I would imagine dwarfs and elves and stuff would be. But this one guy, dressed as an elf—complete with a sword and bow—was so damn pretty that I basically had to shield my eyes from him. I say him because using the feminine to his face got him rather peeved.

He and the rest of his crew seemed to take offense to me trying to question whatever generic fantasy land whence they came. Of course, when I had properly gotten to the pretty guy, he turned on me without any humor and did not look very happy.

“Would you cut that out?” he snapped. “I get it; you’re the up-and-coming Altair Penrose, but trust me, arrogance in this business doesn’t do you any good.”

“Arrogant? I’m not arrogant.” I scoffed. “You’re just an androgynous pretty boy who really needs a good smack across the face. Pretty boys suck; they make terrible heroes, and only lesbians like them.”

His eye twitched. “Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t hear you over just how much more money my fantasy movie, Lord of the—” A short, stocky pony with a great big beard put a hoof on his shoulder. “What?”

“Orlando Plume, fellow prestigious actor and star of many hit films,” the dwarf-LARPer said in a calm voice.

“Yes, that is in fact my full name and general synopsis of my career,” the would-be elf replied with befuddlement. “Why do you feel the need to state it?”

“I dunno. I think it’s a nervous tic.” He hook his head, his beard bouncing and swaying. “In any case, let it go, and don’t let him get to you.”

“You know, you’re rather tall for a dwarf,” I added absentmindedly before using my telekinesis to lift Plume’s bow from him. “Dude, this thing is terrible. And are these engraved in a made-up fantasy language? Wow, that’s lame, even for me, and that’s saying something.”

The pegasus actor snatched his bow back with a growl. “Don’t you touch my stuff! I am very proud of it and honored that a fan would make this for me!”

Of course, being that I had nopony to stop me—Unlena was off… somewhere, and I was the only cast member of Jericho here—I took the bow right back and promptly plucked at the strings. “Can this thing even fire? These strings aren’t even of guitar quality. I mean, maybe you could use it to floss, so that it smells bad when you come up from behind somepony and use it to garrote them.”

I looked at him and frowned slightly. “Hey, that tattoo on your chest…” Looks exactly like the one the sacrifice victim from earlier had.

“What of it? I’ve had it for years.”

Probably no coincidence. In my experience, there were no such thing as coincidences. I’d have to keep this little detail in mind.

Anyways, as I reached for one of the arrows in Plume’s quiver, the stallion snarled and tried to ram his shoulder into me. I sidestepped his blow with ease, yawning for effect as I did. But from this angle, it was fairly easy to just snag the whole quiver for myself.

With a giggle, I allowed Plume to grab the quiver back. Yet, with the quiver in hoof, he hit me over the head therewise. It was made of velvet or something soft and so didn’t hurt at all, but he had gone too far.

Mine eyes narrowed as I carefully enunciated, “I fear you are about to meet with a terrible fate.”

His mouth tightened so hard as to become little more than a scar as I dropped his bow to the ground. “You wanna go?” the actor hissed. “Sure—we can go. How about I just go up to your fan Q&A and embarrass the hay out of you? Show your fans who’s the real hero.”

“Oh what, you going to challenge me to a swordfight/rap battle?” I offered up the most belittling laugh I could. “Boy, I bet your swordplay sucks, and your ability to improv a rap battle is nonexistent.”

“Don’t make me come right over there and—!”

“Well, this escalated quickly,” a stallion said from behind me. Whirling around, I saw the poor sod they’d hired to play Duke Elkington. I missed the upper-class Southern accent that I had known him for.

“Gasp,” I exclaimed. No, I did not gasp. I just blurted it out, and did so whilst rushing up to the stallion. I extended an arm and touched his naked chest and I said “Touch” with great wonderment. “What’s good, villain potentate and rapist extradinatore?”

His look was that facial expression with I most often encountered, the one wherewith I was most intimately familiar: confusion. At that moment, I resigned myself to never going through with the ritual and practice of sexual intercourse ever again unless my partner perpetually wore a look of honest confusion. Because, knowing me, that’s how it would be regardless, right?

Ellie gestured around the VIP room and shifted his expression to one of mildly annoyed expectation. When I just stared at him with a dumb little smirk of my face, he only groaned and stated, “Altair, have you seen Holly or Spot?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Holly Woods and Lime Light. Tall lady and the adorable little one, don’tcha know. I can’t find them. Last I heard they were with you, eh?”

“Oh, wow,” I added. “I hate your accent. And also, no, they were with me but got eaten by the infinite expanse of meaninglessness that you call an existence.”

“In other words, you have no idea.”

“They went off to the bathroom and got eaten by a grue,” I replied with conviction.

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Altair, what’s gotten in to you today? I saw that interview you gave, and you’re not acting right at all.”

“That’s just what you think!” I said, touching his nose with a smile.

Elkington didn’t glare at me, but his look was stern. “Look, could you stop bothering mister Plume there and get to your panel already?”

“Oh yeah, that thing Unlena told me to find eventually before somepony pointed me here.” I paused, looking around as the ponies shuffling out the room, including a glaring Plume. “I don’t know where to go. Presumably, I should follow them?”

“Yeah.”

“Understood.”

|— ☩ —|

I looked out at the rather gigantic crowd and marveled at how well this place’s air conditioning must have been that I still felt all snug and cold. Ponies were asking questions to my fellow panel-mates, which included a wide variety of Orlando Plume associates and other somesuch I didn’t notice. No Duke, Cards, or Selena, but Lightning Dust was sitting by me playing with pencils, so there was that.

My gaze wandered up to one of the foremost rows in the rather alive and moving crowd when I caught sight of a pair of identical twin mares. As if on cue, the bumped their flanks together and looked at me. One of them had “Jeri” on one side of her ass, the other mare had “icho” such that the Is were spread evenly across them both. My name, huh? Across two twins. When will these silly Equestrians learn that incest just wasn’t cool?

So, with a blank face, I almost didn’t note one of the questions posed at my part of the panel. “Mister Penrose,” asked a girl in the audience, “what’s your favorite pastime?”

I hesitated as I had to remember that I was being addressed. In my silence, Orlando Plume stepped up and said, partly under his breath in a tone that was just asking me to reach out and choke a he-bitch, “Sucking dick, most likely.”

This elicited a collection of odd laughs and a few gasps from an over-sensitive audience. For a moment, his face took on an expression that made me think he honestly hadn’t meant to mutter that so closely to his microphone.

Leaning back in my chair, I said with a wiggle of the brows, “Plume says true. I’m like a chupacabra, except with dicks. But in all my years, let me tell you, no one has spit that tastes more like cock than old Orlando Plume’s here. Imagine a rich chicken soup with salt and rice. Now imagine that it’s not chicken, it’s heaping hordes of cock, and that’s basically what his mouth tastes like at any given moment.”

As the crowd laughed, I cast Orlando a devilish little smile and added, “His toothpaste dispenser, for God’s sake, is just a glory hole with a firm cock ever ready to help Blume achieve the whitest, healthiest smile this side of Canterlot.”

A fan raised their hoof and asked, “Is Jericho gay?” It was at this moment that some intrepid filly in the audience raised a sign that read ‘Jericho X Elkington’ with a big heart around the names.

“What,” I deadpanned.

A mare stood up. “Well, all these hot vaginas keep landing on his lap, begging him to teach them a thing or two about the fundamentals of permanent vaginal stretching, yet he refuses them, especially if they’re really hot or adorable. The only girl he’s kissed at all is Dust’s mother, who then shot herself. Yet Jericho insists that he and Elkington had a special connection via ‘the bad touch’. Not to mention Jericho’s narration is, like, ninety-five percent dicks; it’s as if the show would have us believe that most of the time, Jericho is thinking about dicks.”

“Why would you… when do I ever think about dicks?” I inquired, thinking about dicks.

“You?” another pony added. “We’re talking about Jericho himself.”

“Yeah, me, you silly salty ninny.” I scoffed. “Look, Jericho is I and I am Jericho. Never was there an Altair Penrose, and I honestly don’t know who he is or who any of these weirdo ponies are. Yes, I put the Is in insanity. Least I don’t spout no profanity.”

“Oh, would you just shut up!” Plume barked at me, red in the face.

I looked over at Elkington and noticed he had been drinking out of a now-empty mug. I grabbed the ceramic object and tossed it gingerly at Plume’s chest. The stallion flared his wings in panic and threw himself backwards with a yelp to avoid it, tumbling off his chair.

“What the hell, Altair!” Plume spat out at me, rubbing the back of his head. “Were you trying to kill me?”

“I call that a hunch,” I replied blankly. “All you’ve got is circumstantial evidence.”

“Celestia, you’re a right bastard, you know that?!” He gave me with a look that said either ‘I want to sleep with you’ or ‘I’m going to hurt you’. After my experience with Cherry Berry, I wasn’t so sure of the difference anymore. “And weren’t earlier you saying I was going to ‘meet a terrible fate’? Were you threatening me? ”

I walked up to Plume and tightly put my arm around his shoulder as I gestured to the crowd. “Orlando, like Elkington will soon have to learn, Celestia is a mistress who laters turns out to be a mister, and no amount of salt-bathing will ever cleanse you of the shame.”

“Don’t you touch me, you psycho!” Plume barked, batting away my arm. “Gah! I’m going to get security,” he muttered, marching off.

I just stood there. Then it occurred to me that security probably was not what I wanted anybosdy to call upon seeing me, descending from their ant-like hives much the same as termites to an anteater. That probably would have no easy solution other than murder, which was my usual go-to problem solver.

Valor was the better part of discretion. But the point stood. Jericho—exit, stage left.

|— ☩ —|

As it happened, the best way to escape prying eyes at a convention seemingly littered with people who know you was to just calmly stroll around and act interested in the stands and whatnot all scattered around the place. There were enough people here who dressed like me that I didn’t stand out.

I was a seeming nobody in a crowd of ponies trying to look like somebodies. It was like that holiday I’d heard of, Nightmare Night. The one night a year everypony got to don a mask and pretend they were a monster. It was unfortunate that, for the people at the convention, it made them all look like hopeless nerds. Deep down, I wondered if my coolness would give me away as the real Jericho.

A little family went by me, a couple and two kids. The father seemed to be dressed as me, or at least how I was with C’s arm and the eyepatch. The mother, like Cards, but with leather armor and a necklace of whiskey bottles. Very un-Cards. Their son was some kind of farmpony. But the daughter, who ran up to me and said giggled something about how I dressed like her daddy, was some kind of mailmare.

Whatever. And ponies think I’m weird. Had to get back to finding something to do and het me out of here. Or at least find a least a sword. I felt so naked without a weapon. What would I do if I encountered a Cherry Berry cosplayer? I’d be defenseless! Reliant only on prayers and the deep hope that she didn’t carry a strap-on.

Lightly, I chuckled to myself. Strap-on backwards was no-parts. Fitting.

More to the point, without a weapon, should I have to kill, I’d have to do it by hoof. And I’m not going to lie, a little part of me usually very well-fed by adventuring wanted to kill somebody. A bad pony nobody would truly miss, preferably. Or just a killer. I wasn’t sure if I could handle more innocent deaths on my heart after Sleepy Oaks—a debt still unpaid, whereto the only suitable exchange rates were paid in my blood.

But there I go, monologuing again. I was getting too dramatic and dark, which was never a fun combination. It happened at that moment that I saw a clown in go-go boots and a white mullet making a balloon animal for a little filly. Something about those things always creeped me out.

“Aww, what a nice kitty!” the little filly squealed to the clown.

“Isn’t she?” the clown asked. “And now for the finishing touches!” He twisted his creation’s neck all around and tied it in a knot. But he did it too hard, and the kitty popped. The little girl soon found tears in her eyes as the clown quickly tried to repair the damage with a new animal.

Her father rushed over to comfort her, saying, “It’s okay, sweetie. Kitty’s in balloon heaven now.”

A perfect image of the ideal father-daughter relationship: lies and deceits. The next animal the clown gave to silence her was a turtle.

Distantly, I recollected that as a boy I had owned a pet turtle. I had no idea why Father had given me the thing. I suspected he had been re-gifting it to me, but that raised only further questions. Seriously, who gives someone a turtle as a gift? The thing had taken one look at me before recoiling back into its shell, where it stayed until it starved to death. Good times.

I looked up, into the swarming, chattering crowds of the convention, just wondering what next to do. That’s when I saw the holiest of holies: a ball pit! Why this place had one, I didn’t know, but it had a ball bit and I was going to become its king, just like in all my twelve-year-old fantasies I never got around to because I was too busy killing the neighbor’s dog.

I rushed up to the ball pit and gracefully let myself in, like an alligator in a child-filled kiddy pool. The feel of levitating the ball was a happy one; I had so missed using my horn since I’d lost it. Of course, the first thing I did was hurl it at some stupid kid’s face, thereby challenging him to a duel, as per Ball Pit Code. Rather than accept my challenge like a stallion, he just cried and ran off like a bitch, inasmuch as it’s possible to awkwardly waddle away when you’re up to your neck in multicolored balls. The experience almost made the seeming eternity without my horn seem worthwhile. Almost.

This is about the time it occurred to me that I could levitate more than one ball at a time. “I. Am. A. God!” I declared with maniacal laughter, forcing away the children through force of victorious arms and toy balls.

Not long thereafter, security found me. They didn’t seem to know me, though, so that was a good sign. “Sir,” one of the two, whom I thought of as Luey, started, only to be met by a ball to the face.

“I am your reigning monarch, the grand high once-and-future king of Ball Pitia! You will address me with the respect that title deserves!”

“Let me restate it, then,” the other one, I thought of him as Chuckowitz, said. “Hey, asshole, get out of the ball pit. The children are afraid and all they want to do is play!”

“I’d like to see you try and make me!” I hissed, diving under the balls.

“Shit, he’s gone under!” Chuckowitz yelled.

Luey spat out, “We can’t have another one drown on our watch! Why do we let kids in there without life jackets?!”

They jumped in and the chase—nay—the hunt was on for Red Jericho! This was my new title as King of Ball Pitia, I decided.

It wasn’t long afterwards, somewhere between the arrival of seething masses of people standing at the edge to watch us and when I was punching security that somepony I knew came up. Unkington. I know, how clever of me to hight him so.

When I finally noticed him, he sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You know, when I heard that there was some crazy manchild running amok in the ballpit, terrifying children and fighting rent-a-cops, somehow I got the sad feeling in my gut that this is exactly what I would find.”

“Hello,” I said, dropping one of the guards I’d headlock into unconsciousness. He gained it back as soon as I let go, and so just floundered around in the balls for a while.

“Do I have to go and drag you out myself?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I hissed. “You just can’t handle the fact that I have an entire pit of balls, and you have but two!”

He sighed. “Altair, it’s time to leave. Your era of ballpit tyranny is over.”

“Just five more minutes, please?”

“Don’t make me come in there!” he threatened threateningly, which was honest-to-God my exact thought at the moment. He threatened threateningly. Like only a crazy pony could.

“Fine. God! Always ruining my fun!”

Grumbling, I crawled out the pit, leaving the two battered and bloodied security pony fighting and drowning beneath the walls of the ball pit. Although, I did think that because of my moment of fun, the universe would probably punish with with a thousands years eternal torment in the violation wells or some other horrific form of retribution, as was its custom.

Out of the crowd came a familiar mare in a starry hoodie. It looked to me as if she were on edge like she wanted to get away from a place she didn’t like, a fact which she tried to hide by feigning a cool countenance. Holly Woods. Was that her name here? Selena sounds better. Holly Woods sounded like fake name you’d use in porn to cover up the shame you felt on the job.

But the thing was, when our eyes met, she had this sudden look of recognition mixed with tinges of revelation. Not normal recognition, either. More like the kind you wear when you meet by total happenstance an old ex whom you still cared for deeply. Holly hadn’t expected to see me here at all, for one thing. Not in the ballpit, but in this entire place in general. As though I were a ghost.

As I climbed out of the pit, she looked between me and Elkington. In a quiet voice, as if she didn’t realize she were speaking aloud, she said, “I always suspected you had some sort of daddy issues, but if this is the sort of thing you dream about…” She shook her head. “It’s much worse than I thought.”

“Wait, you were watching that the whole time?” I asked.

“Hey, Holly,” Unkington said, “have you seen Lime Light?”

Holly gave a quick, clueless look. Did she not kennt UnCards anymore? “Um, no, I have not,” she replied, her eyes flickering to me. Elkington shot her a sour look, whereto she replied with a shrug, saying, “Look, if it’s important, Lime Light will show up. Lime Light couldn’t have gone off too far, right?”

Awkward lack of pronouns. Holly didn’t even know UnCards’ gender. Something about this was really wrong. My muscles tensed for action, but something inside me hesitantly recommended playing this situation out. In the ballpit behind me, I could hear the security trying to find itself and get back to me.

“Look,” Unkington sighed, “we’ve got to do something about all this. Before it gets more out of control. Not really sure what to do when your coworker is probably wanted for crimes relating to a balloit, though.”

“I’ll handle it,” Holly responded in a careful tone.

“But how are—”

“I’ve got it,” she stated with great firmness. In a quick motion she stepped over to me, way too far into my personal bubble, and put her mouth too close to my ear. “Jericho, if you wish to make it out of here alive, I suggest coming along with me. Post-haste.”

“That a threat?” I whispered back.

“A warning,” she affirmed.

I eyed her over, like she was prey. Was she victimizer or victim-to-be? “You’re not Holly Woods, are you?”

“Nor are you Altair Penrose.”

“Fair enough,” I said with a nod, deciding not to question where she’d learnt my name. Then, hanging my head and in a theatrical voice for all in the crowd to hear: “Aww, Holly, do I have to?”

She growled at me. Playing along. Good girl. “Altair, if you keep this up, I’ll… I’ll…!”

“But I don’t want to!”

The mare with no name grabbed me hard. “Come on. We’re getting out of here!” When the mare dragged, she dragged hard and convincingly.

“Hey, no need to drag,” I replied cooly, getting a grip on myself and putting an arm around her. And not the shoulders mind you. But more closely, I whispered, “You lead, I’ll follow.”

No-name nodded, and we walked together through and out of the crowd. Beyond a little corner, and into one of the doorways that lead to the catacomb-like tunnels meant only for employees and other service personnel here went we. I remained silent, waiting for her to offer the first words. When dealing with mysterious envoys, it was polite to let them speak first. That way you could act all cool and mysterious yourself.

She looked around, found another door, opened it, and promptly dragged me into a closet so claustrophobic it could double as a corpse slide from a morgue. And yes, dragged. I wasn’t about to walk in there, but she was tore me thereinto and slammed the door shut.

“Security won’t find us in here, likely,” she said in a way that made me think she was about to dead-leg me and go for the tried-and-true romantic tactic of ‘surprise sex after I’ve crippled you’.

When I tried to get my arm off her, she frowned. “You know, I didn’t mind that there.”

“If you use threats and tell me to put it back,” I said, trying to back away, only to find out that I couldn’t, “I’ll impale you with my horn.” Honestly, it was like no matter which way I moved, the lack of space made it seem like a cross between an epileptic fit and me trying to dry hump the mare with no name.

She only gave me a confused look. “Look, if you want to be that way, fine. But all I know is that security was looking for ‘Altair Penrose dressed up as Jericho’, but you’re not Altair; you actually are Jericho. I’d remember you anywhere.”

“Well, it’s nice to know I’ve got another stalker. Better add you to my list, right after ‘C the Horse’,” I replied with a shake of the head. “Now, please stop digging through my trash in the hopes of finding a used condom. This is just advice I give to all my stalkers. Especially the mares. Which is most of them, oddly.”

“No, no, no, you misunderstand,” she replied, with no small hint of nervousness. She puffed out her chest, pressing it tightly against mine, and declared, “I am the Mistress of Dreams, Maiden of the Night.”

And self-giver of pretentious titles, I thought, a blank stare on my face.

Her look went from prideful drama to slight anxiousness. “You know; surely you’ve heard of me.”

“The tooth fairy?” I put a hoof to my chin. “Didn’t I tie her up and feed her nothing but stale bread for a month when I caught her trying to steal my teeth as a boy?”

“N-no, no, you know. Uh… Um…” She looked around, as if trying to spot the difference between two seemingly identical photographs of tentacle porn. “Oh, like—the wanderer of the dreamscape, solver of deep-seated psychological issues?” She leaned in towards me and moved her mouth as if you continue trying.

“Oi, stop touching me,” I stated, trying to wiggle in for myself some room.

“It’s not like I can help it! There’s not a lot of room in here.” She pushed back against me. “And as I recall, weren’t you the expert at fitting big things into small spaces?”

I paused. “Wait. Selena? Now I’m confused. That was something only Selena would know, right? So… you are Selena?”

“No, I’m not Selena,” she scoffed, a undercurrent of amusement in her voice. “I’m just…” She looked down at herself, stretching out a leg—insomuch as it was possible here—as if to examine it. “Just borrowing the body.”

“Then who the hell are you, girl?”

A sly little smirk crossed her face. “Well, I’ve been known by a few ought names here and there. I’m only Selena when I choose to be.” She looked around conspiratorially, then beckoned me to get closer. I did no such thing, since this was a goddamn closet with no room to move. I just let her make a stream of various ‘come hither’ gestures until she just groaned with frustration. She took a breath, trying to keep her cool as she resumed a conspiratorial demeanor.

“Well, you might just know me as that dark, mysterious mare of the moonlight.”

“The Sandmare?”

“No,” she said with a grunt. “I mean, that rumored mare. The most beautiful pony in all Canterlot.”

“I thought I was the most beautiful pony in Canterlot.”

“Okay, now you’re just screwing with me.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

She groaned. “Okay, fine. We’ll do it your way. I am the Princess of the Night—Luna!”

I gave her a look that betrayed no emotion. “Funny. I always thought of you as more of a Susan.”

The lady before me deflated like that balloon kitty. Well, that more-or-less exploded into a pile of colorful scraps. Similar enough here, as well. “No, no, no. I’m—y-you know, Princess Luna. Princess of the Night.” Silence. “Princess Celestia’s sister?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course. Her sister. I didn’t know she had a name,” I said. It wasn’t true, no, but it was funny. “And you know, it occurs to me. You’ve been lying to me this whole time?” I said in a blank, almost completely neutral tone. “All the while you were somepony else?”

She looked as if I’d just gut-punched her. “Well, no… I mean, I, um…”

I couldn’t hold back the stem of laughter. “Yeah, right—you, Princess Luna? Go ahead, now pull the other leg. It’s got bells and far fewer scars.” Then I realized the implications of my attempted dick joke. “On second thought, please don’t grab my penis and pull thereupon violently. In fact, don’t even think of touching it.”

Her ears flopped. “You really don’t believe me?”

“Well, mayhap were you to prove your case.”

Selena stared sullenly at the floor, evidently lost in thought or else really admiring that particular speck of dust in the corner opposite me. “Alright, then stand you back, ye fair denizen of dreamland. I’m going to shed this shell and show you who I really am.”

“I think that phrase was kind of gibberish,” I replied, but pressed myself up to the wall to humor her, not that I went back very far. Something phallic and wooden poked into my back from a shelf.

Selena just stood there for a moment before an odd looked crossed her face. It the was look of a mare who just discovered that her prized sex toy had filed for divorce and was entering witness protection to escape her. The mare slumped back slightly, wearing a mortified countenance. “In this world, it appears I am stuck as a unicorn. That’s-that’s never happened before.”

There was silence for a moment. And then I reached out and booped her on the nose. “There. That’s what you get. Now please don’t pull off any of my metaphorical legs.” She rubbed her nose and glared at me like an angry kitten. “Ergo, you are clearly Luna the Seven-Tentacle’d Anacondom of the Canterlot Savannahs.”

“I… what?”

“Wow. You know, you sure are perplexed a lot. Oh, and so, tell me, all this ‘Mistress of the Night’ business, does this mean you’re the lady of the night,” I asked, rocking forwards with a smile. “Because a lady of the night is slang for a pros—”

“When we get back to the real world, I am so going to smite you.” When I smiled thereat, she huffed. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “I try not to fly in the face of public opinion.”

She scrunched up in a pout, still glaring at me. But that didn’t hide the embarrassed red glow from her cheeks. She opened up a saddlebag and pulled out a rolled-up poster, which she promptly unfurled and pointed at. Problem was, what little room there was in the closet was not gone, utterly eaten by a neat poster. “See? It’s a poster for Jericho—your show! See that? On the left? That’s me!”

I examined it closely before saying, “Sure, I suppose there’s a vague resemblance. But that mare is a unicorn. And the tiny filly on the right is a sad-looking Cards. The middle, which takes up most of the shot, is me. Oh, for that matter, why do you have a poster of me? And where can I get one?”

“Shut up! There are wings under her—er, my hoodie!”

“Suuure there are. And I’m the King of Cantaloupes, here to enforce my fruity vengeance upon ponykind. With a vengeance.”

She just continued glaring at me with that scrunchy-face pout.

Then something occurred to me. Ye denizen of dreamland. “Is… is this all just a dream?”

Selena frowned. “Maybe. This whole place is weird and confuses me.”

“Well, some Princess of the Night you are,” I scoffed. “You know, you were much more informative before you got possessed. Now I think I’m stuck in some dark ritual up in the ass-end of the Crystal Empire.”

“Crystal Empire, huh?” she said. “Of course you’d be involved with it. Seems like you’re never too far whenever Equestria’s having a problem as of late.”

I shrugged. “Comes with the territory of being the only one who cares.”

“Still,” she said slowly, putting a hoof to her chin, “if this is being created by some spell or ritual, it might explain why this place is like no dream I’ve ever seen. I was surprised I could even enter it.”

“So, then I am dreaming.”

“No, I don’t think you’re dreaming, but this is a dream.”

“I repeat: I’m dreaming?”

“No, like I said, you are not dreaming,” she replied in the tones of someone trying to explain the color ‘screw you’ to a blind pony. “Your mind is not creating this place. It’s too… concrete. Too much continuity. Too much, dare I say, logic. Dreams are chaotic, illogical series of events, at least to an outside observer. This place doesn’t work anything like that. It’s more like… something trying to simulate life working within a very set series of parameters.”

“You lost me at the first ellipsis,” I told her, feeling the strange urge to light a cigarette just to blow smoke in her face. Of course, that would plant the idea of cancer in my lungs, so I scratched that urge out of my mind. “But the gist is you’re a dream expert. Mayhap the way out is to wake up?”

“Mayhap,” she uttered with a little giggle, a nostalgic smirk. “Stars above, that’s a word whose like I’ve not heard in… gosh, ever.”

“I got brain damaged at some point. I have no idea what the dialect wherein I speak is or even wherefrom it comes.” Get to the point where I can get out of here, do it please ya.” I paused before adding, “Or even if it don’t.”

She hesitated, looking about. “Sometimes, really shocking things can force you awake. So too can doing something so against your nature that your unconscious mind rejects it and forces you awake. Can you think of anything like that?”

Quickly flashed through my mind the image of weaponized Cards-coitus making Stronghold’s head explode. I shook my head, both to clear the image therefrom and to respond. “No, I can’t think of anything. But…” I gave my head a slight tilt. “Wait, what about dying? I seem to recall that dying in a dream causes you to wake up.”

Selena’s eyes widened as she shook her head a little too fast. “Oh, no, no, don’t try that. Please, just don’t. Call it a hunch, but… Let’s just say I don’t put much faith in the idea that this could end with anything but horror and tragedy. For instance, you could—”

An ear-splitting ringing ran out throughout the building. It took me a moment to realize it was some sort of fire alarm. I was actually surprised that Equestria would even have those. They seemed too safe and logical for Equestrians to ever consider.

Funny how things just seemed to jump up on me, even when I’m not doing anything.

Ten Mark said there was no fire, that the alarm had been pulled by some dickish teen. Still, it didn’t take long for me to hear the sound of ponies walking through the back hallways. Fire exits were likely this way. I advised Selena that somepony official would eventually come in here to check on something or other, and that we should probably head outside.

I grabbed her hoof and took her along with me, Selena just slightly behind, as we snuck out of the closet and followed the ponies doubtlessly heading for the exit—most of them grumbling, the gist being they too thought it was a prank.

The sunlight was warm, and I had no idea what season it was in this place. Selena and I were being quiet. We walked through the growing crowd of ponies as they pressed out from the convention center, a veritable sea of geeky ponies who didn’t believe in deodorant.

We went on for a while. So many people. I heard sirens, and soon there were fireponies and then even police officers entering the building. It took a long time for anything to happen; we couldn’t get very far due to all the people and the commotion. The officers looked like more than the run-of-the-mill Joes working the shift. These seemed like proper investigators here by specific call, not just because a fire alarm had been pulled. There was a purpose to their workings. It was a subtle thing hard to put into exact words, but after a few years working cases in the RKA, I sort of just had a feel for this sort of thing.

At some point, Unkington and the ponies who played Cards and Lightning Dust showed up. I had forgotten their names because they weren’t interesting characters worth even mentioning. Although when I saw Not Cards’ strange new black leather suit, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had dressed as a gimp and just gotten out of a broom closet sex meet-up with a lion.

“Wow, girl,” I said. “You look like vomit vomited up its own vomit.”

She glared at me. “My costume got ruined, that’s what happened.”

“And who were you trying to be?” I asked, cocking a brow,

The girl looked away and sighed. “C’mon, Altair, we already went over this a week ago. Y’know? Comic book hero?”

“You can read?” I blurted out, agape. “Holy hell, this is news! You there, guy who is not Elkington. Did you know they were teaching mares to read now? What a travesty!” And then, in a normal voice: “But yeah, no. Who?”

She groaned. “Fire Sex Rider Girl, one of my heroes?”

“What kind of hero is… I’m going to out on a limb here and say he?”

“Y’know? Strong, confident mare who knows what she wants and takes it by force and wit. A hero people look up to. Gets all the sex she wants and nopony calls her a worthless whore because of it?”

“Aw, don’t be like that. Girl, you can have all the sex you want and I’ll approve. Heck, you can have, like, three whole penises in each hole at once and I’ll still approve. I probably wouldn’t shake your hoof, though, because I don’t know where it’s been, but I wouldn’t judge.”

“That’s… good to know. Very liberal and forward thinking, I guess?” She offered me a smile. “You know, you’re a little different today. Still crazy, but…”

“I know, right? Oh, hey, does being literate mean you’re going to demand the right to vote now, too?” I asked with a frown.

“Um…” she droned. After a hefty moment she said, “So. you’re being more… personable and approachable than usual.”

“I blame the Jericho in me. Makes me do strange things.”

“Oh, yeah. I totally know how that feels! Sometimes, I get really into Cards when I try to play her, like… You know that Cards-based spinoff show some of the execs were trying to get, about Cards and her life in Hoofington during season two and stuff? Well, I was so good at thinking and pretty much being Cards that half of the dialog used there is just me rambling on while trying to be in-character.

“So, like, it’s really cool to see you and I are alike on this, kinda sorta. I mean, I know how you do acting and stuff, but it’s not like we’ve ever really talked outside of in-character on the set, y’know?”

I cast her an oblong look. “Are you trying to say you look up to me?”

“Well, uh… I guess? I mean, you’re a pretty cool actor and stuff. And I mean, like…”

“Very incoherent,” I noted. And a thought came to me. “Strange. Just like in Calêrhos. It’s like in every where but home, Cards seems to look up to me, think I’m a hero. In every where wherein I’ve not killed Glasses or the like, that is to say. Does make me wonder what Cards would think of me had I not butchered her only friend in the world.”

“Cards is… complicated, I’d like to say,” the mare offered with a wink. “She’s just like that. Kind of girl that can both hate and love somepony with equal measure, which only makes her hate her lonely self all the more. Sure, Jericho fucked up when he killed Glasses, but if there’s one thing that Cards really gets, it’s fucking up. That’s my interpretation, personally. But being the girl who plays her, I sort of have a big say in all that.”

“How… insightful,” I said, almost not even there. I was phased out, just thinking about the implications of all that regarding Cards.

“Thanks, I try!” she chirped. Not that I was paying attention much anymore.

In truth, I rarely if ever thought of Cards proper as a pony, just a thing: either as obstacle or tool. This mare… I think her name was Lime Light. She suggested that my relationship to the real Cards could be more like how it was to the Cards of Calêrhos or this Lime Light. It was a strange, even stupid proposition.

But then what? Would Cards actually be my friend? What a strange thought. Friends. Lovely to have, hard to come by when you’re like me. At least, hard to come by ones that last. I let it sink in with a quick flash of an amused grin. That’d surely be the one way to kill her for good: befriend her.

With that little thing out of the way, I noticed Selena just standing there, being irrelevant and pointedly seeming aware thereof. I decided to ask her about what she had in mind to do now, since I was sort of at wit’s very boring end. But that was when I saw the pair of well-dressed ponies who were clearly police officers. Amongst them was a big burly stallion with a face that looked like a leather boot. I could just sit there, idly imagining myself chewing on his face like a dog for hours, utterly content with myself and life in general.

But it was the other one, the mare, who met my eyes and asked, “Mister Penrose?”

“Well, people seem to have taken a shine to calling me that lately, so I guess you can join the crowd too, if you want,” I said. “So then. Either something horrible is about to happen, or you found me because only I can save the President’s daughter.”

They exchanged looks before the mare spoke again. “Nothing of that sort. But we are with Applewood Metro Equicide. May we speak with you?”

“I’m guessing that if equicide is here, then there’s somebody dead in there, right?” I asked in response. “And if you’re talking to me way out here and clearly suspect me of something—don’t bother hiding it. I was special Agent in my day, and I recognize the look in your eyes, however subtle. I’m thinking that mayhap it has something to do with a corpse they found on the set?”

“What are you doing?” Selena whispered rather loudly to me.

“I thought we talked about this? Almost half of all your emotions when around me revolve around confusion. Stop it.” I flashed her a smile. “Probably nothing will go too horribly wrong. I’ll at least have no more than one eye when I get back. Besides. I might learn something here. And I’m also out of other ideas. Like, dead out. So why not?”

“How is this at all a good idea? Are you utterly stupid?” she demanded suddenly.

“If I said yes, you’d be a liar,” I concluded in an expertly clinical voice. Then I turned back to the officers. “Sorry thereabout. Now then. From that stance you’ve both assumed, I presume you want to bring me in for questioning, is that right? Good. I hate being right.”

|— ☩ —|

They pushed me into a dingy chair in a shady room with one-way glass on one wall and hoofcuffed me to a table. “I’ve played nice so far. I’m not even technically under arrest. Need I be cuffed?” I demanded.

“We don’t know, and it’s better to be safe than sorry,” said one of the officers who’d taken me in as they left the room. Lawponies in Equestria didn’t seem to play by the ideas of civil liberty and innocent until proven guilty that we had in the Reich. Or maybe cops just followed no logic here in this place. Who was to say?

I sat there for a minute, thinking about whether it was possible to strangle a snake and how best to hide its body from the snake authorities. I don’t know how long I was stuck in la-la land with that, but when I came to, somepony was walking into the room.

At first glance, she looked like a large kitten dressed up as a police officer. I half expected her to purr and start giving herself a tongue-bath. She lacked cat-like grace, but was sleek, small, and narrow.

“I’m sorry about this little mess, Mister Penrose,” she began, pushing her dark blue hair out of her eyes and flashing me a smile. I wondered when ‘good cop’ had become ‘poor attempts at seduction cop’. “My colleagues can be a little… tough and rough.”

“They weren’t rough on me at all,” I said in a happy tone, “just incompetent. I mean, have you seen how loose these cuffs are? Allfather above, I could probably wiggle out of these. You really need a better budget here in order to hire ponies who don’t suck. Or maybe a zebra with his stripes painted hot pink. That’d be rad!” She almost missed her next step, but caught herself before she tripped. Less than ten seconds in, and I suspected I’d utterly thrown her off her game. Go Team Jericho. “And for the record, since you’re the obvious good cop, where’s the bad cop? I thought bad cop went in first. Or do you guys just suck so much that you forgot how this is supposed to work?”

“He… called in sick today,” she said softly with her ears turning down, like a sad kitten.

“Right. Well. That explains everything,” I said, tilting my head and staring at her. “What, did he come down with a bad case of Vagina Dentata?

She took a seat opposite me and looked me over. From the look in her orange eyes, I could tell she wasn’t actually studying me, just trying to seem competent. And it failed. Silly girl needed to learn how to stare down her suspects.

“Well, seems like they were nice to you, then. Not incompetent. And that’s probably just because we don’t get so many famous, big-named actors in here like yourself.” She flashed me a smile that utterly collapsed under my hard glare. “My name is Meadow, and… You know, Mister Penrose, this might sound odd, but could I get your autograph?”

“Beg pardon?”

She slid a piece of paper in front of me. “See, I’m a fan of your work and all. And personally, there’s no way such a distinguished member of the community—”

“Stop,” I barked. “This is just a piece of paper that says ‘I totally did it’ followed by a dotted line.”

“I thought it was clever,” she muttered, fidgeting with her hooves.

“Know what? You’re right. It’s an excellent plan. Not in this dimension, of course. Not even in this plane of reality. But I’m sure it’s an excellent plan somewhere.” I threw my hooves up in exasperation, or at least as much as I could when I was cuffed to the table. “And, for that matter, did what?”

She slammed down a photo—where was she getting this stuff?—on the desk. “Murdering Orlando Plume!” Meadow declared dramatically as I gave her a nonplussed look. “Give it up, Altair! We already have countless witnesses to your assault on Plume with a coffee mug, a deadly weapon if ever there was! We know exactly where you were when you vanished after that! Being a murderer.”

“Actually, I was conquering a ball pit, then I was in a closet with a silly pony pretending to be Princess Luna. Poorly.”

She rubbed her chin., “Ah, yes. The ball pit We heard of it. Sadly for us, there are no explicit laws forbidding any of what you did, but you are still a murderous criminal.”

“If I was such a criminal, would I be so inclined as to reveal an important clue you’ve clearly missed in this picture of Plume’s corpse? Give me a pen. I’ll highlight it.” She dramatically slammed down a pen with great gusto. I picked it up, played therewith, and scribbled on the photo.

“Did… did you just draw a penis on an important bit of crime scene evidence?”

“What, don’t you see this important clue? Plume’s face and it’s similarity to a penis. Coincidence? I think not!”

“So. Are you saying this vindicates you?”

“Honey, were I to kill Plume, I’d do it with pizzaz and I would have violently resisted arrest. As it stands, he’s dead? Since when?”

“We’re trying to keep that hush-hush to prevent panic and the like. Here.” She tapped at the photo, beyond my elegant artwork. “See these? Do these symbols mean anything to you?”

I shrugged, my eyes wandering about the cold concrete walls of the room. “They’re fake.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re all just made to look dark and spooky. But from what I know, these have no meaning.”

“Not even this one?” She tapped two pictures, each one a photo of a corpse. One was the the pegasus, Plume. The other an earther, the unnamed first victim.

With a raised eyebrow: “Should I?”

A little smirk danced across her lips as she pulled out a camera. Again, no idea whence it’d come. Was she hiding a bag of holding inside her vagina? “Mister Penrose, would you mind taking off some of your clothes for me?”

I blinked. Then I recalled that in Equestria, this was probably not a question I could press sexual harassment charges over. Because everypony was usually naked. “I’m not going to do that. I have the right to say no as a stallion! This is wrong and I won’t stand therefor anymore!” I tried to stand up, but the cuffs caught my motions and I ended up falling to the ground. Because I wasn’t going to stand for this kind of shit no more.

“All I wanted to do was note you had an incredibly similar tattoo on your chest,” she said. “Land’s sake, I wasn’t about to go all Cherry Berry on you.”

“It’s hard to tell these days,” I replied in a weak voice. “Because if you were, I would’ve found a way to break these cuffs and send you to the graveyard. Where dead people live. Also, you watch that show? I bet it must suck.” Then the implications behind what he said truly occurred to me, and I jumped up. “Wait. I have a tattoo like theirs?”

“Yes. Which is one of the reasons why you’re a suspect here,” she replied, looking over at me, cocking her head a little to the left. “Same unusual tattoo in the same place on the body. It’s just too odd to just be a coincidence. That, and you were seen fighting with Plume. And were near the first corpse found. See what I’m getting at, Mister Penrose?”

What followed was an odd experiment into not being helpful in the least bit. She asked things here and there, but in the end I was pretty sure I’d managed to learn more than she did. Plume was dead like the other one, similarly sacrificed while the fire alarm had been pulled. There was an occult motive suspected, but nopony really knew anything. All their proof was circumstantial. Overall, it was as horrible as having a huge fetish for your own limp penis. But she ran out of questions eventually. At the end, they had no evidence on me nor a reason to legally hold me. I was free.

They walked me outside. Dusk had fallen. It struck me that the length of the interview stood as a testament to this city’s failed excuse for cops. I had expected to meet Selena out here, presuming she knew where to go, and so found myself standing in the empty park next to the police station. At this hour, nobody wanted to see the duck pond or the lovely shadows the trees cast. And due to its proximity to the police station, the place as clean and free of ragamuffins, vagrants, and other types a city government would deem undesirable.

I pulled out a cigarette from Altair’s pack, staring thereat. “Woe betide me,” I muttered at the packet, fishing around for a lighter. Not that I would use them, but I just sort of wanted to hold them and feel cool for a moment. Smoking made people cool because there was nothing cooler than dying of lung cancer. What then followed for me was about three minutes of me stumbling to continue an alliteration, abusing a line or two from Teutsch, before clunkily dropping into a slur of French that made me sound like a pretentious and incoherent twat.

“Altair, have you gone mad?” came a voice.

I turned around slowly. There, standing in the shadow of the nearby tree, was Cards. Lime Light. Whatever. And she wasn’t wearing her ruined gimp suit anymore, which made me frown. “I suspect they will have to conclude as such,” I replied in a sad voice. “What are you doing here, and did you bring tasty, tasty snacks?”

“Um, I did not,” she said, casting me a bemused look.

“Thou ignoble strumpet!” I hissed. “I’ll bash your face in like a bag of carrots for this transgression! Assuming, you know, I get out of this dark ritual alive.”

“Ritual?” she asked in a perfectly innocent tone, like a child asking her father what ‘deepthroat’ is. “You mean those murders? I only heard of them in passing, save for the fact you were involved.” She crept closer towards me. I put my smokes and lighter away.

“Suspicious of you to be here,” I offered. “And I don’t think is a realm of coincidence. I know you for must you must be.”

Before she could do anything, I jumped in her direction. Cards didn’t even react as I shoved her against the tree and pinned her there, a murderous grin on my face. “Know what I think, little lady?” And she whimpered.

“What?” she demanded, shaking hard. Her horn took on an aura of levitation, and I replied kindly by smacking her across the face.

“The cops wanted these murders, especially of Plume, to be on the hush-hush, so there’s no way that if something this big leaked into the press that you’d only hear thereof ‘in passing’. Not to mention how you’re suddenly here out of nowhere in the dark and acting so innocent.” I tsked at her, shaking my head. “A reasonable pony wouldn’t conclude much thereof. Unless you are a red herring. But I’m so tired of this whole shtick that I’ll bark up any tree at this point.”

“You’re insane!” she yelped. “Holly asked me to come pick you up when you got out!”

A bug bit me on the neck as I said, “How would she have known that I’d get out at all? If this were a logical world, she’d’ve been here in your stead, up front. You’re involved with this event, somehow. And you’re going to tell me about the ritual, and about… and about…” My words trailed off. Bug bite? Bullshit. It took me a second to properly register that there was a needle jabbed into my neck. And it was acting fast. Far faster than most. Odds were, I was going to pass out and come to tied up.

I looked back at Cards to see her horn lit up as she mouthed the word “sorry!”

Oddly, my last thought before I fell to the ground, before everything got blurry and incomprehensible, was shit, I forget to hide a knife up my asshole.

|— ☩ —|

“Moon, glorious moon,” came the voice of Lime Light as I groggily found my senses returning to me. I was about to tell her to shut up before I killed her only other surviving male family member with a baseball bat, but that’s when I noticed I was lying on my back, and high above me was the reddish face of the moon.

I tried to move, but apparently Lime Light knew how to tie a stallion down. My eyes fluttered around, rolling and rolling as I tried to get a fix on where I was. Looked dark and dingy, reminding me of a warehouse, the skylight high above me having long ago lost its glass.

“Full, fat, bloody moon,” she went on in a singsong as I heard the sound of sharpening knives. “Night as bright as daylight, moonlight filtering down across the world, bring joy, joy, joy. Don’t you agree, Altair?”

Lime Light’s visage appeared above me, smiling as she held a large knife. “Come now, I know you’re awake. I used smelling salts.” When I tried to speak, only a muffle came out. She blinked, then pulled something out of my mouth. A rag, as it were. “Sorry. You were saying?”

“I could really go for a pork sandwich right about now,” I told her matter-of-factly. Her expression faltered, like I’d entirely thrown her off her game. And thinking thereabout, I probably had. “It’d help me think. Fine bread. Perfect blend of pork and pickle. Can you tell I’m hungry?”

“You’re supposed to be afraid,” she replied with a frown.

“Yeah, mayhap. Sad news for you, I’m not. Like, I feel nothing right save for my hunger. Hey, Lime Light, mind getting me some take-out before you try to murder me? Thankee, sweetie. You’re the best.”

“No, no!” she shouted, stomping her hooves. “This isn’t how this is supposed to work!” Snarling, she pointed her knife between me and herself as she pretty much yelled at me. “You, victim, afraid. Me, the victimizer victorious. You, mark on the chest. Me, created to hunt you and finish the ritual on the marked ones.”

“Ah,” I said in a dull voice. “Me Jericho. You girl. Me big hungry. Zug, zug. Am I speaking your language properly?”

“Gah! Why do I even bother?”

“Because annoying murderers is one of my many illustrious pastimes,” I replied.

“I’m no murderer!” she retorted with an indignant tone, thrust her nose up into the air.

“Deceits! You were saying that you need to kill the ones with the strange tattoos here to perform the ritual? A tattoo I did not have before I fell into his place, mind you. So you know things that implicate you as a murderer. You are a liar!”

“I’m not a liar, either. And for the record, Holly really did ask me to come get you. It was a little too perfect, to be honest,” she finished with a little laugh. “But I’m no murderer. The thing inside me, well, that might be another story. Before it jumped to me a little after you vanished. But before that, it was in two ponies before. One of which was Plume. His was actually a suicide. Fine work, really.”

“Ah. So you’re not Lime Light but a thing inside of her?”

“Again, wrong,” she said, waggling a hoof. “I am Lime Light, but now I know what the thing inside me knows. So, therefore I know what’s best and what I’ve got to do. Simple, really. Gosh I really never did realize how much I wanted to stab you a lot until this little thing found me, too!”

“Huh. You know, I never would’ve guessed. This whole ordeal came straight out of left field.”

“I know, right? Anyways, now that you know that I know eldritch secrets, are you afraid?”

“Neeeemmeehhhrrr…. I’ll think about it,” I replied. “You’re just kind of the least intimidating bad guy ever. Although if you got me that pork sandwich, I might be willing to comply.”

“Shut up!”

“:Lime Light, just because nopony wants to get in your pants because you look like Cards doesn’t mean you should go around murdering ponies! And the sooner you forget about that, the sooner you can realize that murdering me won’t solve your perma-virginity problem.” I tried to raise my head, but I was bound down to whatever surface I was on—a table?—by the forehead. But I got far enough to see that I was naked, and that my limbs had been bound by tape, it seemed. Lots of duct tape.

“And really, Lime Light? Really? I’m naked. What are you going to do, demand that I give you head or you’ll kill me?” I scoffed. She was now slowly grinding her teeth. “You know what, you try that. Just try that. The coroner’s report will read you died from having your labia ripped out by a wild honey badger.” I laughed at her. “If I’m going to die one way or the other, where’s the harm in being belligerent thereabout? So, what’s it—”

She clamped a hoof over my maw and hissed out, “Shut your fucking mouth, Altair!” It was at that moment that I felt her knife slide up again my face, slicing a wound into my cheek. “I’m not going to take any more of your shit.”

“Hey, while you’re really particularly evil, and thus in an expository mood, could you riddle me something?” I asked. “What role was Plume’s and unnamed earther in this whole thing?”

Lime Light sighed hard. “Part of the trifecta; an earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn are needed to finish this business.” She licked the bloody knife, and I found myself deeply hoping she’d cut her tongue and die. “All must be united in death, for they are marked with the symbols.” She pointed to my chest. “See? Only then can this whole ordeal come to an end.”

“And my role in all this?”

Cards sighed and rubbed her forehead. “A construction partially of your mind, partially out of the ritual, Jericho. With your death, your body will be fine, but your mind will be no more.”

“Nifty,” I said, totally unfettered. “So. How’ve you been? And the kids? I see. And your daughter? A raging slut now? I see. Lovely,” I went on, nodding my head as politely as I could.

She put the knife above my heart, holding it there with her telekinesis. “I could end your whole mind right here. Right now,” she threatened, sounding about as dangerous as a kitten with a hangnail. “So stop fucking with me!”

“Yeah, you do that. I’m waiting for my deux ex machina.”

“What?” she asked, one of her ears drooping.

“As soon as you raise your knife to plunge it into me, I guarantee some friend of mine is going to burst hereinto and save me. Ten bits say she’s standing on the other side of whatever door you have in this room, waiting to be an eleventh hour heroine.”

She chuckled. “Unlikely. I made sure I wasn’t followed.”

I groaned, and said back to her, “Moon, glorious moon.”

“You know what, I’m sick of your shit!” she blurted out, and raised her knife high.

I yawned. “See, you say that.”

Out from the darkness of my peripheral vision came a figure cloaked in shadow. She was late, that was for sure. And—“Gotcha,” Lime Light giggled, spinning around and bringing her knife to bear against the figure. “Mister loudmouth here really needs to learn to shut up. Heard you coming from a mile away.”

“Yes, you did,” Selena replied. I wasn’t sure what happened in that next movement, but as it seemed to me, Selena kicked Lime Light in the elbows. As the little mare fell down, my would-be rescuer grabbed the knife and tossed it up at me.

“Danke!” I said as I grabbed the knife in my telekinesis. As I used to cut the bonds holding my head back, it struck me how stupid it was that Lime Light hadn’t done anything to prevent me from using telekinesis. Not even some sort of anti-magic thingy or even one of those drugs that makes unicorn unable to use their namesake for as long as the lasting drug is in effect. Even when she was an evil serial killer in another dimension/dream thing, Cards was incompetent. Yay me.

I sliced off the bonds holding my arms and chest in place, then quickly slid the blade through the ones that held my legs and thighs down tight. The knife was oddly effective at cutting the tape. I pushed myself off the table.

Lime Light and Selena were dueling, hoof-to-hoof. It was actually rather embarrassing for Selena; you’d think that Cards, at least someone with the same body if not name, wouldn’t be any trouble for her, she really sucked. Like, wow, she was terrible. With a casual hop in my step, I went over and got behind Lime Light. I tried to whistle, but being that I couldn’t whistle, all I did was sort of splatter a bit of spit on the little mare’s back.

She turned around, I smiled as I wrapped my arms around her neck and squeezed hard, strangling her in a headlock. The mare tried to struggle, but I very successfully kicked out her legs and threw her to the ground. Still naked, I pounced atop her and slugged her in the jaw.

I raised my knife, meeting her eyes with a grin. “Wait, no, Jericho, don’t!” she pleaded.

“Don’t worry, I’m only kidding,” I replied amicably, before I plunged the massive, serrated knife straight into her wrist, deep enough to penetrate the wooden floor. I hopped up and stomped on the knife, driving the blade up to its hilt down into her flesh and the wooden floor below, pinning her. “I wouldn’t dream of killing you, dear.”

Standing up, I gave Selena a smile. An honest one, not the murderous ones I’d been giving Lime Light. “See? I knew you’d turn up. Question is, what took you, and why?”

She at first didn’t respond. The mare was too busy wearing a horrified expression and looking down at Lime Light, who herself was screaming as she frantically tried in vain to alternatively pull the knife out and stop the bleeding.

I poked Selena.

“Stars above, Jericho,” she whispered hoarsely. “That’s… that’s…”

“I didn’t want to kill her; she might know something useful,” I said. “And I saw no other immediate options. I did what I had to do.”

“You still have all that tape you’re wearing—you could have tied her down!”

I scoffed. “And go naked? Are you crazy?” I looked over to the table whereto I’d been taped, and next to it was a little table of medical instruments. Including a needle, a spool of thread, and a very convenient syringe. A quick check to make sure it was full later and I injected it into Lime Light’s jugular. She was out cold post haste.

“That…” Selena tried, “was not something I ever wanted to see. So much blood.” She turned her eyes to me. “Honestly, I suspected what this was when I noticed it, and even more so when I entered this… dream-like state. You seemed to constantly be near trouble recently, and I thought at first you were an unwitting victim in this whole matter. A witting pawn at worst.”

I shifted my weight and looked at her. “I’m not sure what point bothers me more: the fact that I don’t know what you’re thinking, or something about how you knew what was going on this whole time and didn’t tell me. Because I think you know a lot more than what you’ve been leading on.”

“You don’t get to where I am without having to learn a thing or two about dark magic, like it or not,” she replied with a hefty sigh. “And so when I found this… thing, I suspected its intents were an obscure take on a summoning ritual. But after all this, and judging from what you know about dark magic already—”

“You now think I’m less victim and more villain?”

“In a matter of speaking.”

There came a pregnant pause. Selena shuffled in place. She looked between me and the knife pinning Lime Light to the floor.

“You seem to be trying to determine if I’m mad or sane,” I offered.

Selena shook her head. And after a moment, she spoke. “No, that much is becoming clear fast.”

“Good,” I told her. “Shows you’re capable of some basic common sense, which is a lot for most ponies.”

“I let you take that book from the Royal Archives because I was curious; I wanted to see where it would lead. And because it was fun, being a bit of a bad girl. I suspected it had something to do with my investigation into Songnam and Sleepy Oaks. Not sure how, and I’m still not, but I had a gut feeling.” She sighed. “Honestly, it’s why I let Lime Light here take you like I did. I needed to investigate what would occur, and it had to play out naturally, with minimal involvement from myself. So that in the end I could understand better what was going on.”

Cocking a brow and leaning against the table, I said, “I resent the idea that I’m a sort of guinea pig for your curiosity.”

Her eyes never left the moon, glorious moon. “Jericho, right now I’m trying to decide if I still think you’re a good person. Just tell me, I prithee, why do all this? Why steal the book? Why get mixed up in these dark rituals in the first place? You’re clearly no hapless victim. You know a lot more than I do here, and that’s both saying something and a rather scary thought.”

I didn’t reply at first; I only licked my gums and thought for a moment. She never once interrupted me. The mare just let me think. “I am a monster, Selena. Don’t let me ever fool you into thinking otherwise.” I gave that a moment to sink in. “But I exist to pay evil unto evil, to purge the wicked. I am he who sells his soul for the innocent, who sacrifices his blood so those without sin may prosper.”

“You’re not answering the question,” she replied forcefully, and I found myself struggling not to grit my teeth.

“Because my last adventure broke me, mind, body, and spirit.” Not to mention the tons of other people I broke. “Back in the real world, there’s a sad little orphan waiting for me—” to screw her life up even more “—to find her and set things right.” Even if the status quo of a perpetually unlaid and miserable Cards is hilarious. Some things I probably just can’t change. Even if I wanted to. I nodded at the unconscious mare. “This monster is wearing her skin, that of the orphan.”

“And if mayhap I can’t set Cards right then… the least I can do is encourage her and see if she can become the true mare she’s meant to be, rather than the poor thing she was when last I saw her. I don’t want to screw up her life more. I really do want to do good. But the universe will probably twist it all around and make it so I ruin her so she’s even worse off than before,” I added with a mirthless chuckle.

Selena said nothing, only looked at me with solemn eyes.

“There was darkness afoot in the Crystal Empire, where I’d gone to restore myself so as to set myself right. I had to get thereinto in order to stop it. I regret nothing, and I know I’ve done bad to get here.” Deep down inside, I really wanted this conversation to just go away so I could get back to being productive. But something told me this was a mare I’d meet again some point, and that she would remember me. And in those cases, it’s best to make a good impression.

“You’re on a quest that can only end in death, Jericho,” she spoke quietly.

“No, I’m not. A quest is righteous, selfless, with heroic aims. They are good; they help people.” I shook my head. “This is an obsession. Those hurt people. It is only by pure coincidence that the people my obsession most often hurts are the wicked, vile, and cruel. I’m no more a hero than a murderer whose victims just so happen to be worse villains than he. And even for those I help, those I call friends, companions, or otherwise, little good lies in store for them.”

“How do you mean?” she asked. It was clear I had her interest at this point. Good. It helped to play up the dark, angsty hero card from time to time. And what I was saying wasn’t exactly false, either.

I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Should you want to stay safe, want to stay alive, I’ll give you some advice: if Death comes knocking on your door and asks if you know Jericho, you tell him you don’t.” I gave her as deep and meaningful a look as I could muster/bullshit. “So, when you ask me if I’m good or bad, that’s not for me to say. In this case, it’s your call.”

Silence reigned. I tried to seem dark and mysterious as I looked down at my hooves or at Cards, as if in deep, meaningful thought. Of course, the only thoughts going through my mind had something to do with tasty pork sandwiches and the clittorcock theory. Don’t ask me how those two ended up in the same thought.

Then, a miracle—the ghost of a smile flittered across Selena’s lips. “I like how you artfully managed to dodge the question again. You’re used to dealing with the hopefully naïve, aren’t you? The kind who just eat up that kind of spiel, right?”

I gave her a little laugh. “I could lie and try to defend myself, but, well…”

She rolled her eyes. “‘Don’t bullshit a bullshiter’, Jericho. I’ll offer you a modicum of trust for the moment. Maybe you can’t explain, maybe it’s too personal. Benefit of the doubt against what might be my better judgement. But if you cross me, so help me, you’ll regret it for the rest of what will become your nasty, brutish, and short existence.” And then, with a cute little smile and a wink, she added, “Are we clear?”

“Aye, ma’am, like crystal.”

“Now then,” she started with renewed energy, “there’s still the matter of how to get you out of this mess.”

“So… back to square one, basically?”

“More or less, yes.”

I looked down at my mostly naked body, to the symbol on my chest. The one I know I hadn’t possessed in the real world. “This symbol. Those wearing it need all be sacrificed to end this whole thing, aye?”

“Yes, it needs to be a part of them. I think. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen something of this like,” she said, a hoof on her chin as she looked around.

“And if there were another pony, another unicorn therewith who was sacrificed…? Speaking hypothetically, of course,” I replied, my eyes drifting to Cards. Lime Light. Whatever. I kept thinking of her as Cards where really I needed to alienate her as Lime Light.

“Well, I guess it would work. I think. I don’t really know.”

I moved over to the little surgical table, scanning over its contents once again. “You may want to look away, ma’am,” I said, picked up Cards’ unconscious form and hoisting her only the table, taking care to keep the knife within her body to prevent too much bleeding.

“What are you doing? Jericho, what are you doing?” she demanded as I fished out a roll of duct tape from under the table and taped Cards down as she had me.

“I’m going to complete the ritual,” I replied calmly, without inflection. Actually, I forgot to add proper tones, but still.

“What do you mean? You can’t draw a new symbol onto her! That won’t work. It has to be attached to the body to the sacrificed ponies, the original symbols, that is.”

“I cry your pardon, ma’am?”

“The goal of this kind of thing—I’ve seen it before, see?” Selena spoke faster now, more worried. “You’re the last victim because you were victim from the real world. The spell is meant to hollow your mind out, and bring forth a powerful being from the other side in its place, wearing your skin!”

“Nifty,” I said, holding up the scalpel. “Which is why I’m going to finish the ritual, and I’m going to break the game in the process.”

“What does tha—” She half-gagged, half-screamed as I jabbed the scalpel straight into my chest. Acting casual, I traced an outline of the tattoo with the blade, cutting and scraping away the flesh deeply. Blood gushed out, but what did it matter? Selena watched with horror as I quickly cut out the skin and held my tattoo up before mine own eyes.

“See?” I said, offering her the flesh. “No big deal. Now I’m no longer a victim to be.”

Then, humming a jaunty tune, I set the gory flesh down on Cards, getting a fix on the dimensions before I jabbed the scalpel into her and cut out a similarly sized chunk of skin. Now it was a race until either I bled out or the wound clotted up. I wasn’t sure which would come first. Worst part was, this was enough to wake her up.

Lime Light/Cards tried to scream, but I shoved a rag into her mouth and went out without a care. Selena went over into the corner and bravely retched. The little mare on the operating table was crying. And by the time I’d removed the chunk of flesh, she’d pissed herself.

Selena dragged herself back over to me, watching with a mix of horror and fascinating as I proceeded to stitch my tattooed flesh to Cards. “Why?” Selena croaked out.

“Because a few things. Cards here is the little girl whose life I have to make right. So, clearly, if I kill her here, the shock and horror might be enough to wake me up. Elsewise, I might have thrown this ritual off so hard that it might just break. Either way, I’m taking a third option. As always.”

“That’s… horrific!”

“I won’t sit here and be some damsel in distress you need to rescue, Selena. I’m being proactive. I’m going to save myself, and them I’m going to save Equestria. Again.”

Now, I admit freely that I am no surgeon. Sure, I was good at hacking apart flesh, but with all this slippery blood, it was hard to keep things nice and clean. Cards’ life leaked onto the floor in spades, filling the air with the metallic smell thereof. It pooled with mine own blood on the ground. There was probably something poetic thereabout, but I didn’t care. It didn’t help that she struggled and trashed, held down and nigh still by the thick straps that were now digging into her flesh. With her agonized ferocity, I half-expected the straps to cut her deeper and faster than I had.

And there. It was a rough, shoddy job, but now Cards was the marked unicorn. With red, pleading eyes, she tried to beg me not to do this as I ripped the serrated knife out of her wrist.

“I… don’t think I want to be here to see this,” Selena said. I watched as she made her way towards the other end of the room. She cast one final, solemn glance at me before heading out a door into whatever other dark corridor there was in this foreboding place.

I took Cards’ large knife and held it high above her heart. Of course, for all I tried to make this seem less horrific than it was, I couldn’t help but think back to Maiya. It seemed to easy to sacrifice Cards, as it were, but now the thought of being forced to do the same to Maiya would have horrified me in some cold, clinical way. Sentiment. That was the word for it.

Maybe it’s because I knew Maiya was real in a way this Cards wasn’t, but as I listened to her muffled screams and watched her thrash helplessly on the table, my excuses found themselves ringing hollower and hollower by the second.

But it was too late to turn back now.

The knife came down harder than hell. I felt it go through bone and into her heart. I even sensed as the heart tried uselessly to pump as the blade tore it in half, each throb ripping the organ asunder even harder.

“Sorry, kid,” I said as I tore the knife out.

Lime Light was dead. This is how it’d look like were I to actually murder Cards. I gazed at the knife, dripping with her blood. It was a strange feeling. Like a bad taste. Only instead of taste, it was the murder of somepony I was, in a weird way, almost fond of. Which was very much unlike taste, come to think. Of course, I knew it wasn’t Cards. Not really. But this image… I’d imagined killing her before, back when I honestly thought we’d been on opposite sides of the fight, with her working for evil masters.

With a weird, twisted species of amusement, it occurred to me that this was the second time I’d sacrificed Cards. Once here with mine own hooves, and once in Calêrhos to C so I could save myself and heal my wounded flesh. A little cold feeling inside me, colder than ice, reminded me of something dark. If given the choice to redo what I’d done in Calêrhos, and likely indeed here, I would sacrifice Cards again and again to suit my interests.

That’s what I told myself, and I struggled not to think any more thereabout. Because I knew if I thought about that too hard, I might reveal it for the lie it was.

I grit my teeth and swore under my breath. Fuck it, I didn’t want to kill her! I didn’t! Sure, she was a screwed-up monster inside a familiar body, but I didn’t want to kill her! I cursed the universe, knowing it’d do no good. From somewhere deep inside, a dark, toothy, and joyless grin spread across my face as a thought came to mind. There awaited me a karmic debt to pay for this and Sleepy Oaks alike. A divine punishment befitting of my sins. Retribution against me. Then I could go back to being a hero. Soon enough; I couldn’t escape it. And I couldn’t fucking wait.

“Kid, huh? How quaint.”

Immediately, I looked up to the table, the wound on my chest oozing blood harder as my heart leapt. I probably didn’t have long till I went into shock. But there was the matter of who had spoken.

The bonds of tape were gone. In fact, all the tape was. Sitting up on the table, legs crossed as she took a large bite out of an apple, was Cards. Except, one look into her red eyes told me this was not Cards, not at all. Not Lime Light. And not even whatever Lime Light became when that thing possessed her. Her eyes glowed with ambition and determination. They held a fire of casual charisma that nearly burned holes in her skull.

“Although,” she went on in the tones of predator who couldn’t decide if she wanted to seduce me or devour me bit-by-living-bit, “did you have to use so much tape? It still smarts.” She laughed and took another huge bite of her red apple. I dimly noted that her chest was not bleeding anymore, unlike mine. “Pretty brutal way to go, I’d say,” the… Cards-thing said through a mouthful of food.

She tossed the half-eaten apple aside and stood up. I stepped back from her, and she shrugged. “What, afraid of little old me? Why… Gunslinger? No, no, your proper name was… it’s Jericho, right?”

“Forgive me for playing the role of Captain Obvious, but you’re not Cards, are you?” I asked with caution, ready to leap into action in any direction should the need arise.

“There’s a simple answer, but, well, I may as well not tell. Rule of drama, you must understand,” she said with an innocent, even adorable, jostle of her shoulders, as if to say ‘who, me? I didn’t gouge his balls out with that ice-cream scooper. Nope.’ “But I’m not here to do you any harm.”

“Funny,” I said. “Because right now you might as well be holding a sign that says ‘I am new final boss’.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. Sure, I’m not the Cards you know and love, but she seems to hold you in the highest regards. At least, she did before she… well, let’s just say that C’s a liar and a backstabber; even when he does exactly what he says he’ll do, he finds a way to mess you over.”

I leaned away from her. “Who are you?”

“Oh, Jericho, I am hurt. I am Cards, but I am not. This is how she came out when C dragged her through the doorway; it is the flesh he offered unto me in exchange for… something of value, of which we’ll not speak.”

I said nothing more. Since she was clearly some sort of bad guy who had me at a disadvantage, I expected her to pounce and kill me. Honestly, any smart villain would do that; I’d otherwise totally destroy her plans, one way or another.

“Um, are you going to…?” she said, swaying her head as if to prompt me to go on some point. “Come on, questions?”

“Oh,” I said. “I figured you were going to give me some sort of evil monolog wherein you explain to me your whole evil plot and the one thing that can defeat you before trying to kill me, leading to my inevitable escape and vendetta against you. I mean, twenty minutes ago you were trying to kill me.”

She blinked, then offered me a good-natured chuckle. “Oh, no, no, no, that wasn’t me at all. That was the ritual girl. I’m the real McCoy, just like Luna over there in the other room.”

“Wait. You’re saying that’s actually…” I shook my head. “Then who are you?”

“Like I said, I don’t care to answer. But when I found out somepony was using Korweit’s old, incompetent attempt at a ritual to get me into your head, I just had to stop it. C’s production might not have been what I had wanted, but it had what I needed. But then I get here and you’ve already thrown this whole ritual off course, and, Jericho, I just love that! So innovative and fresh and exciting!” she finished with a laugh.

“Honestly,” she went on, “I was just here to stop this charade before it went on. But it’s fun to see you here. Even if your flesh is different since then.” She pointed to the blood-encrusted, but very much still bleeding, wound on my chest. “But, seeing as how I don’t want to have to forcibly merge my mind with another one so soon, I’d think it’s best that I let this thing end before any other unforeseen consequences pop up, hmm?”

“But who are you?” I demanded. “I want out of here, aye—but who or what are you?”

She stepped in close to me. I felt as if I’d have to stoop if she got any closer, but were she to do that, she’d be holding herself against me. “Well, I suspect our paths will cross soon enough that you’ll learn my name.”

I reached out and, hesitantly, grabbed her hoof. “Do not play games with me, ignoble strumpet! I demand you tell it me!” It was a gamble; it felt dangerous, and I couldn’t even say why I was doing. I just needed to know who this monster was. Of course, a name was a powerful thing to kenn, and infinitely helpful when trying to research ways to fight a monster.

The mare was quiet for a moment before her face scrunched up in a species of scowl. “Damn her, this other mare. Cards Greaves. She has—or rather, had—such a soft spot for you.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Oh, just keep thinking me as the dark lady you always have, just as the lovestruck Korweit does. But if you really must know…” She leaned in close, and I did indeed stoop to make sure I heard her better.

“I am the Queen of Graves, but you may call me… Shall we say, Eosphora?”

That was when I gave the single most appropriate response in the history of forever. “Well, fuck.”

Level up!

New Perk: Eosphoric Trauma—Wow. Were you anybody else, you’d probably end up being a catatonic wreck, but because you somehow really screwed things up so hard, you survived with relatively minor mental trauma. You now have a 30% bonus to mental fortitude and gain bonus willpower (is that a thing in this game?), but at the tremendous cost of now almost wondering about the idea of what it might be like to think about feeling bad for Cards, which is enough to shake you to the core. Oh, and you might have a teensey weensy problem with the Queen of Graves being a part of your mind now. We’re not really sure. Cross your fingers and hope not!

Chapter 41 — Death of a Teuton

Chapter 41: Death of a Teuton

“When it rains, it pours.”

Cold.

Like someone has just spent an inordinate amount of time stuffing my throat and asshole full of ice. My hooves all feel like they’d been thrown into buckets of liquid nitrogen. I try to move. Nothing happens. Pressure on my ankles and wrists. Am I in the crucified position?

Shit, I can’t even see. It takes effort to open my eyes, and even then they hurt. Sore. No doubt red. Infection? Drugs? But the vision’s so hazy. A frigid, off-white surgical blankness. I think, trying to figure out where I am, how I got here. But the haze extends into my brain. Incorporeal. So quiet, too. You’d think I’d be able to hear my heartbeat, but no such luck.

Am I alive? Am I dead?

It takes minutes for my senses to acclimate themselves better. Maybe seconds. Not that I can really tell. My back is at least warm, against softness. A bed? I try to move again, but again I am restrained. Feels like leather pressure. Straps?

I think I’ve pissed myself at some point; my crotch is wet, but as icy as everything else.

I blink a lot. Every eyeball flicker results in pain. Only cure is to hold them still and stare blankly ahead. At the ceiling? Yes, ceiling. I am on my back, which would make sense, seeing as I believe I am on a bed. Don’t know of any vertical beds. Eyes still hurt.

Wait. Eyes. Plural. I have two eyes again! And they ache. Am I just acclimating to having regained my lost eye? I shift my neck. There’s a weight different on my forehead. Subtle. Something I’ve lived without for too long a time now. Horn.

Baby, Jericho’s a two-eyed unicorn once more.

Breathe deep. Lungs don’t want to comply. I make them. As I look around, I feel my vision cleaning up slightly. My arms are indeed strapped down. I try to think hard enough to telekinetically undo them.

I fail. I can’t focus hard enough; my horn sort of fizzles and sparks. And suddenly I feel exhausted. I give up trying. Sleep never comes, though I feel it should.

I lay there for seemingly all of eternity. My head isn’t right. I must be drugged. Dead? All the same. Why do I keep thinking in sentence fragments?

Don’t know. Won’t know

Don’t know. Won’t know.

But… there, a spark! A mare in Cards’ body. Cards? Yes, she. I know her. Irrelevant, she. But the one in her flesh, Eosphora. She spoke to me. Told me things I can’t recall. Important. I need to write this stuff down. But I seem to have forgotten my pen. And my distant body, in frustration, pisses the bed again. Typical. At least the urine’s warm.

I stop trying to struggle, both in mind and in body. Can’t even control bladder. Unable to hold a solid thought. Just fragments. Known ideas without context. Like sunlit quadrupeds, gyroscopes, and the basic suffering that pervades all existence. Just things I know, but I can’t recall the message Eosphora gave me. If it even was a message. Don’t even have any proof that actually happened.

Why’s the room so dark? I know I can see now. More like a forgotten morgue than a… what is this? Hospital bed? Like the scene where I woke up as Altair Penrose? Looks like it a fair deal, yes.

I lie there for so long. Just listing things I know, but can’t contextualize. The urine eventually grows as cold as the rest of my surroundings. I allow my eyes to close and find myself in the limbo between wakefulness and sleep. Slowly, the mental clouds part.

|— ☩ —|

My name was, is, and will be Jericho Amadeus Faust. It was a name that suited me. At this very moment of time, I was strapped down to a bed. And in case you’ve never been in this situation, allow me to assure you that it pretty much sucks in every conceivable way. Though it still beat being cuffed to a radiator by the Cherrypillar.

A distant thought echoed the sentiment that I wasn’t sure how long it’d been since I finally axed that harpy. A lot had happened, and some of that was in a strange mirror where time behaved funny compared to the real world. Now, here I was, my long-winded quest over with, my flesh restored, and… what now?

My chest erupted with a sudden feeling of hollowness, the kind one gets after having just missed a life-changing opportunity. Or had just royally screwed up the rest of your life.

I needed to get out of this bed and resume getting neck-deep in the fray.

But… that could wait, if only for a moment. I banished the urge to commit reckless self-endangerment. Allowing my eyes to close and emptying my head, I simply lay there, enjoying the nothingness: the calm, the lack of a pressing urge to save the day or a call to action, the sense of nothing trying to kill me at this very moment. It was a rare feeling. Hard to recall the last time I was allowed such a moment

Somepony clicked her tongue. Just like that, reality reasserted itself. It was not my fate to relax.

I lifted my head up. There in the corner, sitting on some sort of table or desk along the wall, was the mare in black, my very own blue-eyed witch. The shadows bathed her, but I still recognized the phantasmal girl with the devious half-smirk on her face. She made a gesture as if dismissing me with an odd shake of the wrist

I just stared at her. With the harsh creak of a voice not used in ages, I said, “Tell me: are you real, or have I just gone batty?”

No reply.

“Right. I’ve gone mental,” I said with a sigh. “Lovely. Or… maybe I just don’t have voices in my head. Yet. I always knew I was going to catch dementia one of these days.”

She continued to sit there. Menacingly.

“Great. I’m talking to a figments of my imagination.”

Gritting my teeth, I came to the understanding that my wrists felt off. I was strapped there, and the flesh under felt raw. On a whim, I flexed my arm, pulling at the restraints. Something gave way. It wasn’t a quick snap, nor was it easy, but with enough force, the strap broke.

There came an air of stillness as I considered the implications. My eyes went to the blue-eyed mare, and I wondered if she had a name. I was sure she’d given me it, but I couldn’t recall. In any case, she remained still as ice.

I unbuckled my other wrist with my free hoof, then went for my legs. Halfway there, I recalled that I had my horn. Last I checked, horns had a bit of range. From here, that extended to my restraints.

Sticking my tongue out and biting it, I focused hard on my lower restraints. There was a slight light, a bit of a crackle, and then a fizzle of sparks like the world’s most uninspiring ejaculation.

A wave of hot pain surged through my head as I yelped. Ave Laurentia, what was that!? I found myself panting, suddenly tired. My stomach growled for the first time in, like, ever. I wasn’t even aware it even could do that.

Alright. So. Reality check. Horn’s on the fritz, I was near starving, smelled like piss, remained partially strapped down to a bed, and was now crazy with a capital “My pet chicken shall make a fine senator!”

The blue-eyed mare continued to sit there, so I up and shouted, “Don’t you mock me, you perfidious floozy! And no, my sudden rage is no indication of innately pugnacious characteristics!”

Unnessarily complex words made me feel like a sane and rational male. I got back up resumed undoing my straps manually. As providence would have it, the door opened. Oh, and I discovered the room had a door beyond the bed.

In walked a crystal stallion in a black suit and matching cape. He was a true king of fashion, provided he were an edgy teenager or undertaker. Our eyes met, and he looked extremely tired just then. With a sigh, he said, “I always knew it would come to this.”

He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a wooden stake.

I blinked. “Cry your pardon?”

“Unholy abomination of dead flesh given unto life, I smite thee!” the rather queer chap shouted, stake raised, as he charged.

“Everything about this sucks,” I moaned, tugging at my last restraints.

“From the depths of life, I strike at thee!” And so he did.

“No!” I yelped, awkwardly flinging myself to the end of the bed. With one leg still tied down, this had the incredibly undesirable result of literally flipping the bed end-over. It then collapsed on top of me.

Using my chin as sort sort of stubby leg in addition to my other limbs, I crawled forwards, the bed resting uncomfortably atop me. I was now a bed turtle. No one could stop me! Oh God, I think my head just brushed the wet space where I’d pissed myself. Ave Laurentia, the smell of urine—why?!

Mr. Murder at that point realized a turtle’s one weakness, and promptly flipped the bed over. My restrained leg went with it, and in moments I was hanging off the side, the straps painfully digging into my legs. Also, it should have dawned on me much earlier, but I was naked. Very much so naked.

I looked over to the blue-eyed mare aaaand of course the crazed figment of my imagination had ditched me. Because everyone, even the made-up ones, leaves me.

“Foul cretin of the underdark, I smite thee!” the guy yelled and I flailed around helplessly. He stabbed at my heart with the stake.

It sort of bruised the bone that protected the heart. He pretty much just stood there, staring at each other in a pose which could only be described as the least homoerotic male sex position ever possibly conceived. Despite all the action and doubtless spurts of adrenaline I must have received, my heart felt strangely, almost supernaturally calm.

“So, um,” he tried. “I never really thought this part through. Kinda just imagined you’d burst into a puff of ash or turn into a giant snake of some description at this point.”

We proceeded to just stare at each other, both of us pretty sure that something was supposed to happen that was not this, but neither of us really willing to take the initiative. But at length, I figured I had to go first, because why not.

“In other words, you just assumed touching my sternum with a really blunt stake would simply obliterate me?”

“More like never imagined an undead monster would have enough calcium in their diet to create a functionally strong sternum.”

I slapped the stake away. “Okay, one: you’re stupid. Two: who in the Nine Hells are you?”

“The mortician.” He looked around as if suddenly remembering he had an important thing to do at that place by the stuff. “You were dead, so I was tasked with mortician-y stuff. But then it turns out you were an undying abomination against all that is holy, as I knew I would one day encounter, and so—” he shrugged “—here we are.”

“I see…”

“Wait, hold on. Lemme try again!” And he rose the stake.

“No, no, don’t you dare—ow, goddamn you and everyone you love to the infernal rape pits in the deepest level on the secret tenth level of Hell, ahh!”

“Nope. Trying harder did not work,” he added slowly, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

I slapped the stake out of his hooves and kicked him off. The weirdo stood there, looking like he was about to be forced into an arranged marriage with a total bore of a wife. So I reached up and smacked that stupid look off his face, too.

“What is wrong with you?!” I barked. “Is nobody in this entire country even remotely sane or competent?”

I pulled myself up and finally finished unclasping myself from the last restraint. Then I promptly slid off onto the ground. Wasting no time, I bounced to my hooves, on high alert.

We locked eyes. “Don’t you dare so much as look at me, you little pencil-dicked, mouth breathing son of a syphilitic pissant whore!”

Mustering himself, all he could do was stare at me, slack-jawed. It was as though he’d never been insulted before in his life and my words had been enough to shatter his entire worldview, leaving him a broken shell of a pony about to be colonized by feral cats, pissing and shitting everywhere.

With a grunt, I looked over to where the blue-eyed mare had been moments ago. In her place were my bags. After a quick check to make sure the other bastard was still frozen in place, I went to my things and get clothed.

Next to the bag was a little bottle of cologne labeled “Eau de Jericho”. I didn’t care; I applied it. It got rid of the smell of urine, at least. The bottle came with a little note. But I tore it off and ate it. Like hell I was going to subject myself to the words of a being a little north of my understanding.

Perhaps I should have cared, but really, the only thing on my mind was the thought of a good sandwich and maybe a day at some ritzy spa. Because up to this moment, I’ve had to deal with more shite that any person should ever have to deal with. Maybe I had died, but now was some kind of zombie messiah figure. For all I cared, Celestia herself could have burst in here and declared her intent to fornicante me with her ever-growing clittorcock.

The blue-eyed mare and my guardian angel could go fuck themselves for a day.

As I finished adjusting my duster, the bandana from werekind Dust, and my hat was on correctly, I spoke aloud to the psycho pony in a cold, steely tone that could have given him frostbite. “You. Leave me be. Tell the others what happened here. And strongly imply I am in no goddam mood for their shit at this moment. Are we clear?”

He swallowed hard. “Crystal pony clear.”

My eye twitched. Slowly, I turned to face him. “On second thought, I’m going to kick your ass, and then you go do all those others things.”

|— ☩ —|

Sandwich, a hot bath, maybe a ponypedi for my newly restored hooves. Oh yeah, Snechta’s spell had fixed that, too. No more weird freaky skinwalker arm. There was probably something ominous about that, ike the idea that his arm had walked off and was now stalking me. That fit C’s modus operandi. But nothing was stopping me. No deep introspective thoughts, worldly musing, or revelations that the heavens had parted and my angel wanted me to go fetch him the newspaper so he could read the funnies.

Not even walking past my own eulogy.

I entered the main room of the mountain temple, the one with the little hot spring lake with the tree-holding island at its center. Absolutely packed with crystal ponies, all with their attention on Snechta, herself giving some sort of speech that referenced her title for me. Because nobody could be bothered to learn I had a name.

All one could do was shrug, and swagger with a tall, confident posture towards the exit. Choo choo, all aboard the train to NotGivingAShitville.

In a way, it was sort of amusing to watch the ripple effect from the first pony who recognized me spread to everyone else, even though I guarantee most of them couldn’t see me clear enough to make me out. Herd mentality at its most subtle.

Finally, it hit Snechta like a ton of undercooked meat and meat by-products. Needless to say, not a pretty sight. I slowed, innocently looked around, then made a “who, me?” gesture.

“Look away right now and resume your business,” I called out. “Or else I’ll burn down the entire crystal empire.”

Nothing.

“No, really. You think I’m exaggerating but I’m not. Have you seen what I’ve done so far? Because that’d be a walk in a bloody park and well subpar the course for me.”

Very quickly, the vast majority looked away from me, seeming to examine their extremely interesting hooves or their neighbor’s strange phallic-shaped cutie mark or whatever.

Between me and the exit stood the rest of the crowd. I just walked into it, following a straight line, and watched as people got out of my way. Now was not a time to give a damn about Snechta, Lady Erysa, or whatever the hell whacky “take over the Crystal Empire” scheme those two were doubtlessly trying to hatch up this week. Though I did wonder which of the two was the smart one, and which the idiot—as per cliché rules.

At the room’s exit, just before the staircase leading into the great antechamber, Snechta finally made it to me. I gave her a contemptuous, but overall exhausted look, and carried on.

She tried pleading. Demanded I stop. Resorting, in the end, to biting the tail of my duster and trying to pull me back. She even grabbed my leg.

I spun around quick. Before she could even stop biting my duster, I lowered myself and uppercut her straight in the ovaries. Probably hard enough to impregnate her with a hoof. She let go, and I swear to On High flew nearly head-over-tail onto the ground.

“Let me alone!” I growled.

Snechta remained silent there on the ground, tears welling in her eyes. She slowly and shakily rose to her hooves like a newborn fawn who’d just been kicked in the nuts.

Silently and with a cold lack of expression, I stepped over her and continued on my merry way

“You… you were dead,” she croaked out in a hoary whisper. “I saw you there, without pulse, without breath, without life. You were dead! A corpse!”

I offered a grunt. “Yeah, probably.” And I just jauntily strolled onwards.

|— ☩ —|

Everything edible in the Crystal Empire sucked. I mean, like, it was as if pure evil and pure blandness teamed up to create the ultimate dish, and then this food became the only edible thing available in the empire at all. And then they put that unholy abomination of food between two slices of poorly-made bread, garnished it with misery, and put a glove over a glove over your tongue when you ate it. A glove full of raw sewage.

Didn’t help that everypony was staring at me, turning a calm mid-morning into a game of how many people I had to stare down to eat the wretched sin they dared call a sandwich. I mean, where was the meat? No variety at all. Even those unreasonably sugary crystal berries would have been a better main ingredient to this sandwich.

I ended up hungrier than when I’d begun, and deeply, deeply homesick. Because the Reich knew how to prepare food. I put down at my table money for the food, and asked for the check, purely as a formality.

Then I got the check. Read it. This prompted a harsh swear followed by my plate flying across the room and shattering into a million pieces upon the wall.

Why? Well, I’ll give you a hint. The check didn’t have any numbers on it. There were words, in fact. And it ended with “P.S. Bring me the paper; I want to read the funnies”.

Author's Note

Footnote: 0% to next level. You didn’t do shit today. And no, punching Snechta doesn’t count. She’s so pathetic that assuming you’d get rewarded for hurting her would be like expecting to score massive experience points for being mean to Cards: deeply satisfying, but ultimately a pointless endeavor.

Chapter 42 — Lady

Chapter 42: Lady

“But perhaps you didn't have the whole story.”

Map.

Sure, I mean, there was the receipt that ended with the note about fetching the paper, but attached via paperclip to it was a supremely folded children’s coloring map. Possibly because I accidentally ordered my sandwich from the kiddie menu. Not my fault the Crystal Empire doesn’t label stuff well.

Unfurled, it was… God, Crystal folk had no idea how to make maps. There was no north, south, or anything. In fact, the very top of the map was Snechta’s mountain temple, which I was pretty sure was more westerly than any other direction.

There was a spot marked with red… was it crayon? It was crayon, alright; my guardian angel shares a pastime with the majority of tiny children. Good to know. But once place was marked “You are here”, and this other place was marked “Go here”.

Upon the reverse side was a crude drawing of Korweit sodomizing me while holding a banana and a box labeled “turtles”. The captions here read “This will probably end up happening if you don’t go to the place and look for three things necessary to stop the Voice in the Dark.”

I read all of this in the mid-morning sun, since my expletive had gotten me thrown out of the restaurant, and I wasn’t in the mood to throat-punch some innocent service mare just for doing her job.

One of these days, I was going to found the Hero’s Union. A worker’s union for people who are constantly stuck in the role of hero, whether they like it or not. We’ll picket and go on strike whenever we’re taken advantage off, even if that means the bad guy get to win for once, because we deserve some respect.

So, with that in mind, of course I grabbed the paper on my way, a copy of the Manehattaner. I didn’t care to read it, but having it felt like I was at least going to rack up that experience. Or maybe I could stockpile it—like that time I tried saving up my sleep by keeping myself drugged out of my mind on sleeping pills and remained asleep for the better part of a week, then spent the next week awake up until I collapsed from exhaustion.

Good times, I’d say.

What didn’t make for good times was trying to follow my angel’s map. Errand boy I may be; reader of broken tourist maps for kiddies I was not.

I paused as I walked down some nameless Côrint street, the Crystal Castle looming ever in the skyline. Somepony walked by, and I demanded to them, “What does it mean?!” And threw the map at her. She promptly screamed and ran off.

“Well, you’re no help,” I said with a sigh.

Distant jingling of a bell perked my ears. Rounding the corner, I spied a mare in robes standing by a collection bin, asking for donations via the mystical language of incessant bells. She gave me the sense of being an agent of Snechta is some way or form.

“Amazing that you’re just allowed to ask for donations to a terrorist organization right here in broad daylight,” I offered.

“I’m sorry, but…” the mare, looking up at me, trailed off. The face she wore went utterly blank in that way that implied some heavy mental gears were rustily clanking away in her mind.

“Oh hey, you’re that’s one priestess mare who tried to make me give money to your dopey cult that first day I got here,” I said.

Immediately, she grabbed her donation bin and spend off into an alley. And all before I could traumatize her. Again. Though, I had to admit, for as big city as Côrint was, I had the odd habit of running into ponies I knew or into incredibly improbable circumstances. Hello, meeting Lady Erysa.

I bit the corner of my lip. It remained as fact that my guardian angel clearly had at least some influence here. He’d gotten me this note, at least. Was it not then plausible that he utilized other subtle machinations to push onto me scenarios which, for any other pony, would be so ludicrously unlikely as to never happen?

There came a little sinking in the bit of my gut. The very same kind you got just before a pressing existential conundrum. Unfortunately for my inner philosopher, the idea of Korweit violently sexing up my ass loomed in the back of my head. But more importantly, so did the terrifying mental image of Snechta’s whacky evil schemes actually succeeding if I didn’t screw her over. Imagine, ponies thinking Snechta was actually competent. That kind of threat focused me back on my bullshit little map.

With a sign, I sat down on the sidewalk, propped open the map, and gave it a good read. Then another. And a few more. Until I was sure I knew where I was going. Or at least the general correct direction.

|— ☩ —|

Four hours and at least three ruined childhoods later, I finally made it. The midday sun hung high above, heating up the cold winter air. Still felt well below freezing, though, just a little a bit better.

That was the good news. The other half of the tale forgot to include that what I was now looking at was a door by the sidewalk. A sizable door, don’t get me wrong, but a large locked door. It was almost in the middle of nowhere, on a street that looked to be in the more ragged side of town, where the elegant architecture of the inner city gave way to practical concrete and near rotting timbers.

It was a city in decay. A place that must have stood as a warzone years ago, been hastily, shoddily rebuilt, and then left to the sands of time. Sure, this particular street looked more well-to-do than some, but what did that matter?

So, there was me, a door, a little awning above the door, and a red carpet going down the sidewalk, similarly covered up. And like I said, the only conceivable way into the place was locked.

Of course, that meant I had to break in. I reached into my pack and, after some digging, pulled out my lockpick set. By instinct, I tried to telekinetically use it. A light, a shine, and a fizzle and a pop. Everything got all blurry for a moment, and I felt as though my head was liable to float off my shoulders.

With a grunt, I dug further, found my vodka, and took a swig. It burned like all hells, but it made me feel just a bit better. Returning everything to my pack, I slumped down to the ground. There I sat, a blank look on my face. Just staring into the aether.

At long last, I punched the wall, screaming, “Goddamit!” with such hateful vigor that even I was surprised. I quelled the upstart feeling with more heavy duty grain alcohol. The thought occurred that maybe this was how Cards felt: useless, weak, and with the only cure needing an unethical dosage of alcohol to make work. I could see how that little thing could stand to get so piss drunk now.

You know what, no? Screw self-pity. So what? I did a whole load of asinine bullshit, traveled to another dimension, got killed the one Cards that liked me, tortured another one, and all to get back my original body that didn’t even work as advertised. I had two eyes, a silly horn, four hooves, and fire in my belly. I could do anything! Well, anything short of empathy, that was.

With slow, deliberate motions, I got back up, found my lock picking set, and set to work undoing the lock by hoof and mouth alone. Tick, tack, tock—undo the lock. I breathed a sigh of relief, and put my tools back. The door opened, quietly at that, and before me was a long, dark stairwell.

How deep did it go? And why was there a red carpet here? Like, I had suspected some sort of club of discothek, not a dark stairwell into what was doubtlessly the realm of some clown-themed rapist.

Shaking my head, I acknowledged that my anus was going to end up perforated one way or the other, and I may was well try to prevent the Voice in the Dark’s attempts on me. So, shitty reason or otherwise, I made the trek into the dark stairwell, taking care to close the door behind me.

It was time for the sneaky sneaks.

Which was exactly why I tripped on a loose step (and totally not the impractically of my duster’s long tail in such a small space) and rolled head-over-heels down a set of really nasty stairs. When it finally ended, I found myself nursing a bloody nose and probably the making of a concussion.

Oh, and apparently I landed right in a sex dungeon. That’s kind of an important detail, I’d imagine.

I found it hard to precisely make things out in the grim light of things. As my eyes adjusted and my nose bled all over the goddam place, I noticed the stone walls. By no means did the builder intend for this space to be claustrophobic.

The ceiling felt low, but enough that I could stand. The dull red light slowly found itself aiding my eyes as they adjusted. Scattered chains against the walls. A spare few cages. Bounding hallways to further depths of this dark place. Wooden walls with chainlink makeup set up multiple smaller rooms in this grand place, with a few of them looking like seating lounges, and beyond one clearly lay a bar.

So, yeah. Sex dungeon crossed with a nightclub. Had somepony built this out of a section of the Underdark? Place looked like it certainly had seen use as a catacomb or dank stockade.

At length, the nosebleed cleared up. I breathed a sigh of relief for that. Only problem now related to how bloody my arm found itself. I was going to have to wash some blood out of sleeve later, too, I bet. Maybe ever—

Hoofsteps! A distant clip-clop, hesitant, slow, from a further hallway, but approaching.

Thinking fast, I slid into one of the small rooms and hid behind furniture like a true hero. I dearly hoped I wasn’t going to encounter more things like those risen dead Caroleans. But should that became the case, I readied myself to pull out a weapon.

In walked a lady, strong in posture but cautious in demeanor. Possibly trying to look more confident than she was. But very much lacking in the features commonly associated with face-eating corpse ponies. She looked around and deigned to proceed further into the room.

By some miracle of where I ended up, I could see her well, and she couldn’t see me unless she stared really hard at me and maybe used her imagination a little. Slowly, she proceeded up to the stairs. Peered up them. And after a breathless moment, shrugged and walked away.

And froze. With an expression of horror, she looked down at the floor, and pulled her hoof up. A hoof now wet with nasal blood. Sonofabitch! A panicked look on her face, the mare snapped her head around her shoulders, rapidly peering into every nook and cranny of the room she could. When she gaze was directly opposite where I was, I gambled and swung myself up and over the couch I was behind and slide in a corner booth, assuming an incredibly relaxed, amused posture.

“Blind?” I inquired.

The mare practically leapt ten feet into the air as she spun around to face me. We stared off at each other, she eying me up and down, and I giving her a confident look back.

“Well, you’re not deaf. Daft, perhaps, but your ears do work,” I offered. “Say, grab something from the bar. Share a kind word with a venerable vaudevillian with a desperado’s disposition.”

“Who are you?” she demanded. She wore her tough exterior, and from my point of view, she failed at making it convincing.

I returned her a dark chuckle. “At this point, ma’am, I don’t think my name means me much. No one dares use it. Titles, though. Aye, folken know me thereby. But ladies first, as the most chivalrous of fools say.”

The mare’s postured stiffed. “I am the Lady, and you are in my domain. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t get the guards in here right now.”

“‘I’ve three to offer. One, I wager I’m bigger, faster, and stronger than you. You’d not even be halfway up the stairs before I dragged you back down. And two, because a little birdie told me something something about a certain object I need to collect. One of the three, whatever that is. And I’m no stallion if I can’t see through things to the end.” I smiled as genially as possible. “And lastly, because I’d just murder the guards and torture the information out of you anyhow, so why not play Miss Nice Lady and cooperate. Save us the trouble, do it please ya.”

My eyes met hers, and we locked until she dared look away. “I know who you are.”

“Aye? Do tell, lass.”

“You’re the one who’s come to take my key.”

I continued smiling as I stared her down. “Suppose it were so. What then?”

Her dark eyes lit up with hate. “Then I’d rather die than see you have it!”

Quicker than greased lightning, I was over the table and had crossed half the distance between us. “That can be arranged,” I said with deathly calm.

The Lady utter a shrill little squeal as her eyes widened to the size of saucers. She made for the stairs, but I stood true to my words and bound upon her. I bit her tail and jerked back hard enough to nearly tear her a whole new asshole. The Lady flew down the few stairs she had climbed, her face landing in the little puddle of my nose blood.

She tried to shriek, but I cut her off by kicking her hard in the stomach. All she could do was lay there, face painted with blood, dry heaving and gasping for air.

I picked her up and threw her against the nearest wall. She scrambled to get back to her hooves, but I forced her back against it. “Now, tell me no lies and tarry no further, or I’ll cut off your other ears.”

She looked upwards, as if she could actually see the top of her head. “B-but I’m not missing any…” The Lady fell silent as she caught the look in my eye.

“Oh, I know. The first ear’s non-negotiable—shows you I mean business.” I pulled out my knife, holding it hard in my head as I grabbed her long mane and forced her head against the cold stone.

Without fear or mercy or hesitation, I moved the knife. The steel touched the base of her ear, so that not even her wildly flicking it about could save it.

And I froze. Just… froze. No other word for it. I knew what I was doing. It was a proven method of “kinetic information retrieval”. I had no moral or ethical qualms with that I was doing. Yet as I looked at her, I saw my reflection in her golden eyes. The visage of tall, faceless golem—the very same pony whose skin I’d occupied nearly three months ago in the Acolapissa Cabinet of Curiosities, the blood of Glasses on my hooves, and a little white mare before me.

By Saint Markos the Protector, I looked back at her and saw how Cards must have seen me. The daemon from afar. A monster, no different from the things I swore to murder. And I… just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fucking do it!

“I don’t have it!” she screamed. “Pleases, don’t do it! Don’t do it! I’ll do anything, just don’t cut my ear off!”

Though my expression remained stoney, suddenly I felt a pit in the depths of my gut lessen. I remained a stallion priding himself as not one to make idle threats, but at last I could stop here and save some semblance of face.

I slowly sheathed my knife and smiled at her in a way that would get most ponies thrown into a room with padded walls. And though my grim heart felt ever so calm, I was nearly shaking in my metaphorical boots. Dearly I hoped she wouldn’t see through my façade as I had seen through hers earlier. That she wouldn’t know I couldn’t follow through.

“If you deign to be whole after this day, then you will tell me everything you know of these keys, Lady,” I commanded, and threw her to the ground. My did I tower over her.

A pregnant moment of silence followed, broken only by her heavy, panicked breathing. “You… you don’t know anything of the keys, do you, Equestrian?!” she accused. “Calschpamidh Sejfêodh!”

“Call me no Equestrian. For though I’ve no luster to my form as you, I come not thence. I am a son of Ñwlcorvim, von Nûlkar. And I am here to fix the errs of you Westerners.”

She slowly tried to crawl away from me, but I stopped that by stepping onto her leg and putting weight down hard to pin her. “You’re not with Solnyshko, are you?” the Lady asked hesitantly. Quickly, it dawned on me that I had screwed up. In no small way. She suddenly had the confidence to ask questions. Ball was in her court.

“I would so hope not,” I offered. “Especially not since I brutally murdered the bitch.” I blinked with a sudden thought. “Although if you tell me you were told of my coming via an angel, and then you have a hidden Voixson somewhere detailing how you touched yourself thinking of our meeting, I will murder you.”

“What?”

I shivered. “Ewgh… Bad memory of an event that happened to me back in Calêrhos.”

Her eyes widened again. “You are he who emerged from the mirror! The Mirrorborn! The bitch Solnyshko spoke of you when she tried to make me give her the key.”

“Okay, Mirrorborn. That’s a new one. Better than Strider, and possibly better than the Champion of Côrint. At least it’s not Government Boy. Although of all the nicknames I’ve had over the last three months, I liked Gunslinger best. Had a ring to it.

“But in any case, you spoke with Solly before I brutally executed her by accidentally stabbing her exactly fifty-four times with this knife here? Over what? And to what end?”

An almost calculated look splashed across the Lady’s face for a fraction of a second. Then she gazed upon me with a little smirk. “You are the Champion of Côrint, he who makes strides against Shining Armor’s laws, Snechta’s juggernaut, and Sygwł Erysamim. But yet… you’re implying your agenda is directly opposed to that of Solnyshko and Snechta.”

All I dared do was glare down at her. I could practically hear the gears in her head churning up a storm.

“You… you’re not going to hurt me, are you? You wouldn’t—couldn’t!”

There was only one way to get back in control, for there was no telling what this mare was capable of when she was the holder of frame in this situation. I had to hurt her. Badly. Or else… or else… Ave Laurentia, and by the Archangel Thor, I was hopeless here.

I grit my teeth. My horn didn’t function, and I couldn’t even bring myself to torture a bitch. Who in God’s name was I? Because I sure as the Nine Hells wasn’t Jericho anymore.

The lady just slipped out from my weakening pin and sat up, looking me in the eye. She appeared so suddenly menacing. The witch actually had the gall to smile at me as my old blood dried on her face. “You want the three keys, don’t you? Perhaps I misspoke earlier. Maybe it’d be good to see you have them. But not for free. Not without something of value for me, their last guardian.”

“I shan’t count myself your servant,” I replied flatly. “You’re little more than a fool made for me to toy with, like a cat its mouse. Ich bin der Ritter und du der Knecht,” I spat in Teutonic, making the language sound as rough and throaty as possible. Westerners always found it so threatening a tongue.

She cackled like a harpy in head. “Oh I don’t think so, boy,” the Lady said with a psychotic sneer of her own. This was clearly turning into a disastrous battle of the psychos. Step right up and see which of these two loonies can survive a fight to the death! This Sunday at Modern Times Dinner and Tournament! (Bring your own Cherry Berry!)

“Dare you bet your life on this little assumption of yours?”

“Damn straight,” the Lady added with a grim chuckle.

“Well, it looks like you lose, girl,” I spoke, plodding towards her with an expression oozing malice.

Suddenly, I heard an icebox open. The Lady’s expression went very cold. Looking over towards the bar, I watched as a little filly failed to sneak away, carrying a bottle of alcohol. She glanced over to see us and froze like a deer right before it gets hit by a train.

The Lady nearly jumped up to her hooves. Sad for her that I remained there to trip and shove her back onto the ground. She fought and scrambled to get up, but at this angle, I was in control. Bitch wasn’t going anywhere.

“Missy, get back to your room!” the Lady shouted.

“I didn’t mean to walk in on your adult wrestling! I swear!” the kid called back, jumping behind the counter.

I looked down at the Lady. “My, what have we here?”

“Don’t you so much as fucking look at her, you bastard!” the Lady snarled.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll tear your dick off and stab it into your eye!”

“My my, how protective. I take it she’s yours?” I asked, smiling like the Big Bad Wolf. Shoving a hoof in the Lady’s mouth, I said as sweetly as possible. “Little lass, don’t pay me no mind. We’re not doing anything of note. You’re in no trouble. Why not just come out of there.” I felt the Lady try to bite my hoof, but, well, it’s a hoof. Very hard and painful to bite.

The little filly—Missy, if I wasn’t mistaken—poked her head from around the counter. She eyed me, as if sizing me up, while I tried to estimate her age. Then, with a hesitant smile, she slunk out from behind the counter, still carrying a bottle of alcohol behind her back.

Missy bit her lip as she saw the Lady, saying, “Are you alright?”

“She’s fine, I swear,” I offered as genially as possible. “We’re just playing the quiet game. She lost, so now she’s trying to win again, but I suppose now I’m losing, so the real winner is up in the air as this point.”

“Lady,” Missy said, then rambled on something in Mijôra, the damn local tongue that I still needed to learn. Slowly, the filly walked towards us. Was she really that stupid? In any case, around this point, I felt my hoof getting covered in drool from the Lady’s attempts to gnaw it off.

“Say, what have you there, Missy?” I inquired.

“Nothing,” she replied in a guarded voice, still inching towards us. I got the sneaky suspicion she was going to try to walk past us and to her room, or wherever else she was supposed to be. I had to leverage this to my advantage. I couldn’t hurt a child (again) and for some damn reason the Lady couldn’t be harmed in any meaningful way, but the threat might be enough to get what I needed.

“Oh please. When I was a tyke, I too did some pretty sneaky things,” I told her. “I won’t be mad if you tell me. And I promise nor will she.” I winked. “We’re on good terms like that; I’d be up to bat for you.”

“Well, um… some of the other girls were being kinda mean to me, and so I was going to show them that I was cool, too. I got this thing and, um…” She was almost close enough to grab. “I got some of that algwl.”

“You mean, that’s alcohol?” I inquired, making sure to stuff my hoof further into the Lady’s face to keep her silent.

“Um… yes?” And the filly took the bottle out from behind her. “See?” I leaned in slightly to read the label in the darkness

And then the little bitch hit me upside the head as hard as she could with a full bottle of booze.

Now, to anyone who’s never had the pleasure of being in that situation, allow me to intimate to you just how heavy a full bottle is; how strong the glass is; and how, even if you hit weakly, the force from the bottle’s weight will still screw you up.

In a flash, I felt a gash in my forehead, suffered a raging migraine, had blinding spots in my eyes, and lay on the floor. Oh, and blood. Lots of blood. My brain became scrambled eggs as I tried to process what had just happened.

The girls highhoofed each other, and then the Lady hugged the little girl hard. “That’s my filly!” she declared with a laugh. Then, in a strongly stern tone: “Although you and me are going to talk about you stealing alcohol. Don’t think you’re off the hook just yet, Missy.”

With my forehoof that wasn’t covered in slobber, I reached up to the gash in my head. Not that I needed a measurement of my bloodloss (a lot), since it was already leaking into my eye, stinging like a bitch and a half.

Lethargically, I moved to get back up. I set a forehoof down, and slipped on my own blood. “Whores in a blanket!” I swore. Or, rather, tried. It came more like “Mores uh lanka”.

So, of course, I faceplanted into the cold ground. Missy kicked me, but her hooves were a lot less murderous than a bottle of drink. “That’s for thinking I’m just a stupid kid, you creep!”

“Missy, that’s enough,” the Lady chided. “Hand me the rope. I’ve got an idea.”

Ropes? Right. If this ended with me almost getting raped à la Cherry Berry, I was going to give up and let Korweit destroy the Crystal Empire. Purely on principle.

So the Lady rolled me over onto my back, stood on my chest, and bound me. The little filly helped keep me down. And then, because it wasn’t like it could get any worse, the Lady produced a bag and forced it over my head. Why not? By all the saints, I was going to get murdered by a fetish lady and her creepy daughter.

Sometimes, I really hated the shit I did because my guardian angel thought it’d be a good idea.

|— ☩ —|

My face was getting all sweaty and gross by the time the girls took the bag off my head. I gasped for breath. “Holy dog shit on a hammock, have you never washed that bag? It stinks like you’ve used it for nothing but dirty socks and—oh dear God, do crystalfolken also have that strange sock fetish like your southern neighbors do?”

The Lady smacked me across the face.

I growled in return, looking around the room. Some sort of sex dungeon, indeed. And she let the filly in. Great. Seemed about as appropriate as a school curriculum teaching ten-year-olds the “perks” of brutally throat fucking each other. Lousy liberal education system.

“You know,” I offered with a chuckle, “I actually just ended up in the domain of whom I can only surmise is an expert on sexual fetishes. From you I can finally figure out if Westerners have a sock thing.”

“Except I’m the one asking questions here,” the Lady retorted, and only then did I realize her attire had changed. Or rather, she was wearing a really shiny peaked cap and a suit which I could only describe as being made out of leather so tight yet revealing that it was implausible to suggest she could move. Must have caused some serious friction burn when she moved about in it.

“That so?” I asked. I looked down at Missy. “What’s with the little backpack there, little lass? Planning on a trip?” She stuck her tongue out at me. Before I could say anything else, the Lady bitch smacked me again like a two-bit whore.

“Who sent you?” the Lady asked, staring me down.

“The Tooth Fairy. She and I got a little thing. So long as her husband doesn’t find out, I’m golden.” I gave a grin so shit-eating you could swear I was a buffet.

The Lady looked to her protégée and back to me, a skeptical look on her face. She wasn’t going to countenance my bullshit, I knew. Though honestly, mocking your torturers was always worth the eventual mutilation you received. I expected that. Not the sudden wide grin on her face.

“You know,” the Lady sussurated, “you’re in a vaunted position. I lot of stallions would kill to be where you’re sitting. Aside from the breaking and entering part of getting here, that is. And the bottle of booze upside the head,” she added in a conspicuously childlike voice. The kind of girly thing that only made me want to strangle her; I didn’t find it cute.

“But sadly for you, you made the idiot’s mistake of entering my domain. Just when I was trying to teach Missy here the tricks of the trade.”

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “I understand child prostitution is a big thing in the North. Tell me, how much do you make by selling the bodies of a children under your care?”

“I run an orphanage of thieves and scamps, not childhood whores,” she retorted alongside a twitch of the eye. “Any income they bring me, I supplement by the nightclub I run. I am the Lady of something, you see.” I glanced at the weak candles keeping the room in a state of semi-twilight and inquired as to whether or not she could care to make it less dingy in here.

All the Lady did was groan and look to the filly. “Missy, would you care to help your Lady out here?”

Missy shot me a cheshire grin, bouncing up and down like a serial killer on a pogo stick. “Can do!”

With a skip to her step and an air of childlike wonder, she looked around the room. Her attention fell upon a section of tools on a wall that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a stallion-cave, if that was a thing in Equestria. Aside from the actual selection of tools. Whips, clamps, something that looked like a mohawk, painful-looking spiked phallic tools.

A sinking feeling in my gut told me that it’d be better to stand locked in a room with the Cherry Berry. I struggled against the ropes that held me to the chair. I hadn’t even realized I’d been in a chair, but there I was. Based on how they’d bound me, I figured the knots found themselves behind my back. Thinking and focusing really hard, I tried to telekinetically feel for them, and only got a sad little fizzle and a quick spot of double vision. The mares didn’t even bother to pay my antics any mind.

Ave Laurentia, I didn’t mean to further demean the little thing, but was this how Cards felt whenever she tried to wield the heresy of magic in general?

It dawned on me what I’d just thought. Were it not for the terrifying calmness of my heart, it might have skipped a beat. A pseudo-insult to Cards that I meant as no insult. Saints above me, I was losing it. Just completely off my rocker and as low as they go. I wanted a mirror. I need to see who was looking back out at me from my own skin, for whoever the sonofabitch was, he had forgotten the face of his father.

Missy put a hoof to her chin. “Nah, none of these seem right.” Her countenance lit up like New Year’s Day. “Oh, I have an idea!” She set her bag on the ground, unzipped it, and pulled something decidedly furry out of it the size of my eyeball.

The Lady hummed quietly. “You had that the whole time, huh?”

“He wanted to come with me,” Missy replied, looking at the ground and kicking a hoof idly. “B-but he’s perfect for this—watch!” With the furry ball in her arm, she trotted to my chair. Wearing a smile that’d not be out of place on a serial killer, she held it up for me to see.

Eight little legs unfurled, black and spiky. They reminded me of one of the forms C’s limbs had taken, back there in the cathedral with the Devil’s Backbone.

“This,” the miniscule hellion declared proudly, “is Mr. Cuddles! Say hi, Mr. Cuddles!” Before me, the ball of fur hissed and stabbed it legs in my direction. Eights legs meant spider, and spiders weren’t supposed to hiss, goddamnit!

I could imagine it on my face, its leg cutting into my pores as it gnawed my retinas off, using its sharp nature-given tools to burrow into the viscous eye fluid and make itself a home. It would do this in order to make a nest, spin its freak legs, and raise a spider family dedicated to desiccating me from within. My eyes, organs, and finally, my flesh consumed, it would move back on to find a new host. Not unlike an arachnid version of the virulent fungal necro-plague unleashed against the Reich during the Dark Crusade.

With an underhoof toss from the filly, the furry hellspawn attached itself to my face. Unleashing a torrent of Teutonic vulgarities and threats, I jerked my head about as though trying to shake my skull out its skin. But the freaky little thing’s shark legs dug into my flesh and clung with ease.

In fact, it moved up. Nearer and nearer to my eye. The same goddam one I’d just spent months getting replaced, too! Its pinprick steps rubbed against the bottom of my eyelid as I forcibly closed the eye, holding it shut tight.

Mr. Cuddles moved on. Off my eye, onto my forehead. To my temples. And finally, poking around my ear. For a moment I did nothing. I could only think in jumbled, half formed garbles of thought and terror as the arachnid crawled deeper into my ear.

I howled like a banshee, thrashing my head around as though caught in a thresher. The pissant bastard attached itself into my ear with a snug, prickly feeling. The more I moved, the deeper it pushed itself. Clawing and scratching my ear canal. The sound of scraping little legs and its fur in my ears deafened me to the sounds of my shrieks.

If I could have focused, I would have stared daggers of pure venom at the girls. It wasn’t like I could see them through the tears. But through the deafening sound and the tears and the jumbled mess in my mind, there was only a single thought with any coherence in my head: I didn’t care if it broke the Code in spirit, I was going to break every single bone in Missy’s body and leave her a soulless cripple for the rest of her miserable existence!

“Oh Mr. Cuddles, you can stop playing hide-n-seek now!” Missy singsonged, stabbing a hoof into the joint of my mandibles. It probably ruptured an eardrum. Claws, hisses, stabs, scratches. Something hot and weak. Aural blood drawn.

And then it came out, stained yellow with earwax, but not without a hint of crimson. Mr. Cuddles ran up her arm with what only could be described as joy.

I gasped for breath. Sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eye, blinding me. My throat felt hoarse enough that I thought if I dared cough, I’d spit out blood. More blood. Blood from my nose, my ear, and then my throat. Not going to happen. I tried to drink my own spit to soothe it.

Missy looked up at the Lady, and only then did she the see the dark, barely contained look of horror of the mare’s face. “Sorry. Mr. Cuddles was getting uncomfortable in there. He wanted out. It’s that fear thing of small spaces, I think.”

Quickly, the Lady went over to a drawer and got out a needle before returning back to me. I glared at her, warning, “Don’t you dare.”

She dared. I felt cold metal pierce a vein, and a freezing ice lock up all the way through my heart. The Lady tossed the needle and looked at the filly. “Missy, I think we need to talk. Just you and me.” Then all I could make out were garbles.

It took a sparse few minutes before I blacked out.

Author's Note

Footnote: 50% to next level

Quest Perk: Arachnophobia — -20% stress resist vs spiders. We stopped stealing Fallout’s mechanics and are now plagiarizing Darkest Dungeon. What you gonna do?

Chapter 43 — Der Leiermann

Chapter 43: Der Leiermann

“FINE! Leave! See if I care! I don't need you guys either!”

Thud!

Nothing quite said “you need to lose weight, chubby thighs” like coming out of a drug-induced sleep because the chair you were tied to broke under your weight. My arms hurt with stiffness, as if they’d been in rigor mortis and only recently recalled I yet lived, then returned back to life kicking and screaming.

I blinked hard, a smell not unlike piss and ethanol singeing my nose. I found myself in a dark, claustrophobic room. Cleaning supplies, and a bucket with a weird face painted on via lipstick. I felt a sneaking suspicion I was in Ylv’s fantasy cave.

In any case, without the back of the chair, the ropes that bound me pretty much fell off. I rubbed my wrists and swore to the Allfather that I would personally put spiders on the endangered species list by the time I died.

If I listened closely, I could distantly hear loud, violent dance-type music. I had to still be in the Lady’s club. The only issue was one of time. But hey, look: there were my bags. That was good. My sheathed weapons lay there.

Spying a lantern on a shelf, I took my lighter to it and gave myself enough so I could see the room proper. As it happened, my initial assessment was not incorrect. It was a janitorial closet, if a rather large one. The only thing that struck me was the Voixson tucked in the corner, and the empty booze bottles surrounding it.

I checked my pocketwatch. Hell’s bells, it’d been nearly a whole day. Night had no doubt come. Sighing, I went over to the corner and picked up the Voixson. A luggage tag on the handle labeled it as “Solnichco”, which, after a moment’s thought, I concluded was Solnyshko’s name as written in Mijôran tradition.

Hitting play gave me a burst of static, then a low voice. I turned up the volume, quickly recognizing the Lady’s voice. She spoke in a slurred manner; no doubt alcohol had something to do with this.

“...asked me about grandda’s key. Bitch somehow knows about them. Told me she’d tell me where one of the three was. In the sky, she said. Ha! Sejfêonar has two of the three. No wonder the empire is screwed. So, she wanted to know where Grandda was. Me, the key. Bitch said she needed to know where the last was so she could…” I heard running water, a gargle, and a hard sigh.

“Brother, I suspect I will die soon. I know we haven’t even spoken since you picked up that job in Sombra’s army way back when. But I know what you’re up to. I had one of my girls keep an eye on you. Solnyshko spoke that soon a stallion would come to me, demanding to know of the keys. He is the Betrayer, the demon spawned by the dark mirror Calêrhos. She told me that if I didn’t tell her where the final key was, then the Betrayer would force it out of me. Solnyshko needs him to bring the keys together; his special mix of resourcefulness and expendability to do it makes him the only real candidate left for uniting the keys.

“If I die, I’ve asked little Missy to bring you this. You kenn him; perhaps even as a friend. When he brings the keys together, it will be up to you to undo him. Trick him, lie, whatever. Just make sure to use the united keys for good, not his dark ends. Solnyshko and her ilk won’t find the last key; I threw her out of my home. Big brother, I love you. And I… hope you never hear this.” The Lady broke down crying, and just as quickly the log ended.

Solnyshko remained alive, then. More to the point, I had a new title. “The Betrayer.” It had a ring to it. But what the hell was that part about me being expendable that made me the best candidate possible for uniting the keys?

I put the Voixson back and looked around the room. Was that turpentine and a number of dirty rags? It was, indeed! I grabbed them alongside the empty bottles plus a full bottle of Bucking Bronco (highly flammable) and stashed them in my bag for later.

Who was the Lady’s brother? He had to be a guy I knew. A crystal pony, too. The only crystal stallion I really knew was Ylv, and, well, the Lady and Ylv didn’t strike me as being related in any way, shape, or form. So, back to square zero with that line of thought.

Whatever. I tried the door out. Locked. Picking it seemed tedious, so I just bucked it open. Before me, to the left and right, stood a dim hallway. The music came from my right, so what remained to my left?

|— ☩ —|

Years of tabletop RPGs couldn’t lead me wrong here. Whenever there stood an obvious route, never take it. Go the wrong way first. There was bound to be some cool loot that way. So I proceeded down the long hallway until the violent music got dull. There, at the end, was a cave-in. The tunnel from hereon become nothing but ruins.

Specks of snow lay on the ground. I looked up. Through cracks in the ceiling here, I could see rays of the galaxy. The milky way of stars high above. There was a door in the wall, and opening it revealed a stairwell. I ascended up, because why not?

It led to the surface. A courtyard stood here; the only way to enter this place seemed to be either from below or from various dark alleys. In the center was a large oak tree, and next to the bald tree blazed a little fire.

There, by the fire, somepony had erected a pathetic box-hut. Sitting there, staring into the blaze, was a little filly, all bundled up. Almost idly, she toyed with some sort of instrument in her hooves. Some sort of Drehleier, whatever that was in Equestrian. Hurdy-gurdy?

As the snow fell softly, I closed the door. The filly looked up, wide-eyed. She jumped up, forgetting her instrument as she charged off down an alley.

“Hey, wait! your forgot your Drehleier!” I called, but to no avail.

I walked over to the fire and looked down at the Drehleier. Against my better judgement, I sat down, settled myself in the box, and picked up the instrument. I looked at it for a moment before turning the crank with one hoof and playing the keys with the other. It accomplished nothing, but there was something pleasant about playing fireside in the ice cold night.

The melody of this particular device was haunting and scratchy. Like the distant wail of a tortured spirit, its cries fading upon a chilly midnight breeze. I toyed with the keys and the speed of the cranking until I was satisfied. It was far from professional, and not necessarily even in the same department as good. But there was something satisfying in the Drehleier’s call across the frigid dark of night, echoing through the alleyways and bouncing back to my ears.

As I fiddled with the instrument, I recalled a poem-come-song about a man who played a Drehleier. It was the last cycle of Winterreise, a gloomy series of poems that always struck a chord with me and the icy nature of the Reich. I took a breath, cleared my throat, and recited from what memory of it I had.

“Drüben hinterm Dorfe

Steht ein Leiermann,” I softly sang.

“Und mit starren Fingern

Dreht er, was er kann.”

From one of the boxes in the alley, I saw the filly poke up her head. I continued playing, and as I watched, she got out of the trash and slowly made her way back over to the fire. For her I moved out of the box, smiled, and allowed her to take back her spot.

“Barfuß auf dem Eise

Wankt er hin und her

Und sein kleiner Teller

Bleibt ihm immer leer,” I continued.

“You really suck at that,” the filly chimed in helpfully.

I ground to a halt. “And you live in a box. I think that makes us even, kleines Mädchen.”

“That’s not fair! I—” a little mew caught her attention. With a fearful expression, she reached into her box and grabbed a bundle of blanket. The girl held it close to her, pawing thereat. I nearly asked what was going on, before I saw the kitten hidden therein. She cuddled the kitten, keeping the little thing warm.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it,” she quietly admitted. Whether for my benefit or hers, I couldn’t say. Slowly, I held out for her the Drehleier. She shook her head. “No, it’s… I don’t know how to play it. I just found it in the trash. Thought it might be cool, y’know?”

“And yet you know I suck therewith?” I asked wryly, and she nodded.

“Yup.” She rubbed the kitten, keeping her warm. If I listened closely, I could hear a weak, dying purr. The little crystal girl looked up at me, then down to her companion. “Life isn’t fair, is it?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You look like one of those big, scary ponies who knows all sorts of things.”

I frowned, thinking of a way to divert the topic. “Why are you out here?”

“Where should I be? Papa’s gone, and I never knew mama.”

A thought crossed my mind. “An orphanage? I believe the Lady over yonder runs one.”

The look on her face reminded me of rusted, icy gears fighting to work. “She’s mean. I don’t like her. I don’t want to be a bad pony,” she said. And then, out of nowhere: “And Sombra’s aren’t open anymore.”

“I’m sorry?”

She shook her head, holding her kitten close to her breast. “The pink princess came here, and the spiky dragon defeated Sombra. He had all sorts of places to take care of lost children. Warm homes. Taught us stuff. When the spiky dragon defeated him, there was nopony left to keep the places warm. Nowhere to go.”

“Didn’t the princess just… hire new people?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

“No, no, that’s… no. Pink princess sucks,” she replied.

I said nothing, just let everything sink in. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine the only orphanages set up since then had either some connection to Snechta or other unscrupulous ponies, like the Lady. Finally, I asked, “What is your name?”

“Twltcha has no name.”

Puzzled, I said, “Then, what about Twltcha?”

She looked at me with eyes that said she had explained this a thousand times, and each time it ate a little more of her soul. “It means ‘worthless’.”

I had nothing to say after that. We just sat there in silence, warmed by the fire. The slowly shrinking blaze bathed us in a dancing orange light. I got up, gathered fallen sticks and twigs from the oak tree, and put them on the fire. Then I went into the alleys and found combustible junk, and set that into the blaze too.

Then I went into my bags and pulled out the cleaning supplies and the Bucking Bronco. These would have made a perfect Molotowbombe, just what I’d need to set fire to the Lady and to that infernal spider. But…

I sighed, and doused what I could into the fire. The blaze gained a great fury; the junk that hadn’t burned suddenly erupted into a conflagration—its heat bathed us well. I sat back, content that the fire would likely last well into the night.

“That song,” the filly said. “What does it mean?”

I reached over and patted her on the head. She recoiled from the touch, as though afraid I was going to hurt her. How many ponies had? I wondered.

“It is called ‘Der Leiermann’, kleines Mädchen. It is a poem, a song, and these are its ending verses. It’s about a poet wandering the cold Teutonic wasteland after his love betrays his heart for another.

“In the end, he comes across a village. And behind the village, alone and near frozen, plays ein Leiermann. He is old and wretched, barefooted, and all hate him. He begs, but no one offers him so much as a penny, nor do they even listen, and even the dogs growl at him. He is totally alone. But yet he keeps playing, forlorn and haunting. So the poet figures he will stand by the old pony, cast his lot in with him, so that at the very least, the two can die in friendship together.”

“That’s… sad.”

I smirked. “Aye, the poetry from the Fatherland is often like that. I cannot say for certain why we’re such downers. Mayhap it is how we make it our sworn duty to shoulder the weight of the world, a task no one asked us to do. And how, in some ways,” I said, looking down at myself, “it is a quest as pointless as it is unending, and every day just grinds us all down further. It will destroy us; this we all know, even if we refuse to admit it. But… what can we do but continue?”

All but the fire remained quiet for a pregnant moment. Then: “Can you… can you keep playing it for me?” she asked slowly, inching towards me. “I liked hearing it, even if it’s all sad and stuff.”

I grabbed the Drehleier. “For you? I think I could do that, even if I am not so good.” I found where I was, and set about finishing the poem.

“Keiner mag ihn hören,

Keiner sieht ihn an,

Und die Hunde knurren

Um den alten Mann.”

The nameless filly hummed along with me, catching onto my simple melody. In a way that I couldn’t help but smile at, she even tried to copy along my words, slurring the Teutonic into garbles. Even the tiny kitten purred louder.

“Und er läßt es gehen,

Alles wie es will,

Dreht, und seiner Leier

Steht ihm immer still.”

At the back of my mind, I wondered back to how I got into this situation. A quest to stop a Korweit, the end of the goal to heal my flesh after the slaying of Elkington’s personal demon. From Songnam to Sleepy Oaks, and back to Lyra’s house.

Lyra. Mint green mare with a thing for foreigners. There was something amusing in that. Eine Leier, in some contexts, could refer to a lyre, which must have been that mare’s namesake. So, Lyra, the strangely hospitable mare who took me in out from the cold, here’s to you. Here’s to Cards. Here’s to Lightning Dust. To everypony else who’s shown me so much kind heartédness or offered me some form of help. And… to all the innocents I hurt.

“Wunderlicher Alter,

Soll ich mit dir geh’n?

Willst zu meinen Liedern

Deine Leier dreh’n?”

I finished the last lines of the poem, then reiterated it in Equestrian for the nameless filly’s benefit. This time, she was more capable of singing along with me, even if she was just a second slower than off, and a fair bit off-tune.

“Strange old buck

Shall I go with you?

Will you play your organ

to my songs?”

There, it was done. I looked down at myself and felt a sudden, dire feeling of despair. What was the point of all this? Why did I care about the Crystal Empire? Why did I have to be its savior? Why was I the lynchpin?

“You know, if you hate it so much, why don’t you just… stop?” she asked, and I paused.

“Excuse me?”

“Your people, I mean,” the filly explained, cradling the bundled kitten in her arms. “If it’s so hard, why do you have to do it? If you just stopped, wouldn’t everything just be better?”

My mouth felt dry. Something felt wrong in the pit of my gut, something I couldn’t name nor even place. Just a general feeling. How long had that feeling been there? Yet, trying to pinpoint its moment of origin was like trying to identify the exact moment you started to feel ill from a cold.

“Were that it so simple for the Reich,” I replied in a slow, solemn tone. “But I am not the Reich. I am Jericho, my own stallion.” I stood up abruptly. A layer of snow that had built up on my duster slid off. “And why in the Allfather’s name do I have to continue on this mad, endless quest?! Who cares about Snechta, the Crystal Empire, Korweit, the Lady—any of it! If I am the only one capable of uniting the keys and moving the dark little plot along, then what else need I do to put a stop to it all than nothing!?”

“Mister?” the little filly said, slowly shrinking back from me.

Instantly, I cooled off and smiled at her. “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you, It’s just that there’s been a lot of my mind lately, and what you said just now, it made me realize something. Something big, earth shattering even.”

“You’re, uh, welcome?”

“Look, I need to go, I suspect. But thank you, thankee big-big, nameless one!” I set down the Drehleier by her side and turned to go.

“Wait!”

“Aye?”

“Before you go, can I have one thing?”

I hesitated. Then admonished myself for doing so. “Anything.”

“Can I get a hug?”

A chill ran up my spine. Even in this weather, the cold had yet to bother me. And then this. I… well, I sighed, and looked her up and down. I grit my teeth and let out a breath. “I don’t suppose I couldn’t.”

I knelt down, squeezing myself up against her box home, and hugged her. She grabbed the folds of my duster and wrapped herself up in it, the little kitten resting between us.

A long time passed like that. Her just grabbing onto me and my duster.

“Um, you know, I should really get going. This is starting to get really awkward and, uh…” I poked her. “Are you asleep? Because, I, um… Well, this is, um… Unique.”

I let out something that was half a groan, half a sigh, looking around to make sure nobody was witnessing this. “You see, Jericho? This is what having a heart gets you: with tiny orphans clinging to your waist.”

At some point, I managed to wrestle her off me, but not without her taking my duster with her. I laid her and the kitten down under my coat and what blankets she had over in her little box. The air felt chilly, but it was nothing compared to the Teutonic winters my body had been genetically conditioned for going on thousand years now. I compensated by taking out my black wool poncho from my bag and putting that on.

Now the problem became, I couldn’t just leave her here to steal my duster, and I couldn’t just beat her up and take it back. Plus, this part of Côrint seemed really sketchy. I was pretty sure I saw a wild dog on my way to the Lady’s club, too, if I left the nameless filly all alone, they might eat her and the kitten.

So I just sat there, at the edge of her box, staring into the fire as the galaxy rotated lethargically above my head. My mind spun with thoughts of Lightning Dust, Cards, Lyra, Selena, Maiya, and the Reich. It seemed to go on for hours, just a mental white nose, a reflection of memories.

And it went on.

And on.

On.

…

Author's Note

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Everybody Loves A Quitter — Giving up is the first step to admitting you have a problem! With this, you've finally learned the one truth of life: that trying is failing, and that sometimes you should just give up. +1 to Wisdom; new dialog options.

Chapter 1 — Also Sprach der Engel

Chapter One: Also Sprach der Engel

“Thus spoke the angel.”

Many years ago, I made the monumental mistake of thinking it was a good idea to get out of bed that day. As I stood there, occasional bolts of lightning flashing in the distant night skies, I wondered if I’d made the same mistake this morning. Well, in today’s case, if I’d made the grave error of crawling out from some foxhole I’d dug in the ground the night before. Checking my bags, I tried to recall the last time I’d actually seen a proper bed on my long journey.

I shook my head, forcing the exhaustion-fueled thoughts from my mind, and focused on the problem at hoof. This was the mythical motherland, Equestria, where Princesses Celestia and Luna—fallen angels, as many back home said—ruled. Because that somehow made any sense. Then again, it wasn’t as if two immortal ladies ruling a fairytale kingdom half a world away made any more sense than that one bucket of ice cream that once tried to eat my face off, and I knew for a fact that I’d seen that, so I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to any myth.

But what I was looking at was no myth. The door before me, light from the building’s windows bathing it in a heavenly glow, was as real as the dirt beneath my hooves. Sounds of semi-drunken merriment from within wafted out through the heavy wooden walls and to my ears. And with the rain pelting my back like a jealous ex-girlfriend pelts your face with mutilated parts of your now-dead cat, I’d rather be inside than out.

I looked up and read the building’s sign: “Ponyville Inn & Tavern.”

Curiosity, plain and simple, had dragged me halfway across the world to this forsaken land, a journey which had taken the better half of a decade. That lust to know had taken me so far into the east that now, mostly but not entirely by coincidence, I was in that mysterious part of the world that was traditionally thought of as being to the west of the Fatherland. Although to be fair, it might or might not have actually been because I had a psychotic hero complex that totally justified excessive violence towards bad ponies since, in all honestly, excessive violence was usually by far your best option when dealing with crazy, evil ponies.

Of course, saying that would make me sound crazy. Which was why, if anyone asked, I was here to see the Equestrian fairyland for myself; to see if those two Princesses existed, if they truly were alicorns, a pony with both wings and a horn; and then go home a famous adventurer. None of that was expressly a lie per se, but they were more of the sort of things I planned to do as I wandered around aimlessly.

But whatever my story was, I was here now, and there was no changing that. I took a breath. The air tasted different here, almost like it lacked the centuries of blood, sweat, and steel that had built the land whence I came. This was apparently the smell of Equestria, and I’d have to get used to it.

It had been night by the time I’d scampered out of the woods and headlong into some spooky town in the middle of the night. Presently, I wasn’t sure how much of the liquid on my face was from the rain, or my own sweat. My muscles made me a thousand promises of pain to come, reminding me of just how much I’d abused them just trying to survive getting through that hellish forest. And this door before me now was the closest thing to a respite I’d seen in weeks.

This was a doorway into the world of Equestria, for all that it mattered. And there was nothing more important than a doorway. After all, as it said in the Book of Chains, before He created mathematics and wrote the Universe, the Allfather created existence when He opened the Door.

So as I stared at this door, I let myself wonder about all the myths I’d heard about this nation. That Equestrian mares were all a bit on the friendly side. Princess Celestia had eyes everywhere within her realm. Equestrians were extremely xenophobic. Equestria didn’t even exist. Stallions in Equestria were treated like slaves by the dominant female population, and were all castrated beyond a certain age. Knowing my luck, I figured it’d be the last one—and I rather liked my masculinity to be wholesome, thank you very much, ladies.

That was why my heart was in my throat as I stared at the door. Beyond it could have been literally anything. Sure, it was possible there wouldn’t be any problems. And it was also possible I’d been a pegasus my whole life and just never noticed the feathers on my pillow each morning. But whatever the case, my limbs dutifully reminded me this was an inn. I would have time to be awed, or horrified, by Equestria when my legs didn’t feel like they were about to fall off.

Adjusting my hat, I tried to breathe the fire of excitement out of my lungs. “You’re supposed to be fluent with the tongue,” I said, staring at the wooden door. “No, you are perfectly fluent. That’s what Mr. Welch said, and he was a great teacher. They’d never know it wasn’t your first language. So just walk in; it’ll be fine, unless it’s not. And if that changeling lied to me, then I’ll dig him up, revive him, and just let him die again.”

Stop talking to yourself; it’s making you look bad.

Even though I doubted Equestrians were hostile to foreigners, I still made sure to double and triple check that I had the sword at my hip, hidden by the tail of my duster. If they, like many other peoples I’d met on my journey, wanted my blood, I would most heartily object. And it wouldn’t be the first time my sword had viscerally aided such objections.

I raised a hoof to the door and pushed it open. A sultry breath of air greeted me as I entered, the kind borne only from the heat of many living bodies. As the door behind me closed, I held a hoof over my eyes, trying to let my sight adjust to the bright interior. My nose was overwhelmed by a smell compounded of the queer odor of working stallions, the aroma of girls mixed with lingering traces of cheap perfume, and the scent of musty wood. All throughout, my ears were assaulted by the voices of tens of ponies, their jubilant laughter as warm as the air outside was cool, their words unintelligible.

“Howdy there, sugar,” a mare greeted with a honey-like voice marred only by the grate of her accent against my ears.

As my eyes adjusted enough to where the light didn’t blind me, I looked down at her face. My heart froze. Im Namen Gottes, she’s naked!

“What can we do ya for?” she prompted, her tone so bubbly it made me want to strike her.

With a horrified slowness, I forced my eyes off her and to the room. The tables, like the floor, walls, and ceiling, were wooden. A number of tables stood at attention in disorganized ranks about the floor, with stallions and mares—mostly mares—sitting around them. Cuddled up to the walls were personal booths, where yet more ponies loitered, drank, ate, joked, and bantered, each cackling like a hen about to lay an egg. Every single one of them, without exception, was naked.

It’s reasons like this that make me sure my death certificate will read, “Cause of death: drowned in absurdity.”

“I said, what can we do ya for, hon?”

I stared at her, like an idiot actor waiting to be spoon-fed his lines. Do ya for? Oh Gott von oben, that’s an idiom, right? Okay, so we have girls here, all of whom are naked, just like the nice lady before me, and that sweaty smell, which can all add up to just one thing: this is a whorehouse!

She frowned. “Are you alright, sugar? Your cheeks just went all red-like.”

“Huh-bu-wha’?” I stammered.

Bravo. What a brilliant introduction to the first pony you meet in Equestria.

The mare cocked a brow, but remained silent.

“The sign outside said this was an inn and tavern, correct?” I managed to force out. In truth, I would have preferred to just cover my eyes with my hooves. Of course, if I’d done that, I’d have fallen over, which would not have helped.

“Last I checked, sugar. Why? Did those darn neighborhood colts try t’change the ‘inn’ to an ‘out’ again?”

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the words “Inn & Tavern” that I was previously unaware of. Or I’m an idiot. Either or, really.

“No, Ma’am.” I glanced to the mare’s chest, upon which she wore a thin black-and-white bandana. A sparse few other girls in the tavern, all walking around, also wore bandanas like hers. They were probably the working girls, I figured. “I’m, uh, looking for a room for the night. Are there any such here?”

The waitress pointed to a counter at the far end of the room. “See that big, perpetually grumpy guy over there an’ behind the counter? Talk t’him, sugar. He’ll fix you up right as rain, sure as ya got the Bits an’ all.”

“Thank you, Ma’am,” I replied, only half-sure that I understood her. Just as quickly as she had showed up, the mare skipped over to a nearby table. The stallion behind the counter at the other side of the room seemed so far away. To reach him, all I had to do was trudge forwards and not stare at any of the naked girls.

Out of the rain and into the fires of the inferno.

I supposed that this was probably to be expected. After all, I was at that point in life where overcoming hopeless situations was probably second or third on my daily to-do list. The universe had it out for me, I was sure. Taking a deep breath, I set a hoof forwards, my eyes locked onto the stallion. A little pony in my head assured me I didn’t have a dirty mind, just a sexy imagination.

Just keep walking. Control your breathing. Don’t stare. Wait. Is eying prostitutes considered window shopping?

“Oops, sorry there,” a mint-green mare chuckled to me as she stood up from a lonesome table, bumping into my shoulder. “I wasn’t looking.”

“Oh, no, it’s okay,” I quickly replied, mentally reminding myself that her eyes were on her face, not by her thighs.

She looked up at me as I looked down at her, herself cocking a brow and narrowing an eye. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out, and she just stared at me as I peered at her light golden-orange eyes. Then, shaking her head, she broke eye contact and trotted away towards the door. I marched onwards, heart pounding but still giving myself a mental pat on the back.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said as I approached the mustached earth pony barkeeper, “I was looking for a place to spend the night, and I was told I could find one here.”

Adjusting his glasses, the barkeeper replied, “Aye.” He picked up a glass mug from under the counter, beginning to clean it. “You’re dressed rather funny, mister.”

And you’re a naked barbarian fleshmonger with a peculiar accent, good sir.

“And I could say that you’re not dressed funny enough,” I replied, looking at his white apron. I tried to ignore the awkward feeling slowly boiling up from within, hoping that I wasn’t still blushing like a filly with a crush.

“Hmm,” he grunted, putting away the glass and reaching for a new one. He wrapped his hoof in a clean white rag and went to work on the new glass.

I waited for him to say something else, but he just kept shining his glass, his lips sealed. So I took the initiative. “Is there a problem?”

He offered me a lone nod. “Aye.”

“What would that be?” I probed, fidgeting with my hat’s visor.

“Room’s price is a couple o’ Bits a night.” He paused, for dramatic effect, probably. That, or he was trying to give me some silent cue I was missing. “I’m waitin’.”

My heart sank into my stomach. I really wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide face-down at the bottom. “Um, this is going to sound dumb.”

He raised a brow. “That so?”

“Yes, sir. Bits are what Equestria uses for money, right?”

“Get out.”

“Excuse me?”

The stallion sighed, setting the glass and rag off to the side. “Kid, get outta here.”

I took a step towards the counter, angling my head a few inches downwards. “Kid? I’m not a child, sir.”

“I know ya ain’t, buddy. But I ain’t got the time for your childish games.”

“I cry your pardon, sir, but I don’t quite follow.”

“If you’re gonna bug me durin’ a shower with dumb questions, I don’t care for you. Get outta my inn. Pronto.” The bartender gestured to the door.

“My apologies, sir, I was only making sure—”

“Out. Now,” he growled, gritting his teeth.

This guy needs to be stabbed, preferably somewhere like the kidney. It’s been awhile since I’ve done that. Shifting my weight, I tried to appease the ache in my limbs. “But it’s raining out there.”

“Does it look like I care? Besides, I don’t serve idiots dressed like guys in one o’ them Westerns. And you look like one o’ them performers in that getup you’re wearin’. This ain’t no theater play, son.”

“But I’m not a performer,” I replied. Of the emotions battling for supremacy in my head, confusion had clawed its way to victory. Again.

“I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it. As a rule, I don’t trust traveling performers.” The barkeeper clenched his teeth, shaking his head.

Great. Just great. Because if you think things can’t get worse, it’s probably only because you lack sufficient imagination.“What does that even mean?” I asked.

“Simple: do you have any idea how hard it is to—”

“Look, sir, I could care less about whatever traumatic childhood event made you perpetually phobic of the theater,” I interjected, making a slashing motion with one hoof, “but please don’t take it out on me.”

His eyes narrowed into slits.

“In my experience,” I said in a calm voice, attempting to get a hold on my finer grasp of Equestrian, “such rude behavior can often end up being quite detrimental to your health.”

“That so?”

“Indeed. Hustling out a poor traveler like this.” I shook my head. “Why, it’s the very antithesis of civility.”

“Do you have any Bits?” he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

“Then get out. Even a foal o’ two would understand this.” He put a hoof to the side of his mouth and called out, “Send somepony to fetch a foal o’ two!” The bartender shook his head, putting the hoof down. “Skedaddle on out before I call the guards.”

Wait. How likely are Equestrian guardsponies to try to physically attack me? I should look into how swing-happy these Equestrians are, at least before I do anything that might possibly be a crime. I let out a long sigh. “If you insist, but don’t hold me accountable should your establishment end up in flames.”

“It’s raining; I’m sure I’ll be fine, jerk.”

Giving him one last dirty look, I caught sight of something from the corner of my eye. Hanging on the wall besides the bar was a large painting resting within an ornate oaken frame. If you’re going to go, go obnoxiously.

“Who’s the old stallion in the painting?” I asked.

“Your mother,” he replied, grabbing another glass and cleaning it. “She was quite a fuzzy broad, she was.”

Fighting to keep my lips from curling into a smirk, I trotted around the bar and to the painting. “A most appealing picture. Who’s the artist?”

“My mother, actually,” the barkeeper hissed, watching me like a hawk. He opened his mouth to speak, but I acted before he could.

I put a hoof onto the painting’s frame, pushing at it. “There. Now your painting is hanging very slightly off center,” I spat. “I hope you spend years trying to get it just perfect again, then somehow find a way to choke on it.”

He bared his teeth at me, stomping down a hoof. “I’m gonna have you arrested for this, for disturbin’ the peace and harassment!”

“I am under no obligation to care,” I replied, sauntering towards the door. With all the noise from the tavern’s patrons, I doubted that anypony had even noticed our little exchange.

As I waltzed out into the rain, a crack of thunder lauded my actions. For a brief moment the lightning made the dreary street almost as bright as day. I looked around at the almost medieval architecture of the buildings around me, took in the street’s earthy smell, the observed double-storied buildings possessing thatched roofing. I was fairly sure that thatched roofing was illegal back home, something about it being unsafe, insecure versus the elements, and prone to insect infestations. Save for the tavern, the windows were all dark, which was why the inn had caught my eye. Now knowing what I did about the place, the building looked almost ugly; it was no coincidence that never in any known language had the phrase “as pretty as a whorehouse” appeared in. Truthfully, I couldn’t recall actually taking much note of my surroundings when I first entered the town.

Taking out my compass from a pocket, I took note of where the east was, the supposed direction of the fabled Equestrian capital of Canterlot. Satisfied, I put the device back. “Great. Now what do I do?”

Maybe there’s another inn in the town? Maybe one that’s an actual inn and nothing else? Wait. No, I lack any Bits.

Shrugging, I turned and ambled to the east, ignoring the sting in my limbs. I glanced downward, trying to avoid stepping into any puddles. “Slang. Maybe if I used more, ponies would warm up to me faster. Y’all, ihr. Ya, du. Got to, gotta, müssen. Going to, gonna, werden. The word ‘ain’t’.”

You’re gonna go far, kid.

“Perfect. Just like that. I’m gonna go east. I’m gonna try to meet Celestia and maybe Luna.” I slowed to a stop. “I’m gonna die of exhaustion.”

Rain pelting my back, I looked up and eastward, peering into the inky blackness of the night. Glancing back at the street, a weird thought crossed my mind. With both the darkness caused by the lack of any street lamps plus the rain, it reminded me of a stereotypical scene from a musical play; minus the cold, it was the kind of stage-like weather where you would expect to see a stallion dancing down the street, singing about how his best dame had just broken up with him, this morning he had been drafted to fight overseas, and all the bars were closed.

Taking a long, hard breath, I set about east again, mumbling to myself. The street ended with a T-junction, cutting down my plan to aimlessly wander east. Shrugging, I turned left, ambling down the shadowy street. But before I could really go anywhere in that direction, I froze.

There was a young stallion down the street. He was holding up an umbrella with one wing as he stood in front of a doorway. The pony himself didn’t catch my attention, nor was it my eternal puzzlement with how pegasi could somehow hold things with their wings. Pegasi were probably just as curious about how all unicorns could use telekinesis, anyways. What earned him my undivided attention was that I couldn’t see a single scrap of clothing on him. “Thanks a bunch, Miss Sugar Song,” he said to the older mare in the doorway.

The mare inside smiled bashfully, and I saw the only thing she was wearing was a small wedding band above a forehoof. “Well, it was nothin’, really. Just helpin’ a friend out. Ya let me know if there’s anythin’ else we can do for ya, alright?”

Another young stallion, this one an earth pony with a little filly on his back, came up from behind the mare. “Thanks, Mom!” he said, embracing the mare in a hug. As he did so, the little filly slipped off his back and onto the floor. The trio looked down at her and laughed, friendly smiles all around.

I fought to shove new facts into the puzzle I was building in my head. A creeping realization of horror soon chipped through my mind. Every single one of these ponies was, without exception, naked. It wasn’t that I’d made the mistake of entering a bordel earlier, it was that everypony was naked. The ponies in the bar, those waitresses, that bartender, this random pegasus and the family he was talking to—naked as the day they were born.

“In the name of all that is sacred, what is this?” I forced my eyes off the ponies and soldiered forwards, trying to control my hastening heartbeat. “Whatever you do, don’t stare. They’d probably start suspecting you weren’t from here if you did. It doesn’t matter that you’ve been on your own for so long now that even the colts are starting to look good. Do. Not. Stare.”

Attempting to hold back the perfectly reasonable urge to freak out, an uncomfortable thought crossed my mind. “Does this mean that the Princesses will also be naked? Oh, Father above, that’s gonna be fun.” I side-stepped a particularly murky-looking puddle. “Why, hello there, so-called deities of sun and moon. No, I swear I wasn’t leering creepily at your haunches. I can’t even say I know what ‘leering’ means. Is it a type of frog?” I hopped over a broken wheel which had just been lying on the ground. “I wonder if Celestia even exists, and if Luna ever existed at all. Or were they just fairytales?”

You’re doing it again, talking to yourself. Why talk to yourself when you have me, the friendly voice in your head? You know, other than the fact that I’m not really a voice in your head, just idle thoughts.

“Yeah, you’ve got a good point. On the other hoof, monologuing aloud is quite grand. And as we all know, reality is flexible when something is aroused.” I blinked. “Cool! The Equestrian word is cool, ours is geil, which technically means aroused. Do not confuse these two. Especially not when these Equestrians are all naked.”

Reaching the end of the street, I swiveled my head around, trying to figure out which way to go. To my right, down the short street and then to the left, was a park. When I was almost there, I picked the conversation back up. “I think this is productive, just you and I speaking in Equestrian.”

Oh, of course. Further proof that you have the only two things that you need to succeed in life: ignorance and confidence.

“Ayep, pardner. Ah dun been thinkin’ a’this problem fer a mite while, wha’ ’bout ya, don’t cha know?”

Do you even know what half of those words meant?

“I’m so clever that I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time,” I replied, pausing at the entrance to the park. The downpour drenched the little wooden bridge spanning a tiny creek. On the other side, crowning a patch of wilderness within the town, were benches, a fountain, and a sparse few dirt paths. “A bed would be nice, but I could settle for a bench. Besides, I’m tired.”

Translation: I’m a little wimp who can’t walk for more than a few hours before getting winded.

“Why do I talk to you?” I asked, ears drooping.

Because you have no friends.

Weighing my options, I peered across the park. I even pulled out a pocket watch, but put it away when I realized that I had no idea how to adjust the watch to account for local timezones. And that was assuming Equestria even used timezones. As I idled there, my thoughts drifted to my limbs, and they cheerfully reminded me of the lactic acids fermenting beneath my flesh. I tried to ignore it, to shut it out, but it was like trying to carry water in a bedsheet: it found ways through.

And what if resting on a park bench is a crime, like loitering or something?

Trudging across the soaked bridge, I replied, “Were anypony to try to stop me, I would feel most sorry for them and their new widows.”

Don’t be so cocky; you of all ponies should know that. Andwhat about the possible threat of Equestrians being too swing-happy, huh?

I grunted as I reached the other side. “Well, what better way to test that question? And in the morning we’ll either keep going east, or, uh... We’ll see how it goes.”

Doesn’t this break one of your general guidelines? That you must obey the small laws in order to break the bigger ones?

“I insist we settle this problem now, so why not do it with a game of Kopf oder Zahl?” I pulled out a 25₰ Kupfernickel-coin from my bag. “Kopf, I rest here for the night. Zahl, I march on through the night.”

No, no. Put the Pfennig back. I don’t wish to play. Just don’t blame me if things go sour.

Resting in the center of the little park was a little bench resting in the umber of a grand oak, which shielded the chair from the rain’s brunt. After putting the Pfennig back, I made my way over to the bench, spun around, and sat down. This deep into the park, I now noticed the faint scent of dead grandparents on the air. Well, it wasn’t exactly a smell of corpses, more of odd powders, mothballed cloth, and decaying hope. That probably meant there was a retirement home nearby. Unloved old ponies tended to smell that way in my experience. A part of me found it extremely interesting that these perpetual nudists even lived long enough to benefit from retirement homes.

Sitting up properly in the chair, using what poor lumbar support it offered, I basked in the glory of my nearly dry respite. Or, really, I just stared out into the darkness and rain, my eyes unwilling to shut. Even as my vision glazed over, my eyes refused to rest. So as the rain eased up slightly, rays of moonlight pouring down upon me, I remained on watch.

Something above me snapped, followed by the sound of a heavy tree branch landing in the bushes behind me. The rain, pouncing with twisted glee, now pelted my hat.

“Oh, you simply must be kidding me,” I groaned, looking straight upwards.

The impact of rainwater on my nose prompted me to blink. Rubbing my eyes, I leaned forwards to look down at the bench I sat upon. Already the rain was trying its damnedest to soak my haunches; the only thing that prevented a puddle from forming on the chair’s sloped surface were the holes between the tiny planks of wood.

“Heiliger Maschinengeist, give me strength.”

It continued to rain, so I closed my eyes and leaned my back against the bench, my head tilted forwards as I listened to the soft pitter-patter slowly harden. After checking a third time to see that my coat was tightly zipped up, I jerked my arms out of their sleeves and into the warmth of my gear.

Slowly the world was reduced solely to the sound of rain, and I allowed the frosty talons of sleep to lull me into the doldrums of my mind. As I let the world melt away, I found my hoof fondling the steel necklace hanging around my neck; it ran down the chain until it reached the iron cross that hung from it. Squeezing it for good measure, I let the world drift away.

|— ☩ —|

A rustling in the bushes woke me. Groaning, I forced an eye open, glaring into the night. Judging by how I was feeling, I couldn’t have been asleep for more than twenty minutes. I was so going to murder whatever woke me up.

With a crane of my neck towards the thicket, I saw nothing of note. Looking forwards again, I shuffled in place, trying to get comfy again. I froze as my eye caught sight of something. There, sitting on the mud and battered by the heavy raindrops, was an origami crane.

Cocking a brow, I muttered, “I didn’t know origami was known in this part of the world.” After quickly glancing around for prowling eyes, I jostled an arm out of my sleeve, then leaned forwards and picked up the crane. As I brought it up close to my face, I saw that the folding was superb. Whoever had folded it clearly knew what they were doing and probably possessed a good deal of fine manipulation. Perhaps they were a unicorn?

I turned the crane over, searching for any indication of its maker when I found exactly what I was looking for. There, in tiny writing, were words written on it. It’s a note, I thought, unfolding the creation with my magic. I made sure my sword was still on hoof; one never knew when one might need their weapon. Although hard to read in the darkness, a ray of moonlight gave me just enough light to make out the wet note.

Congratulations on finally making it to Equestria; I’m glad my advice helped you get here so fast. However, vacation time must soon come to an end. By this time tomorrow, you will again have blood on your hooves, one way or the other. In the morning, you’ll want to go north, to the town of Sleepy Oaks. You’ll be able to figure out what to do from there on your own. And while there is more to this plan, this is what we must focus on. Consider this task a personal favor for me. So in the meantime, get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day. Oh, and my apologies for all this cloak and dagger business. I promise I’ll show up in the flesh next time.

— Your Guardian Angel.

“So this is how he says hello nowadays?” I muttered. Folding the note into a rough square, I slipped it into a pocket. My free hoof found itself touching my sword.

Sighing, I put the hoof back into the warmth of my gear and zipped back up. As I looked down at the mud where the crane had been, I let myself wonder just whose blood would be on my hooves. Whatever this unknown party had done—or, more likely, was doing—however, had warranted my involvement. My own business could wait. After all, this little detour sounded like it could prove fun, and maybe I’d get something out of it in the end. Really, zum Teufel with whatever I was doing; this new goal was my new priority, since it looked more promising than wandering around and hoping to find something neat with which to occupy my time. Plus, it had directions, which were rather helpful when you really had no idea where to go from here.

“Sleepy Oaks, hmm? Sure. Consider the problem solved,” I whispered.

My focus was cut short by the discordant chords of rain impacting a new surface, prompting an ear to perk up, and the rest of my body to tense up. Remaining silent, I waited, listening as the sound got louder and louder, nearer and nearer.

A mint-green hoof stepped upon the wet ground I was looking at. My eyes followed the hoof up to a leg, and from there to the bare-breasted body that was decidedly feminine in form. Cocking a brow, I made the final hike to her head, swung to the umbrella she levitated above her, then finally settled onto the face with light golden-orange eyes.

The mare offered me a quick, honest smile. “You seem a little lonely, stranger.”

Author's Note

Footnote:

In the narrator’s language, all nouns are capitalized, and it is considered a spelling error not to do so. Ergo, all nouns from his language will be capitalized here.

Chapter 4 — Cards

Chapter Four: Cards

“Secrets and lies! It’s all secrets and lies with those ponies!”

Water.

The lake water was no pretty sight. Bits of flotsam and debris lined the shore, the boats all lazily rising and falling with the weak current, the water too murky to see into. It smelt like swamp, sweat, and rotten wood. To top it all off, if you listened carefully, you could hear a strange bubbling noise not unlike the sound of a stallion trying to gurgle acid while fighting a pack of racially insensitive bears. I was looking out across the lake and into the swamp the water devolved into, then my focus shifted to the docks themselves.

Aside from me, the docks were a ghost town. It was as if everypony in the town had been at the meeting, which, even for a small town, was highly implausible. There was always that one schmuck who had better things to do than worry about the safety of everything he held dear.

My eyes drifted to the large pier, at the end of which was a large house standing above the water. Its sign identified it as the “Acolapissa Swamp’s Cabinet of Curiosities”, but the doors and windows were boarded up. A hanging banner advertised “Come see the legends of the swamp!” Bits of green algae stuck to the sides where the water constantly washed up against the building’s supports.

An ear perked itself up as I heard hoofsteps from behind me. I turned back towards the town and saw two ponies walking down the empty streets, trying their absolute best to pretend like they didn’t notice me. But as I looked at them, they dropped the act and stared at me.

One was a young mare, almost half my size in every way, with white fur and a black-with-red-stripes mane. Most of her body was obscured by a black longcoat, which looked rather odd because she was clearly wearing it over lightly armored barding, probably to make herself look bigger, but all it did was make it look like she was wearing an oversized trenchcoat. Her red eyes glanced between me and her companion.

The other pony was a tall mauve earther wearing sunglasses and a coat like hers, but none of the armor beneath it. He was trying to hold a sword in his teeth; it looked more like he was carrying it just to prove he could, rather than because he should—he was holding it like it were a two-week-dead lark. The stallion was larger than me bulk-wise, but height-wise I had him beaten.

“Why, hello there, fellow agent,” the mare said, her voice a tad shaky.

I cocked a brow. “Howdy. What brings you here?”

They exchanged glances. The stallion tried to speak, but all the came out was a mangled garble, so the mare spoke for him. “Oh, just roughing up peasants and making sure nopony speaks—you know, the daily grind.”

“Right,” I said. This close to them, I could see they weren’t wearing any proper clothing under their longcoats. Something about that unsettled me. “I’m Special Agent Jericho. And you?”

“I’m Agent Card. Normal agent, that is.” She chuckled. “Nothing fancy about my job. My associate here is—” her eyes darted to the left “—Agent Glasses.” The stallion nodded, the mare offering me a curt smile.

I turned around and pointed to the cabinet of curiosities. “What do you know about that place?”

The pair stiffened up. “That’s the old museum dedicated to the swamp. It was, uh, left to rot soon after the incident when the old couple went into the Acolapissa and vanished.”

I gave them a hard stare, and the two didn’t move so much as an eye muscle. “Very interesting, my fellow agents.” With an over the shoulder gesture I said, “Come on, let’s up and go inside.” They didn’t protest as I walked up the pier and to the front door, they followed wordlessly. “Now,” I said to myself, “a crowbar is just what we need.” Accordingly, I pulled out a steel crowbar from my bag. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

The first wooden board came off easily enough, as did the rest of them. Soon they were all off, and I tested the doorknob. Locked. It figured; whoever had boarded the place up really didn’t want people getting in. Then, like a foal wondering why the baseball was getting bigger, it hit me.

“Who boarded this place up?” I asked.

“Uh...” the mare stammered, “the sheriff. Sheriff Strong, that is. He was convinced all the little knickknacks the old couple who ran the place had put in it had cursed the place. Well, he never expressly said that, but anypony who actually knew him knew that was his reason.”

Pulling out my dagger and lockpick, I set to work on the door, mumbling to myself as I went. This door, unlike the doctor’s, was a more complicated lock, probably top of the line, the real expensive stuff made for the real paranoid ponies. And, thinking about their disappearance, perhaps they were properly paranoid after all. Of course, I was incoherently mumbling these thoughts when Cards piped up.

“Um, why do you keep talking to yourself?” she asked.

“I merely have a penchant for intelligent conversation,” I said, and went back to picking the lock. A little voice encouraged me to check and see if this place had a back door, and to check if it was unlocked; but I was already too far into this lock. Giving up now would have hurt my pride and made me look stupid.

“Meaning that we’re dumb,” Cards deadpanned.

I stopped picking and agitatedly turned my head to the mare. “Well, I was trying to express that delicately,” I snapped, “but if you insist on saying it that way, I won’t contradict you.” That shut her up, and I went back to work. With just a bit more prodding the lock clicked and the door opened. Peering into the musky darkness inside, I gestured into it. “You first.”

They exchanged glances, and hesitantly ambled inside. Once inside, they darted up to the first little exhibit, putting a short distance between them and me. Said exhibit was a strange necklace with a small likeness of a pony attached it to, the exhibit’s label reading “Acolapissa Dark Magic Charm”. I slipped in behind them and shut the door behind me.

“H-hey,” Cards protested, “now it’s too dark in here.” They both turned to me.

“Now,” I said, voice calm but edging below freezing as I brandished the knife, “you’re going to tell me who you are, what’s going on, and whatever else I want to know, and you’re most certainly not going to lie to me—or, to put it mildly, your remaining existences will be nasty, brutish, and short.”

“Whoa, whoa!” Cards exclaimed. “We’re fellow agents, like we said!”

I tossed the knife, letting it clatter to the ground at their hooves. “Here’s a knife. Kill yourself.”

“What?!” she gasped, her eyes as wide as tarantulas.

“You lied to me, and I’m a very honest stallion. So I’ll give you a chance to end it yourself before I let my sick mind wander.”

“Hey, hey now,” she tried, “let’s all calm things down and talk, okay?”

“You want to talk?” I chuckled. “Fine. Talk. And remember, I gave you the knife for two reasons. One is so you have the option of killing yourself instead of letting me do it. The other is because I’ve so much faith in myself that I know giving you my weapon won’t help you worth a damn.”

Cards blinked. “Wait. Now we’re the ones with the weapons? ...Glasses, if you would.” The stallion took a step in front of the mare, and I rolled my eyes.

“Where’d you buy the paint?” I asked. The stallion tried to answer, but in that moment I wrenched the sword from his jaw with my magic. Levitating it over to me, I said, “The paint you used here. I must say, from a distance, this wooden sword almost looked metallic.” With a quick motion I broke the shoddy blade in half over an elbow.

“Dear Celestia!” the stallion gasped. “He just broke it over his knee!”

I furrowed my brow. “Two things—what’s with the apparent need to state the plainly obvious? And second, it was my elbow, not my knee.”

He looked puzzled. “No, that was your knee.”

Raising my arm to him, I said, “This is my arm, it has elbows.” I pointed to my leg. “That is a leg, its main joints are knees.”

The stallion tilted his head. “That’s your foreleg, it has knees. The other thing is your hindleg, it’s also got knees.”

I facehoofed. “Shut up! We can discuss why your language is wrong later. As for now, back to business.”

Her horn glowed white as the mare picked up the knife. “We’ve, we’ve still got you outmatched, government boy.” As she pointed the knife at me, the stallion pulled out a nightstick from a coat pocket. “S-so just give up quietly, and there won’t be no mess. Got any problems with?”

“You just ended a sentence with a preposition,” I said. “Bastard.”

A real fight can ordinarily last only a matter of seconds, because that’s all the time it takes to kill a person, or knock him out, or disable him to the point where he can’t fight back. So when the stallion charged me, I didn’t think twice about jumping out of the way; and when he charged again, I dodged right with hardly a thought, all just instinct. That’s exactly when I didn’t realize the little mare had stuck a hoof out, around the time I tripped and hit the floor, landing on my back. A last drop of instinct held my arms over my face as blunt blows rained down on me.

“Sorry! But! You! Had! This! Coming!” she yelled, bringing down a baton with every word. My ribs and arms exploded with pain, and I was now quite sure that if I hadn’t fractured my shoulder fighting that guard, I was pretty sure it was now. “And this is for you-know-who!” Cards snarled, and kicked me in the groin with enough force to give me grandkids a concussion... and she promptly gasped in pain.

Using the moment to my advantage, I rolled away and jumped to my hooves, ignoring the agonizing shoulder and the searing pain in the area outlining my groin. “Ha! Codpiece, you violent wench!”

Spewing forth a tirade of swears and insults, the mare furiously rubbed her hoof. “I am not a wench!”

“Well, not a good one,” I countered. “You’ve got about as much sex appeal as a road accident.”

“How charming,” she hissed. “So charming I almost wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her from marrying you.” The stallion charged me again as she finished.

“I don’t have time for this,” I groaned. With a quick flash of motion I pulled an object from under my coat. A quick horizontal slash at about neck-level and his limp body tumbled past me. His head hit the reception desk that was apparently behind me, knocking a small scattering of unseen objects to the ground.

The mare gasped with horror, her baton and knife clattering to the floor. The light of her horn died away, but the aura from mine substituted well enough. Her face had gone green, lips quivered, knees and elbows shook, and her eyes were moist.

With a terrible retching sound she lost her lunch on the floor, spitting out bits of bile and plant matter mixed with stomach acids and unidentifiable juices. It soaked her baton and forehooves, and soon it mixed with the thick fluid dripping lazily from my sword. She stood there, hunched over, spitting the taste out of her mouth. Cards retched again, made a vomiting noise, but nothing came out.

She stumbled sideways as she retched again, nothing coming out for the second time. “Oh, Celestia!” she cried. “Make it stop!” Another retch. “Please, no more! Stop it!” Her leg twisted and she collapsed to the floor, tears streaming down her face.

I stepped around the slowly spreading pool and walked over to her. Standing above her, I magically picked the knife out of the vomit. I flipped it around and offered it to her. “One last chance. Kill yourself.”

“You... you killed him...!” she whimpered.

“Yeah, and?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“On my Celestia, how could you... could anyone... oh my—”

I kicked her in the stomach. “Remind me when I care.”

Cards doubled over in pain, gasping for air. “I can’t breathe,” she choked.

My eyes checked up on the stallion, and I snickered. “Hey, it’s kind of funny, really. Here I am, just a random passerby with a fetish for wearing sexy outfits, now embroidered in some sort of dark conspiracy.” I chuckled. “And yes, I guess the angel’s prophecy came true.”

A drop of her friend’s blood dripped off my sword and onto her face. It took her a moment to realize what had happened. When she did, the mare let out a bloodcurdling shriek of pure, animalistic terror. She flailed backwards, only to bash her head against a display.

I took out a white cloth and rubbed the blood from my sword. Sheathing the sword and tossing the blood-soaked cloth into the vomit, I held the knife out to her. “Now,” I said in a voice radiating kindness and mercy, “you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or I’ll cut your other ear off .”

A bile-covered hoof furiously patted over her head. “B-but I’m not missing any...” Cards fell silent as she caught the look in my eye.

“Oh, I know. The first ear’s non-negotiable—shows you I mean business.”

In a desperate, fleeting attempt to get away, the mare scrambled to her hooves, slipping and sliding on them, and tried to run towards the rear of the building. Of course, all that did was allow me to grab a hoofful of her tail and jerk her back. Cards yelped as I threw her to the ground before me.

The mare stared directly up to me, tears streaming down her face, a dribble of snot in her nose. “I don’t wanna die...” she whispered. Something in the air smelled foul, like ammonia—it was either from the stallion’s body or the mare before me. Probably the mare, but it was too dark to tell.

“Well, you should have picked a nicer job,” I scolded. Leaning over, I grabbed her by the mane and shoved her head against the wall. The knife came up to her ear as I flashed her the kind of smile that would get most people locked in a room with soft walls.

“But I’m a good pony, I help ponies—I don’t deserve this!”

I paused, the knife hovering inches from her left ear. “Run that by me again.”

Her eyes managed to somehow widen even further. She quickly began sputtering a mix of gibberish with what almost could have been words.

Letting go of her mane, I hovered my hoof before her mouth. Still sputtering, she looked at it. Then, with a quick jerking motion, I smacked her across the cheek, knocking her to the ground. She gasped for breath as I said calmly, “Now, speak slowly, Ma’am, and take it from the top.”

The mare brushed the tears out of her eyes. “M-m-my name is Cards, special talent is... well, what do you think? I work for Sheriff Strong of Sleepy Oaks, and, and so... so did Glasses.” She whimpered. “Sheriff Strong’s my dad, and Glasses was my only friend.” Cards buried her face in her filthy forehooves.

I pulled out a box of saltine crackers from my bag. They were possibly stale and God-only-knew how old, but they still tasted good. Taking noisy bites, I listened to her story, nodding as she went.

“I just wanted to try to make Daddy proud of me—I’ve been the town’s screw-up since... since that happened, okay? So I... I convinced Glasses to help me dress up as one of the agents and try to convince you we too were with them.” She sniffled, the tears streaming again. “But now he’s dead a-and I’m gonna die and my body’s never gonna be identified ’cause you’re gonna cut me up—oh sweet Celestia, I’m so sorry! I don’t wanna die a virgin—I don’t wanna die at all!”

To my annoyance, I ran out of the crackers. Brushing the crumbs from my collar, I put the box back in my bag, to be disposed of later. “That it?” I asked through mouthful of food.

She dared peek at me from behind her hooves. “W-what?”

“You and Glasses were just trying to infiltrate the shadowy government agency that’s been causing you all so much grief?”

“Y-yes...?”

I gave her a smile. “You’ve got a little something on your cheek—something other than your best friend.”

“Wha’?”

My hoof smacked her clean across the jaw. “Some stupid.” I grabbed her by the arm and heaved her towards me. Shoving my face into her, she gave me a pathetic whimper. “Do you want to know a little secret, ma chère?”

Cards muttered something that passed for an affirmative.

I smiled. “You and I are on the same side.”

She blinked hard at me. “What?”

“Yeah. You’re a good guy, I’m a good guy—we’re on the same side, fighting the same enemy.”

“But you killed Glasses!” She quickly put her hooves over her mouth.

I chuckled warmly. “I told you that if you lied to me, your remaining existences would be nasty, brutish, and short. You lied to me, and I’m a stallion of my word.”

“You... you... you...”

“See, I’m a rather honest pony.” I moved away from her and bowed. “A very bad habit, but one I find quite hard to break.”

She just stared back at me with uncomprehending eyes. “But... you’re a murderer.”

“Perhaps, but I’m also the only pony who gives a damn about helping your town.” I glanced to Glasses. “You say you were always a screw-up?”

Cards bit her lip. “I’ve always been my family’s fuck-up.” She sniffed, her eyes going wet again. “And now, because of me, my only friend is dead... G-glasses was the only one who was really nice to me. Granted, he-he wasn’t really into mares, but he was the only one—I... I don’t know what I’m gonna do without him.” She curled up into a little ball, muttering what almost sounded like prayers.

Hello, pity party; table for one, please!

I rose myself up to my full height and looked down at her. With my magic I took her coat off and used it to clean the vomit from her hooves. She didn’t resist any of it. Oddly, she was wearing a light bit of armored barding under her coat, just like I’d thought she was. Other than that armor, which only covered a part of her chest, she was entirely naked. The armor didn’t look very impressive, being mostly of cloth, but it was probably better than nothing. From where I stood, I must have looked like a complete giant to her—she, a little ball of white fur with a black-with-red-streaks mane, and I, the tall pony in the leather duster towering above.

“Do you know a lot about this area?”

She perked an ear up, daring a look at me. “Yes. When nopony ever wants to talk to you, you gotta find ways to occupy your time, ya know?”

“Hmm... and how would you like to save your town, defeat these evil ponies, and earn your father’s respect?”

Cards swallowed a lump. “More than anything.” I offered her a hoof, but she only looked at it. “What is it?”

The mental image of Lyra came into my mind and refused to leave. “Well, it’s a hoof, and I’m offering it to you, and you look so sad and pathetic on the ground. You do the math, Miss.”

She continued to stare at hoof like it was some trick, which, given the circumstances, was understandable. I smiled down at her, but to little effect, I felt. Eventually, with the timid slowness of a fawn trying to stand for the first time, she lifted a hoof to me. Quickly I took her hoof in my own and helped her to her hooves. Looking down, I confirmed that the smell of ammonia had come from her loins.

“What about him?” she asked, pointing a shaky hoof in Glasses’ direction.

I shrugged. “To the living we owe respect; to the dead we owe the truth.”

Cards seemed to accept that. She turned her reddened, tear-soaked eyes on me. “And what about me?”

Taking a step towards her, she flinched backwards, yelping as she fell towards the puddle of urine. I caught her before it was too late, yanking her away from the mess. I told her, “Why, no one could kill you. And you know why?”

“Wh-why?” As I held her up, I could see her shaking hard, like she was having some sort of attack.

I patted her on the cheek. “Because you are much, much too pretty. God’d have such a shame if He lost you.”

She wrinkled her nose, furrowing her brow. “God? Who’s He?”

“Literal translation into Equestrian for the word Gott.” I shook my head. “Never mind that. See, we are, both of us, much too pretty to die.”

Cards gave me a horrified stare. “You murdered my best friend... were about to cut my ear off... and now you’re telling jokes? What kind of monster are you?”

I smiled wide and toothy, and she gasped through her nose, reeling her head back. “I’m the monster who wants to save this world of ours. Now, tell me: did Glasses have any family? Was he popular and did he have a lot of friends?”

“No family, and I was his only friend, too,” she admitted, then bit her lip.

“Good. Nopony to miss to him.” I drew out another white cloth and wiped the vomit off my knife with it, then sheathed the dagger. As an afterthought, I picked up her baton and rubbed it down, too, cleaning it well. I held the weapon out to her. “For such a little mare, you’re remarkably tenacious. That’s a valuable trait in the right hooves. Take your nightstick and follow me.”

She wordlessly tilted her head.

“Here’s how it’s gonna work, Miss Cards: if you wish to live, then follow me. I’m the only one right now with the knowhow to save your town, and the only one who cares enough to do it. You know the area much better than me, and so would be infinitely useful. Come with me and I guarantee your safety. Stay behind and let them eventually kill you. Sure, they might not kill you today, maybe not tomorrow or next week, maybe not even this year—but do you really want to live in that shadow of fear, the thought that maybe today they’ll come and take everything away from you? You’re the Sheriff’s daughter, likely already a prime target. So, again, if you wish to live, then follow me.”

Cards stood there for a moment. Judging by the direction her eyes had gone—down and to my right—she was locked in internal dialog. I gave the baton a little shake, and she snapped out of her thoughts. Her horn glowed white as she grabbed the baton. “You’re a complete monster, you bastard,” she whispered. Then, in a voice so soft that I wasn’t really sure she was still speaking to me: “But what choice do I have?”

I patted her on the head, and she glared at me. “That a girl, Miss Cards. If it helps, think of me as your new and only friend, yeah? And if you backstab me, I’ll tear out your fallopian tubes and strangle you with them.” Her eyes widened as she stared at me; I wasn’t lying or joking in the slightest, and my tone said as much. Pulling out a blue bottle, I offered it to her.

“What is this?”

“It’s mouthwash. Trust me, you need it. Your breath is as fetid as all hells—I should know, judging by how it smelled when I was in your face.” I took out an ugly purple towel and held it out to her. “And this is to clean yourself of piss.”

Her cheeks went bright red.

|— ☩ —|

“Do you know any magic?” I asked as I stared at the cabinet of curiosities’ door. I hadn’t seen it before, but above the door, written in white chalk, were the words Vous Vois. At least, I assumed I hadn’t seen it before; a paranoid feeling inside me worried that it had been drawn while I was inside. But, judging from how weathered it looked, it’d been there awhile.

“Telekinesis,” Cards said.

I put a hoof to my jaw. “Anything else?”

“Levitation.”

“Aren’t those the same thing?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder.

“And oh! Did I mention telekinesis?” She glared at me.

Was she trying for a joke? It was so precious. “Glad to see you’re getting a sense of humor back,” I chuckled, and she continued to glare daggers at me. “I thought all Equestrian unicorns were supposed know a small collection of spells.”

Cards looked up at me, cocking a brow. She was holding Glasses’ shades, cradling them against her breast. “Just because you can be so blasé about murder doesn’t mean you have to mock me.”

I turned to face her. “I wasn’t mocking you, I was being serious.” I took a step towards her, and she visibility struggled not to flinch. “Whence I come, if a unicorn colt or filly shows too much magical aptitude, the government takes them away.”

She blinked at me. “They’re doing that to your hometown? I, I didn’t know they were doing that.”

I kicked away one of the boards I’d torn off earlier. It went sliding across the house’s deck and into the water. “No, the guys doing evil around here are in no way connected to the government whence I come. In the land whence I come, the government does that for the child’s own good, and we all know it.”

“What?”

“Yes,” I said with a nod. “The use of magic is considered an incredibly dangerous thing whence I come, not to mention a heresy. Using more than telekinesis can attract the wrong sort of attention from the wrong sort of monsters, so the government takes the child away and trains them how to properly use magic without endangering themselves to those forces that would harm them. It’s the only sane option, really. Well, to be exact, we don’t ‘train them to use magic’, as that would be a heresy. We train them to use ‘psychic powers’, which is somehow totally different. But, if you called them magi, folks would generally understand what you meant, even if it is insulting, so I’ll call them that for your convenience, since your people don’t distinguish between magic and psychic powers, I don’t think. Psionic powers are A-okay. Magic would only bring about, again, forces that would harm them.”

“Forces that would harm? What do you mean?”

“Like demons,” I replied.

She shifted her weight, the wooden dock below her creaking. “What’s a demon?”

I paused. Of course Equestrians probably never dealt with demons. If they had, Cards would have doubtlessly understood just how monumentally stupid of a question that was, akin to asking, “Oh dear, you appear to have forgotten what gravity is and plummeted thirty feet straight up into the ceiling, are you alright?”

“If you described a demon as inequine and sadistic, it would probably commend you on your keen observations, and then demonstrate that your mortal definition of sadism was laughably inadequate.” I looked directly at her. “I can see it in your eyes, your apprehension of me. But let me tell you now that the worst fate you could possibly imagine is peanuts compared to what they’d do to you. You don’t want to ever be found by one.”

“What... what would happen then?” Cards asked, cradling the sunglasses tighter against her chest.

“Well, if they found you, they’d rape you to death, eat your flesh, and sew your skin into their clothing—and if you’re very, very lucky, they’d do it in that order.” I smiled at her, but she only returned me a dark, distant expression.

“Where are you from?”

I let the question hang in the air. “Das Reich Teutschland. Sometimes referred to simply as the Reich. It’s a nation halfway across the world, really. It is the most tolerant, most free, most democratic, and most feared nation in the history of the world, in fact.”

“You’re not an Equestrian?” she asked, rubbing her shoulder.

I half-scoffed, half-laughed. “Not in the least bit. I’m a Teutscher. We’re the good guys, I promise you. At the very least, you can always count on Teutsche doing the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else first, of course.”

“I think I’ll put my questions about that somewhere in the forties or fifties on my growing ‘What the fuck’ list...” She swallowed hard. “Can I—can I ask you a question?”

A part of me wanted to give her a smart-ass answer, but the more reasonable part of me prevailed. “Go ahead.”

Cards titled her head to the side and pointed the cabinet of curiosities. “C-c-can’t we at least bury Glasses?”

“And who’d bury him? You?”

She nodded. “There’s an old cemetery out a little ways east. When I was a little filly, I would sometimes go there and... just sorta read the headstones. That was before my mother taught me what a cemetery was and what the headstones—” Cards swallowed.

I shook my head. “There’s no time.”

“But you can’t just leave him there to...” She choked over her words. “Can’t just leave him there.”

“And I suppose you’ll want to buy some flowers and put them on his grave too, right? You just want to let everyone know what’s gone on here, and let them jump to rash conclusions, huh? Because if we do that, they will all see, and they will not take kindly. If we leave him here, there’s a chance his death will go unnoticed, and we can carry on with our business unhindered.”

She crossed her legs, looking at the ground. “I... he was my friend.”

I took a hard step towards her, and she visibly flinched. “I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom. But this is your Weltschmerz, little lady. And we must deal with that.”

“Velt-shmairts?” Cards asked.

Shaking my head, I facehoofed. “It’s a teutsches word which has no real Equestrian translation. Basically, it means ‘the sorrow that one feels and accepts as one’s necessary portion in life’. But now is not the time to dwell about that. We need to move forwards, to make sure nopony else is hurt by these government thugs.”

Cards looked about ready to cry when I finished. A part of me thought I was crossing some sort of line, not only murdering her only friend but refusing to bury him, instead leaving him to rot in a possibly haunted house. Another part of me reminded me that I really didn’t have time to hold a funeral for somepony that no one but this one little mare cared about.

“Oh... okay,” she whimpered, her ears falling limp.

I continued, “Getting what you want is a rare this in this world of ours. All too often we don’t get to sit around and have pity parties for our mistakes. Fact is, we just have to keep going. The alternative is death.”

She sniffled. “Without Glasses, that’s what...”

With a forceful motion, I grabbed her chin and shoved my face into hers. I could smell the fresh mint on her breath as her pupils dilated. “What? Were you about to say that you wanted to die without him? Is that what you really want, Cards?” I scoffed. “If I’d known you’d be this pathetic and weak...”

Tears in her eyes closed, she shouted, “But Glasses is dead! You killed him—and I killed him because of my stupid idea!”

“Yeah,” I said, utterly calm in tone, “you did, you stupid girl. I told you to be honest, and you talked him into doing what he did, forcing my hoof. But he’s dead, Cards, and unless you wallowing in pity or dying would somehow make the universe go ‘Oh, whoops, Cards is sad or dead; better bring her friend back to life’, then you’re nothing more than a selfish bitch indulging in her own selfish wishes. In fact, if your death brought ponies back to life, that’d mean you were my religion’s chosen one or something, which would mean I’d have to worship you, which is not an idea I’m at all comfortable with.”

With an agonizing slowness Cards opened her eyes, staring into mine. “I hate you,” she whispered softly, and I didn’t doubt her. “But Glasses... oh Celestia, I’m so, so sorry.”

Letting go of her chin, I grunted. “Then prove it, girl.”

“How?”

“By living, Cards, and by learning never to screw up like that ever again. Learn to think, learn from this. Trust me, girl, yours was just a minor screw up compared to those I’ve made in my life. You’ll make more, girl, for that’s just a part of life, making mistakes. But in the grand scheme of things, yours was only a minor mistake.”

She gritted her teeth. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“What kind of mistakes did you make? Did they… did they…”

A pregnant pause.

“Cards, I must live every second of every day knowing that I’ve had many friends over the years,” I said, looking her in the eye, “and so too must I live in the knowledge that I have never had a friend whom I have murdered, either by accident, by negligence, or because I… Because of that, I am only too happy to suffer pain. Pain means that I’m doing good. Pain keeps me on the path of penance. I know I will never be forgiven, but this is as close as a monster like me may ever come.” I paused, letting that sink in. “And do you know what? When I drew my sword today, I made one more mistake, just like you.” I knelt down, placing a hoof over my heart. “I beg forgiveness from thee, for I have forgotten the face of my father.”

She only stared at me. “Your… father?”

“Yes,” I said coldly, “my father, both in the literal and metaphorical, ancestor-worshiping way; for the father is greatly important to the religion of my people. As is said in the land whence I come, ‘For the sake of the mothers who bore you and the fathers who smiled upon you, make every swing of the sword count! Stay focused, else you have forgotten the face of your father!’ To forget the face of one’s father is a grievous sin; if you cannot remember the face of your father, you will make mistakes, you will err, you will perform badly, and you will inevitably fail and die. To remember the face of your father is the first and most important part of being a warrior and hero.” I looked up at Cards. “And on this day, I have forgotten the face of my father; and for this reason, I failed and ended up murdering your friend. Can you ever forgive me?”

She sniffled, gritting her teeth. “Never,” Cards said quietly, voice dripping venom. It was kind of adorable, actually. “I will never forgive you for what you did, I can never forgive you.” She swallowed. “A-and to tell you the truth, I don’t think you’re sorry at all. I think that if you could go back, you’d kill him again just out of spite.”

“So be it; I accept your lack of forgiveness, and will take it upon my soul as a black stain, yet another one to add to the black mural that once was my mortal soul.” I stood up tall, looking almost directly down at the little mare. “But therein lies difference between you and I—and the reason I can sleep at night, if only just—is because I know how to move on.”

“Move on?” she half-chuckled, half-sobbed. “How can you move on from this? Why would I even want to?”

“Because if you can’t,” I said in a firm but stern voice, “it will eat you up. It will consume you. The memory and guilt will drive you on a quest for redemption. You will fight to cleanse your unclean soul for years; you, a monster in your own eyes, will become a monster trying to prove in you there is no such beast; and in the utter end, there you will stand, knowing that you’ve only gotten worse.” I closed my eyes and, in a soft voice: “In the end, you will stand there, and you will realize that you are me.”

“You?” she asked.

I took a step forwards, and she flinched back. “Yes, me. Cards, you are seeing the start of the road whereupon I have walked for what has felt like thousands of years. And when you are so far down that road that you have become old and can no longer even remember the road’s beginning, you may as well be caught in the ever-spinning Wheel of Time. The Wheel of Time is the darkest, deepest, most sadistic level of the afterlife, young Cards—therein, everything is the same as the real world, only you keep making those same mistakes and errors, never learning, and only digging your grave deeper and deeper. It is not the fate you should be damned to; for me, it is the deserved price of my sins. When you’re in my place, you learn how to move on because… because it’s the only thing you can do, but I learned too late in life. The Road of the Wheel can only end one way: thy flesh consumed.”

Cards was quiet for a long time. And then, weakly, she asked, “H-how does one move on?”

“You put a smile on your face, you tell a joke, and you try not to think too hard about it. You find amusement and happiness in the little things as you continue fighting on, knowing full well that you can never truly forget what you did, that some ounce of guilt will always be there. You offer up your very flesh to be consumed in the hopes of trying to make it right, knowing you never can. You devote yourself to trying to make life better for the rest of the world, all with a smile on your face because, deep down, you know you’re a monster.”

I took a breath. “It is, I guess, inspired by the third Säule des Konfessionismus, one of the five pillars central to the religion of my people. This pillar is known as Self-Sacrifice. As the Prophet—the Mare Laurentia—said millennia ago: Flesh must be savaged and blood spilt in the acts of true penance: he who sacrifices and gives of the flesh openly unto others is truly worthy of forgiveness. He who has forgotten this truth has forgotten the face of his Father.” I looked her in the adorable red eyes she had, which the mare herself was rubbing.

“Is that why you’re in Equestria? Trying to make life better?”

“Huh?”

“Are you here, so far from home, because you made a mistake? The kind of mistake you couldn’t make right at home?”

I blinked, and suddenly I was staring into the eyes of Mr. Welch, even if one of his eyes was cut, bulging, and resting partially on his cheek. His white fedora was sitting off kilter on his head, his body riddled with cuts, gashes, burns, and various other bleeding wounds. I knew that my body was too. And yet he smiled at me. “I’m the last of my kind, Jericho—changeling, a free thinker, and a good guy, probably the only one of my kind to ever raise a hoof in defense of a being not of my ilk. I know that only one of us is getting out of here alive, and I’m damn sure I could kick your ass in a fight. The contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Still, given the choice between me and you... it should be you that lives. I’ve lived me a long enough life, done everything one of my breed can do. But you? Well, there’s still a lot you could still do, a lot you’re gonna do, you clever colt.” Welch embraced me in a tight hug. “And remember, brother, I love ya.”

I smiled at him. “No homo.”

Mr. Welch grinned, shaking a hoof at me. “Goddammit, all the homo!” We both laughed hard, but I could see tears in his eyes. A horrifying, gut-wrenching howl erupted from behind him. “Run, Jericho! Run, you clever colt!”

His eyes evaporated into the red eyes of the little mare in front of me. My heart was beating faster, unevenly, as I rubbed the side of my head and swallowed. “Not at first.”

She hesitated. “What do you mean?”

I gave her a hard look. “Back in the Reich there was something that belonged to me, something I’d been gifted from birth with. ‘A strong pony stands up for himself,’ they say; ‘a stronger pony stands up for others.’ And unless I could be that stronger pony, this gift would kill me and everything I once held dear.

“Maybe it’s hard for you to see because your culture is unfamiliar with this. I’m a Teutscher; that’s practically our philosophy, defend to the death the weak and helpless. I’m sorry for what happened to Glasses, just like you are. And to prove that, I’m going to hunt down those behind this conspiracy, skin them alive, string them upside down from some high place, and let the sun slowly finish the job for me.

“But whatever my past and history, I wouldn’t dare whine or angst over it. All that matters is that I’m doing what’s right because it’s the right thing to do. And if you ever want to have any hope of sleeping comfortably at night ever again, then you’ll join me, help me stop these ponies that’ve been causing you, your people, and your town so much grief.”

About how much of that overly idealistic crap do you actually believe?

So long as she buys it, it doesn’t matter.

Cards swallowed hard. The whites of her eyes were so red that, combined with her naturally red irises, it looked as if somepony had gouged her eyes out and replaced them with nasty, fleshy red orbs, and then drilled pupils into them. I was struck with the strange mental image of a Cards on an operating table, a surgeon suspiciously resembling me standing above her, asking, “So, would like red eyes or blue ones today? Or maybe green? That color’s far more in season.” It took her a matter of minutes to get a grip on herself, to rub the tears away.

I took a step away from her, putting too much weight on my injured shoulder. Grunting loudly, I swung my weight to the other arm. “Verdammt noch mal!” I hissed.

Cards hesitated. “Are you... are you okay?”

I let slip a throaty chuckle. “I must hand it to you, Cards, you hit quite hard.” As I steadied myself, the mare began gnawing on her hoof. I didn’t imagine it tasted very good. “I’m pretty sure you fractured my shoulder.”

“R-really?” Judging by the look on her face, Cards wasn’t sure whether to be proud or ashamed. She settled for looking concerned.

With adroit speed I pulled out a red, pear-shaped bottle from my bag. I looked at it, contemplated popping the cork and chugging it, but instead asked Cards a question. “Do you know anywhere I can get a bite to eat?”

“Huh?” she stammered.

“Unless you want me to be utterly useless, you’ll point me in the direction of a place where I can eat.” I glanced around the docks. “And maybe somewhere to get a drink.”

Cards, without looking, pointed off in the distance. “There’s a little bar out that way. It serves some good food, drinks, and the bartender is absolutely amazing at pretending to care about your problems.”

I paused. “Wait. Isn’t everypony but you at the town meeting?”

She hesitated. “The meetings we hold are never long, mostly so that those government types never get too wise to our actions. Between Glasses and I tracking you down and what went on in there... I’m pretty sure things are getting back to normal. The guy running the bar’ll be there, at least. B-but why do you suddenly want to get plastered?”

“I don’t care to get drunk. In fact, I’ve never been drunk a day in my life,” I said.

“Makes one of us,” she said beneath her breath.

Was that before or after you brought shame to your family? Walking towards her, I said, “Doesn’t matter. Take me to this bar. Now.”

|— ☩ —|

The sign above the wooden building read “The Watering Whole”. No, not “Watering Hole”, “Watering Whole”. With a big old W and everything. That meant that I now knew two things about the bar’s owner: that he was great at feigning interest in ponies, and that he had absolutely no regard for the Equestrian language. I’ll admit, the written Equestrian language was a complete nightmare. How did they spell the word “enough”? Clearly, there needed to be a G and H somewhere in there.

I shook my head. “You’re sure this is the place?”

Cards nodded. “If not, I don’t know where I’ve been sinking my spare Bits all these years.” She scratched her mane. “Do I have to go in?”

With an over-the-shoulder glance I said, “What’s the matter?” Behind her, lake waves brushed up against the shore. There were wooden docks here, just a fenced-off incline dipping down into the water. Still, I could hear splashes from the water, and water was nice.

The mare gave her tail a sad twitch. “Whenever I had a bad day—more often than I’d like to admit—I’d come here and get wasted. Whenever that happened, Glasses would come find me a-a-and help me home.” She choked up.

Rubbing my shoulder and looking away, I rolled my eyes. “If I go in there without you, can I count on you to stay put?”

“Where would I go?”

“Home? Your father?” I suggested.

“Oh, sure,” she scoffed. “ ‘Hey, dad! Guess what I did today? Got my best friend killed because I’m stupid, stupid, stupid, and not a smart pony! So, how’s mom?’ ” Cards gritted her teeth, staring hard at the ground.

Taking a step away from her, I eyed her. God, if she was going to keep whining, it’d be easier to just drown her in the lake right now. “O–kay. Do you want me to bring you anything?”

She brought her red eyes back up to me. “I’d appreciate a bottle of Bucking Bronco—to help me wallow in pity.”

“Alright, Miss Cards. I’ll be back in... who knows.” I touched the red bottle I had in a coat pocket. The door didn’t have a handle, so I braced my good shoulder against it and entered that way, the door closing behind me. The interior reminded me a lot of Ponyville’s Inn & Tavern, wood, lighting, the booths and tables, bar with its tender at the far side.

What didn’t remind me of my dreadful experience in Ponyville were the two ponies facing off in the middle of the floor, both their sides facing me. “Oh, so ya think you can just scare me off, hmm?” the opal-coated pegasus mare sneered, brushing her two-hued amber mane with a hoof.

The other pony, a young stallion wearing a brown stetson, shook his head. “Lookie here, girl, I’m tellin’ you ya need t’get outta here. Your Nightmare-Moon-may-care attitude’s attractin’ too much damn attention, what with that new gov’ment boy runnin’ about. So get outta town. Now.”

“That government boy? You mean that stallion who got attacked earlier today in town square?” she asked.

Yay. Ponies were talking about me.

He sputtered for an answer. “None of your damn business! Just get outta here!”

The mare stamped a hoof at him. “Well, you can’t just bring something like that up and then not explain it—that’s rude! And what’s with this problem you’re having with the government I heard about?”

Hey, wait. Isn’t that the depressed-looking mare who was drinking that smoothie earlier? Wow. She sure perked up.

“Look, girl, if you don’t get out right now, I cannot be held responsible for what might happen t’ya.” He shook at hoof at her for emphasis.

Snickering, she took off her backpack with only the dexterity of her wings. My eyes looked over the little outfit she was wearing, if you could call it that: a tan little thing that resembled a cross between light armor and a miniskirt. It covered her flanks and probably her other things just enough so that, standing still and upright as she was, the mare looked almost decently dressed. She still wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I highly doubted any panties, but, for an Equestrian, it was an admirable start.

“So, you think you could take me on?” she taunted, then stuck her tongue out. “Come at me, buck!”

Buck? Did she just call him a “buck”? Doesn’t that refer to a male deer? I shrugged; it was probably slang that I’d have to look up. Maybe it’s an insult. It’d fit her tone.

The so-called buck scoffed. “Look, girl, I ain’t gon’ fight ya—”

“Then screw off,” she declared, cocking a brow. “I’m not gonna just mozy on outta this town, oh no. What are ya gonna do to me anyways, huh? Huh?”

I removed my hat and scratched my head. Ignoring the two ponies, I maneuvered my way around them, keeping as much weight off my injured arm as I could without limping. The idea of eating seemed rather appealing to me; I struggled to recall if I’d eaten anything but those three saltine crackers during these last few days. I was probably starving. Brilliant.

“Look, missie, if ya wanna go at it, I’d be happy to oblige ya.”

She laughed. “Oh, so what’s with the sudden change in attitude?”

My mind wandered back to Cards. Had I made the right choice with her? Well, other than the murdering her only friend part, that was. And while I didn’t know her too well, a part of me knew she was going to be an emotionally unstable, naïve liability. It didn’t help that she hated my guts. Yet, she was my local guide, an asset I likely needed should I ever try to do what I was doing. And as for her ideals, what could I say? Her heart was in the right place, and that was a better start than many. Plus, I realized, her mane was black with red stripes, and that reminded me very much of a playing card. Playing cards. Cards. It was like she was color-coded for my convenience!

“Well, girl,” the buck went on, “I really don’t like your attitude or your tone. So maybe, jus’ this once, I won’t be needin’ to act me like a gentlecolt.”

“Oh, so that’s what you call ‘being a gentlecolt’, huh?” she scoffed. “Well, I’d hate to see what your definition of a jerk was.”

“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “I’m lookin’ at my definition of a bitch.”

“Oh, I know you did not just say that!” the mare snarled.

“What?” he chuckled. “Bitch?” With a grin on his face, he repeated the word to her several times. “Just a flank spankin’ hussy of a she-dog,” the buck spat. As I walked behind the girl and made my way to the bar counter, I glanced at him. Our eyes met, and his expression went dark.

At just that moment, the mare let out a roar and smashed his cheek in: “You do NOT call me a bitch!” The buck gasped as he tumbled to the floor, the mare now hovering above him. “Do it again! I dare you! I double dare you, pig!” she barked. “Get back up so I can kick your ass again, buck!”

Meanwhile, I paused to watch the show. But with her in the air, her odd skirt-thing no longer covered her so well. My eye flicked to the bartender, who caught my glance and shrugged. I should probably help end this fight.

Why? a thought asked.

Because I’d rather not have some mare shouting while I eat, thank you very much. Plus, shouting might prompt somepony to go get the Sheriff, and I’d rather not explain to him how I brutally and emotionally scarred his precious daughter. Fathers tend to be very protective of their little girls, and I think one innocent murdered fills my quota plenty for the month. With a sigh I walked to the mare as she landed on the ground.

“Come on, buck!” she demanded, kicking him in the gut. “You think you’re tough?! Scary?!”

I extended a hoof and tapped her on the shoulder. “Ma’am—”

Her body twisted around as she threw a hoof at my face. I shifted sideways, and her eyes widened as her punch sailed past me. With a quick motion I grabbed her arm and threw the mare onto the ground, pinning her beneath me. The action made my shoulder howl in silent agony, but I kept a straight face. Her eyes looked up at me, scanned over my body, and widened to their extremes.

“Bu–how–who–what–where–government boy!?” she sputtered, a droplet of her spit landing on my cheek. The mare panted for breath as she stared up at me.

“That’s nice, Ma’am, but I was hoping to—”

“You–know–you’re–kinda–cute–up–close,” she blurted out, cheeks going red. The mare sucked in her lips, scrunching her face up.

I cocked a brow. “That’s nice, Ma’am. But if you want to go down that road, the least you could do is wear a corset and stockings.”

She silently stared up at me, her wings spread out from when she’d hit the ground. Next to us, moaning and still dazed, was the buck. As her eyes continually scanned over me, the mare still blushing, I glanced over her body. Toned, flat stomach, lovely wings—the kind of body a girl could be proud of, even if she was one of those girls with enough insecurities to fill a house.

I stood up from her, and she immediately turned her flanks to the side, as if modesty were now a thing. I offered a hoof to her, getting a second flashback to Lyra. “Care to stand, Ma’am?” As her eye settled on my offered hoof, she swallowed hard and grabbed it. I pulled her up; soon she was standing before me and looking up at my face, her wings still erect.

“Hi,” she offered in a weak tone.

I bowed my head slightly. “You can fold your wings back up, Ma’am.”

She blinked hard, her wings snapping back to her body. “R-right.” The mare opened and closed her mouth, contemplative look in her eyes. She took a deep, hard breath. “My name is Lightning Dust, reporter for the Cloudsdale Post.”

“That so?”

The mare smiled. “That’s right. Ace Reporter Lightning Dust, at your service! But, uh, you can just call me Dust, ’kay?”

“‘Ace reporter’?”

She gave a nervous laugh, taking a step back. “Well, I mean, not yet.” Her voice dropped to a mumble. “It was pretty much the only job I could get after she happened.” She picked up again. “B-but if there’s something fishy going on here—and I know there is—then I’m sure I can make headlines...” The mare trailed off as she looked at me again. She swore under her breath.

I glanced at the buck on the floor. “Well, my name is—”

“That government boy,” she said coldly.

Shifting my weight to keep pressure of my injured shoulder. I sighed. There was no point in trying to dissuade everyone of that name, was there? Might as well roll with it. “You might very well think that, Ma’am; I couldn’t possibly comment.”

Dust took a step back, swallowing hard. “Uh, does that mean that...?”

I flashed her a reassuring smirk. “Relax, Ma’am. I’m not from that government; I’m a good guy. But, in any case, would you mind not fighting so loudly? The police in this town don’t seem to want to make the distinction between good guys and bad guys.” I turned and walked towards the bar, but I heard her following me.

“Wait! You know what’s going on here?” she asked.

Taking a seat at the bar, I said to the bartender, “Howdy, sir. Don’t suppose you’re serving food at this hour?”

He shrugged. “Am. But you don’t look like you know what you want.”

I shrugged. “Correct. What do you recommend?” I like how he’s not actively hating me right now. He actually seems rather mellow.

“Cheese chips, meal-sized order.”

The hell are those? “I’d take an order of that.” Then, remembering the other thing I wanted, I added, “And a bottle of Bucking Bronco.”

The stallion cocked a brow. “Well, if you insist, gov’ment boy. Gimme a few, aight?”

I nodded. “Thanks.” Shoulder. Shoulder! Hey, stop hurting! It’s getting annoying.

“Stop ignoring me!” Lightning Dust protested, stamping a hoof.

Pulling out the red potion from my coat, I looked at the mare. “Is there a problem?” I asked, and put the bottle on the counter. A thought occurred to me, and I looked at the bartender. “Hey, do you accept raw precious metals as currency?”

“What kinda metals we talkin’ here?” he asked, poking his head up from the cabinet he was searching.

I took out a solid gold coin and put it on the counter. “The expensive kind.”

The bartender’s eye lit up. “Why, I do think we can work with this. Pretty much covers the cost of whatcha ordered plus extras.”

“Hey, Ma’am. Do you want a drink?” I asked.

Dust paused and smiled. “Yes! Yes, I could do with one.” She took a quick seat next to me.

“Bartender, a drink for the lady—”

“Hard apple cider,” Dust finished.

“And a glass of water, please,” I added, and both ponies gave me an odd look. I shrugged. “What? I like water, it’s nice.”

Behind me, somepony was staggering up to us, breathing heavy. Dust looked over her shoulder and sighed heavily. With a grunt she catapulted herself towards the staggering buck. Her hoof made nice with his jaw, promptly knocking him flat on the ground again. “Oh, what’s the matter?! Ain’t had enough yet, huh?!” The bartender and I looked over at her, and she returned the look. Dust shrugged in an ‘are you guys crazy?’ manner and said, “He’s an asshole!”

“Yeah,” the bartender said, frying up something, “but he’s also a deputy.”

Dust muttered something that combined ‘Nightmare Moon’ and ‘fuck me sideways’ in the same breath. “Does that mean I’m technically a criminal now?” she asked, and he and I shrugged. The mare put a hoof to her chin, thinking.

“Here ya go, buddy,” the bartender said, putting a glass of water and a strange bottle on the counter before me and Dust’s drink by where she’d been sitting. The bottle was stout and brown, a label on it reading ‘Bucking Bronco—151-proof!’ but that wasn’t what got my attention, no. What I was focused on happened to be what was at the end of the bottle’s neck; the bottle ended in the vertical head of some stallion, his teeth bared, and looking like he was charging some foe.

I thanked him and took a sip of water, still eying the Bucking Bronco. Whatever it is, I doubt it’s cheap stuff. My shoulder refused to let me forget its plight, and my bruised ribs decided that now would be a good time to toss their hats into the ring of agony, too. Gritting my teeth, I did what I could to look fine and dandy. Turning over the bottle, I noticed that the liquid inside was apparently highly flammable, according to one obscured bit on the back label. And then I saw that it had a jaw-dropping seventy-five-point-five percent alcohol content. Holy Sovereign, was Cards trying to kill herself?

“This is legal?” I asked, pointing to the bottle.

The bartender look over at me and furrowed his brow. “Why would it be illegal?”

I stated the alcohol content. “That’s a bit high, no?”

“You ordered it,” he dismissed, going back to preparing the food.

Dust took a seat next to me, quickly taking a sip of her drink. She turned to me and batted her lashes. “So, you’re that government boy, hmm?” When I didn’t reply, she continued, “Say, if I got in any legal trouble, don’t suppose you’d mind helping a girl out, hmm?”

I took a drink of water. “Allow me to assist.” Turning around I got out of my chair and went to the buck, who was rubbing his face and still lying on the floor. “Howdy, mate,” I greeted, and he groaned. Lyra, Lyra, Lyra, I thought as I held out a hoof to him. “Need you a hoof?”

Groaning, he grabbed my hoof, and I helped him up. “I, uh, thanks,” he sputtered, his face sporting two huge eyesoring bruises. Then his eyes widened. “Oh shit—you’re that government boy!” The buck tried to get away from me, but I still held fast his hoof. Instead, I pulled him towards me, shoving my face into his.

“Now, was that any way to behave around such a delicate lady?” I asked, indicating Dust, who was watching with interest.

“Wha’-wha’?” he stuttered.

“Oh, indeed. What would your friends think if you, a big, tough stallion, got beaten by such a little girl, huh? Why, I’m sure you’d never hear the end of it, how a girl beat you.”

He licked his lips, glancing between Dust and me. “I...”

“So here’s what I’ll do, brother—you just walk away and forget about this all. In turn, I won’t tell a soul about how you were so pathetically beaten without being able to put up a fight against one little girl.”

“Yeah, yeah, I... I’ll...” As I let him go, he stumbled backwards. He was silent for a moment. “And you won’t tell nopony?”

“Not a soul,” I said with an honest smile.

He nodded and turned around. I watched him slink out of the bar, and thought I heard him gasp “Cards?” in surprise, but the door closed before I could catch anything else. As I returned to the bar, Dust just stared slack-jawed at me.

With a breath, the mare closed her mouth and grabbed her shot glass of cider. Another moment later and the glass was empty. Dust looked at her glass for a moment, frowning. “Y’know, I’d like to take a bite out of you,” she said, fluttering her lashes at me.

“Yeah, I can tell. I’m like a cookie full of arsenic,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “But if you wanted another drink, just ask and I’ll get you another; there’s no need to feign a physical interest in me.”

She crossed her arms and made a scoffing gesture. But before she could say anything, the bartender poured her another glass. “Technically,” he said, “I still owe him several more drinks, what with how much that one coin was worth.”

Dust cocked a brow at me. “And just what is it that you did, again, government boy?”

“Oh, a little of this, a touch of that. Swordplay might be involved. Lots of danger. Sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, chips, dips, chains, whips. Performing generally heroics feats.” I winked at her. “Who knows?” Dust just stared up at me, and I went back to enjoying my water. “So what’s with that little thing you’re wearing around your haunches?” I asked after finishing the glass

“Well, if I wear it anywhere else, it chafes,” she replied with a shrug, a wing brushing up against me. “But no, seriously, I’m just wearing it because it frees up space in my bag.” Dust gestured a hoof at the bag she had put under her chair. “I know it looks stupid.”

“I like it,” I offered, holding back the urge to laboriously explain my reasons to her. It struck me how odd it was that I admired it precisely because it covered up her body, particularly when a major goal in any male’s life was to get a girl as naked as possible. Maybe Equestria was starting to get to me.

“Then you, my friend, must have poor taste in fashion,” she chuckled. Without warning, she inched towards me, her hoof fiddling with the miniskirt.

My eyes followed her work. Then, quick as could be and with an air of utter nonchalance, she just ripped the miniskirt off. Quick as I could, I darted my eyes forwards, trying not to catch a glimpse of her soul. Flicking a glance sideways, I saw her leaning towards me, the skirt held up in a hoof, and a cocked brow aimed in my direction.

“See, it helps me to... Hey, you okay there, government boy?” Dust asked. “Ya look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She nudged one of my legs with her own. “Hey.” She whistled. “Big guy, down here.”

After taking a breath, I looked towards her, doing my best to keep solid eye contact. “I’d prefer it greatly if you put your miniskirt back on and covered up your haunches.” It occurred to me how strange it was that my current problem was how the pretty girl had just stripped in front of me, and how my reaction was precisely the opposite reaction to how that was supposed to go. Equestria was definitely getting to me.

“Miniskirt?” she muttered. “I wouldn’t call it a miniskirt. It’s more of a utility—” Dust blinked. “Hey, wait a minute! Are you saying my flank ain’t nice?!” She slapped a hoof over her mark. “I’ll have you know this is grade-A stuff right here, you jerk!”

“That is not the problem,” I groaned, fighting the urge to glance to where I might see something of hers.

“Then what, huh?! ’Cause I don't care how cute you are, I am not gonna get insulted by some creep wearing such a stupid outfit—”

This is going to be a recurring problem, isn’t it? Alright, new resolution. Since this isn’t your home culture, don’t make a fuss about it, or you’ll keep having problem. As they say back home: other country, other rules.

“Ave Laurentia,” I interjected. “I think you are a rather hot lady!”

“You really think so?” she asked in a suddenly friendly tone, sitting back down properly in the seat.

“Yes! The point was never about how your physical body appeared to me, nor how you conformed rather nicely to my standard of beauty,” I quickly replied. “Look, if you want to keep it off, do so. It’s just that I’m from a... a weird place, alright? My apologies. I can handle it, I can handle it.” I sighed hard.

Dust gave me a long, hard look. “Okay,” she said in a suspicious tone, narrowing an eye.

The bartender, clearly sensing it was his time to shine, set down a plate of food before me. The meal itself consisted of little batons of deep-fried potatoes covered with melted cheeses. I realized I recognized the food, not as chips but as Pommes frites, a beloved part of the diet back home. Shoulder aching, I grabbed a hoofful of fries and consumed them. I paid Dust no attention. They tasted divine.

Halfway through the meal, I grabbed the red potion and chugged it. The liquid washed down my throat, igniting with the food in my gut. Sitting there, I felt the ignition move into my bloodstream, warming my shoulder and the rest of my bruised body. The heat, I knew, was actually just a number of localized fevers—my body working beyond its natural ability to heal, and doing it well. I sighed as the pain died down, replaced by the slowly dulling heat.

Dust poked my good shoulder. “Hey, uh, what was that?”

“Hmm?” I hummed, smiling at my good health.

“That thing you just drank.”

I looked at her. “Healing potion.”

She furrowed her brow. “What?”

“In lieu of a doctor, they’re a godsend. Though it really helps to have food in your gut when taking one, or they could very well end your life. Made from the extract of this really strange insect that likes to feed off wounds and diseases, excreting this strange, healing substance that repairs flesh and even bones. It and the Balsam von Gilead are miracle healers. Let it never be said that the Teutsche are not innovative.”

“Wait. What’s a Teutsche?” she asked.

Ignoring her, I went back to eating my meal. Well, wolfing it down with reckless abandon, but details, details. Salty, cheesy, potato-y goodness filled my belly as I ate, occasionally cooled down by sips of water. When I finished it all, I sighed in pleasure. “My compliments to the chef.” I grabbed the bottle of Bucking Bronco stood to leave. “That coin covered the costs, right?”

The bartender laughed. “Boy, do you have any idea what the value of money even is?”

“Not Equestrian, sir,” I replied, walking out. He didn’t stop me, which must’ve meant it was more than sufficient coinage.

“Hey, hey,” Dust called out. “You didn’t tell me anything! What’s a Teutsche? Who are these government guys everypony’s so scared of? Hey, stop walkin’ away from me!”

I glanced back at her, flashing a smirk before I went on my way.

“Celestiadammit!” Dust snarled as I neared the front door. “You can’t just knock a girl to the ground, buy her a drink, and then just walk off! Hey! Hey!” Just as I opened the door, I heard a much quieter, softer voice: “Please, please don’t just leave me here without telling me something.”

Sighing, I looked back at her. She was standing there, her wings sagging, ears drooping. “Trust me, you don’t want to know,” I said, closing the door behind me.

Cards was slumped against the nearby fence, her eyes closed. As I approached her, I could hear snoring, and I couldn’t blame the girl. I sighed and brushed my magic along her mane. “Wha’?” she stammered, an eye opening.

“Here,” I offered, holding out the bottle to her.

She took a moment to respond. When she did, it was to bury her face in her hooves. I gave her a moment to collect herself, and when she did, it was just to grab the bottle from me. Gritting her teeth and grunting, she tore the stallion’s head off the bottle. I wondered if somehow she was imagining me as that stallion. Cards tilted her head back and took a deep swig.

I grabbed the bottle from her and capped it, eliciting protests from the mare. “Hey, hey, hey—take it easy, girl. Are you trying to drink yourself to death?”

Cards ran a hoof through her mane and sighed. “Do you really want me to answer that?” She sniffed the air. Scrunching up her nose, she looked down at herself. “And can we go back to my place? I really need a shower. Please.”

Yes, you do. “Sure,” I said, gesturing down the street. “Lead the way, Cards.”

Author's Note

Footnote:

As you have no doubt noticed, the word Teutsch has been modified, or declined, a lot during this chapter. That is because, as an adjective and counting “more/most” modifications, Teutsch can be modified in literally one-hundred-twenty ways. As a noun, Teutscher, it can be declined in about forty different ways, depending on gender of the object it refers to, position in the sentence, and number of objects. Note, however, that most declensions are the same, but still count as separate. So if you see an odd usage of Teutsch or the word with various modifications to it, that’s because I’m declining it properly. It’s really not that hard to learn, except that it is.

Footnote FROM THE FUTURE (three-ish months from time of above chapter)

Because people keep saying this, I feel like I need to nip this here.

[Cards] was originally a stallion what actually worked for the government. Then I gave him ovaries and he was now she. Then, I decided that she wasn't a real agent for the government. Then, I decided to let her live. What began as a character I was going to torture to death became the emotional wreck and companion character known as Cards (even when she had testicles, s/he had the same name and general color scheme).

Any similarities to another particularly famous ponyfic with regards to Cards and whatnot in this chapter are entirely coincidental, and I didn't even read it until after writing this chapter when someone pointed out that similarity. Although, after writing this chapter, someone pointed that similarity out to me, and I found it so amusing that I think I tossed in a reference or two from said story, as my way of a joke.

Further future note: Eventually, after tons of edits to this chapter and others, Cards did end up becoming on purpose a sort of parody of another super angsty pony girl. You'll see it later pop up in Act 2. So I changed some things retroactively to help me have a fun parody of angsty poneh, but aside from that, Cards tries her best to be a good original character. So... make thereof what you will.

Chapter 15 — Murderer

Chapter 15: Murderer

“But now I realize that some ponies are just cruel, and deserve to be punished.”

Boxes.

“Why-why are we back here?” Cards asked me. Her eyes, one of them adorably black, were still red from crying, specks of her mother’s blood still here and there on her white body. This dim storage room at the back of the Sleepy Oaks sheriff’s office did not bring back good memories, unless you counted me beating up Blackout in the shower, which was awesome in hindsight. Seriously, though, something about that black eye looked good on her: it wasn’t really puffy, just discolored, like an abused puppy. A part of me wished I’d punched her in the eye when I’d first met her just so she’d have that look.

“Yeah, why?” Dust chimed in. “You leave me and her alone for, like, an hour or so in this creepy building, then you show up outta nowhere and lead us here. What gives?”

“That’s a strangely complete summary of our current predicament,” I commented.

“What?” Cards asked.

As I looked at her questioning face, a little thought made its way up through the back of my mind: I think I liked her now better than ever. An hour ago she had murdered her mother, and it’d taken this long to calm her down enough to walk and try to leave. Yet for all of that, she was now firmly aboard Team Jericho, which meant that she likely wouldn’t be playing the moral crusader come to ruin my murder party. Which was good. The last thing I needed was a white knight trying to tell me to stop having fun killing bad guys. This was why it was going to be a good day.

With the light on, this place was almost bearable, even with all the crates giving it a claustrophobic atmosphere. I ran a hoof over the dusty little table that, once a upon a time—or so Cards told me—the little mare had played card games on when she was supposed to be working. I dimly wondered if they had buried Glasses at all, or if this place had a morgue that he was rotting in. Yeah, we were just going to wander around town and find a pack of wild beavers feasting upon his corpse and laying their beaver eggs inside his skull.

“Cards, do you remember that magically sealed crate in this room?” I asked.

She blinked. “Yeah; we never got the code to it. The lock was some specific thought, I think.” The mare looked over to the crate she’d just described sitting next to the table. “What about it?”

I nodded my head over to it. “Only works for unicorns, racist designers. Stick yours in the lock, think the phrase ‘three doors down’. It’s the password thing.”

“But how did you...?” Dust probed.

“I found a piece of paper in Duke Elkington’s throne room/office thing when he brought me there,” I said. “Apparently, ‘three doors down’ was some kind of failsafe built into all of these kinds of chests. I guess they felt the need for a skeleton key. Go on, Cards, open it up.” Because I won’t; Dust said at least one unicorn got their horn blown off by one of these, and that’s not happening to me, no siree.

Cards hesitated, took a breath, then looked to Dust. The pegasus shrugged and nodded, and Cards slowly ambled over to the chest. “Three doors down, right?” she asked, and I nodded. She blew a puff of air out of her mouth. “Okay. Here goes.” And in she went.

To my dull surprise, a weird magic sound came from the box, and its top opened on its own. Cards jerked her head back and stared. There’s bound to be some sexy loot in there! Nudging Cards out of the way, I peeked into the large box and gave it a puzzled frown.

“What is it?” Dust asked.

I pulled it out. “It’s a suit of cloth armor; as in, the kind police would wear during a riot.”

“Riot armor?” Cards muttered. “This isn’t armor: there’s no steel or iron.”

“Steel or iron does not necessarily armor make,” I replied. “You can easily have a suit of armor without any steel or iron that is, on its own, fifty times stronger than steel, and can deflect almost harmlessly sharp and pointy things without effort.”

“That’s crazy,” she said.

“If it was crazy, why are you alive?” I asked, and she blinked. “Remember how back in the doctor’s house, that stallion tries to stab you, only for you to survive with only slight, slight, slight bruises?” She nodded. With a toothy grin, I pulled out my knife and raise it high, pointing the blade downwards. She snapped her eyes shut as I brought the knife down, straight into my own chest.

Nothing happened, just a slight jabbing pain in my breast, like being poked rather hard by the baton of a stallion trying to imply what he was going to do to you now that you were in jail. That is, he was going to bake you a very nice batch of cookies, and that they would be so good as they went down into your stomach, and you were going to be become the best of friends, and then he was going to savagely violate your every orifice because betrayal was the only way he could get it up, but it was okay because he used magic to change his sex in order to make it not rape. Because that was how Equestria saw it. No, I was never getting over that, no matter how preachy I sounded!

I continued smiling as I waited for the little mare to hesitantly open an eye. When she did, I harmlessly stabbed my chest quick enough to make sure she’d see it. “And that’s why you’re alive, Cards.”

Cards blinked. “Whoa. That’s... amazing. I sort of thought it was some sort of magic that kept me alive. This kind of thing has to be, like, the bleeding edge of technology and stuff.”

“No,” I scoffed. “It’s antiquated as hell where I’m from. We haven’t used steel armor for over a century. To me, people who wear that kind of armor are just silly, and you should totally trip them so that they can never get back up and subsequently die; I, wearing teutsche armor, will be dancing around them singing merry tunes of how lightweight my gear is; and then I go to his house and deliver a solemn message to his wife and young son about how their father died before breaking out into a vaguely homoerotic dance routine about how pathetic he—and where was I going with this? There was a metaphor in there, I’m sure.” I rubbed my eyes, then massaged a hoof across the riot armor.

“What are you doing?” Lightning Dust probed.

“Testing it,” I said. “Whatever this is, it’s clearly utter Scheiße, compared to what I’m used to.”

“Shai-suh?” Dust replied.

I rolled my eyes. How many times had I already used that word in front of her? “Yes, Scheiße—means ‘shit’. Shit. Scheiße. See?” She nodded slowly. “But this armor isn’t what I thought it was: rather than a super weave, this is just some well-padded cloth with some light steel plates under it.” I sighed. “Further proof of the superior ingenuity of my countrymen.” Looking at Cards, I put the armor next to her, sizing it up to her. “Holy Hell, I think it’ll fit you. Cards, put it on; it has to be better than going around naked.”

“But I,” Cards tried.

“Don’t argue with me, girl!” I snapped. “Do as I say and you’ll thank me later, I promise.” Under my hard look, Cards buckled and nodded. She took the armor and hesitantly looked it over, likely trying to figure out how to put something resembling clothes on. I didn’t watch her for two reasons: one was that I still had a sense of modesty, and the other was because there was a far more interesting sight in the room than a mare getting dressed.

There was a box in a corner of the room that I had missed last time I was here, a little box labeled simply “Archaeology”. For a brief second, I thought it was misspelt, it being Archäologie back where I was from. I walked up to the box and fiddled with its lid, which came off almost effortlessly, save for the small clouds of dust it sent up. Inside, there was, to my delight, a Voixson.

I forced out a high-pitched gasp. “Aww, it’s going to be akin to one of those pretentious notes that a bad Spielmeister puts into his game campaigns, isn’t it?” Smiling to myself, I pulled it out and set it upon the table. “Dust, look what I found!” I enthused at her. “It’s going to be filled be solipsistic nonsense and sexism because the Spielmeister clearly has some weird hatred of mares, since all the mares in his campaign who are interested in you are either out to murder you or die in extremely gruesome ways. Seriously. I had one campaign where my teammate’s girlfriend got stabbed with a penis through the eye and died from repeated penis-brain penetration.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Yes,” I said to her with a sagely nod.

Play button pressed and the Voixson crackled to life. “A message to the director of the Archaeological Institute of Equestria,” said a voice with what to me was a refined Southern accent. “Winterfulth the seventh, year of—” the record skipped. The hell was ‘Winterfulth’? “Director, you’ve known me for as long as we’ve been a part of the AIE, and in all that time as an ambighter of the Institute, have I ever lied to you?” He sighed. “I send this message not in person but from this newfangled Voixson for one simple reason: I am dead. It betides me that what we have found here in the swamp will kill both me and the ponies digging this site up. It was not the ancient ruin of suggested expansion from the nigh-forgotten Crystal Empire in the days beyond yore which we were told it would be, no. Instead, it is a crypt, a tomb, a sepulcher to a monster. Already, two ponies have gone mad from seeing the corpse of the unholy abomination that lies here. Within this unholy sepulcher are things which boggle the mind, ancient, terrible things that we were not meant to know, I would dare say.

“I record this message with the knowledge that we will all here surely die, we will slowly go mad, and that... thing... we awoke will consume our flesh. I record this message as a warning: do not, whatever you do, send ponies to look for us, for they will end up like us. The extreme remoteness of this location in the swamp is my only solace: nopony has disturbed this place for millennia before us, and so should it for all time remain.”

“Sounds like the plot of a bad horror novel,” I noted absently.

“The abomination hunts us for sport, for game, for fun now,” the Voixson continued. “It shouts in guttural tongues. Every time it slays one of us, it screams Ave Lucifer! Ah-way,” he said slowly, “loo-kee-fair. I... I had the chance once to ask it what it meant before it began to kill and torture and maim...it it said it meant: ‘Hail the bringer of light,’ and ‘Hail the luciferous one’. But now I am here, cold and almost alone... and I am afraid.”

“Director...” He sighed. “Brother, I love you. Take good care of Mom for me, okay? She’s getting on in years. I send you this message carried by the one pony not to be trapped here in this sepulcher with us, Glistening Feathers: I have told her to deliver this message to the nearest town in order to have them send it to you, and then to get as far away from this place as the heavens allow her wings to fly.”

Far off in the distance, a voice cried out as in in ecstatic glee: “Reddite ergo quae sunt Caesaris Caesari et quae sunt Luciferi Lucifero.”

“Goodbye, Brother.” It scratched, jumped, skipped, and died.

I just stared at it. How had this thing ended up here? Clearly, though, the abomination was that monster that was bothering Elkington. “Weird,” I commented absentmindedly. “Demons aren’t supposed to talk at all. Only their worshippers speak. I’m starting to doubt this is a demon at all. Probably some whacky teenager in a bad mask.”

“That’s from, like, a little over two years ago,” Cards said, “right before everything in town started getting horrible. I recall we got this thing from a half-dead-looking pegasus mare who flew right on back into the swamp; we put in this box here we had reserved for things they hauled out from their dig, but since we never got any written instructions, guess we sorta just left it here.”

“You know, the last thing I would ever want to be is an archaeologist,” I said. “Half of the time you’re unleashing ancient, unknowable evils from the depths of the world. In fact, I once read an article in the paper about a famous archaeologist getting sick and tired of unearthing unspeakable ancients evils.”

“Y’know,” Cards hesitantly offered, “I can sort of agree to those p’worth.”

The hell does ‘p’worth’ mean? I looked over and gasped. “Cards, look at you—you’re so adorable!” At least, I thought so: that black eye, pitiful armor, and generally miserable look, I just wanted to put her in a box and poke her with a stick for decades and decades. I put a hoof on her face and went, “Touch.”

She flinched away from me. “Bad touch!”

“Wait,” I said slowly. “If adorable means to be able to adore, and adoration comes from to adore, and you Equestrians seem to give adoration to your Princess, does that mean that Celestia is adorable?” I put a hoof to my chin. “Suddenly, things have gotten weird.”

Suddenly, my mental image of Princess Celestia shifted into essentially becoming Cards with a fancy hat. The mental Luna, the literally devilish mare covered with mutilations like the one on my chest, remained as she was. It reminded me of this one board game I had played wherein I switched my government from a Republik to a monarchy for gameplay reasons, and so I went out and found the guy with the fanciest hat and made him king.

Cards rubbed her face where I’d touched her. “I was trying to say that a bunch of archaeologists went missing in the Acolapissa swamp around the time bad things started going down here.”

“You think they’re connected, both of you?” Dust asked.

“Well, yes,” I replied. “And we’re going to find that thing that killed them and kill it ourselves.”

Her feathers ruffled as a shiver visibly ran up her. “Brgh,” she suddenly grunted. “Anypony else just feel the temperatures drop by twenty degrees?”

I was about to ask if she was mad, then I realized that the Equestrian system of temperature measurement was radically different than the one I was used to. Stupid crazy differences in things. If ever there were a reason to invade Equestria, it would not be to destroy its magic in order to save it, but to force them to use more logical ways of measuring things. Seriously, what the hell was a ‘foot’ and how did it measure things? I looked to Cards, who had a similar look on her face to the one Dust had. “Anypony else not feel it?” I intoned.

Cards bit her lip. “We’re going to kill that monster?” She hesitated, her face quivering like a crystal on the verge of exploding from some absurdly high note. “Suddenly, I...”

“Don’t want to?” I offered. “That thing affected your mother: it made you murder the mare that gave birth to you. I will go to this monster and slay it.” She bit her lip harder. Semi-consciously I moved my hoof over to a pocket of my duster, where a little paper crane was nestled securely. “The angel’s trap had a ghastly perfection.”

“The angel’s trap?” Dust inquired.

“Yes, one specifically tailored for me.” I glanced to the ceiling before looking at the pegasus. “If someone told you you’d go to Hell and burn for all eternity after death if you pictured your mother naked—I’d once been told this when I was a little colt—you’d eventually do it. Why? Because you did not want to go to hell, did not want to see Mommy naked.”

The pegasus blinked. “Excuse me?”

I shook my head. “Look, what I’m trying to say is: I want to, and for every ounce of ‘does not want’ in my mind, that want grows threefold.” I blinked. “Kill the demon, not see my mother naked, that is. I’ve made it a pointed goal never to know what my mother looked like so as to never imagine her, her actual self, naked.”

Cards gave me a weird look whose meaning I couldn’t rightly interpret. Probably nothing good. I made a mental note of it for future reference. It wasn’t a particularly fascinated mark, more like a bookmark a stallion might leave in the page of a magazine containing some particularly weird pornography that he doesn’t want to but can’t help get intrigued by. The kind that would be found years later by his son as he’s cleaning up his dead father’s personal stuff, and would forever sully the boy’s memory of Daddy, even though his old stallion only looked at it the one time.

Dust, on the other hand, mirrored the same perplexed look I had many years ago when I met The Hat, a flying sentient hat who loudly proclaimed, “Behold The Hat, for I have come to feast upon the naked heads of the living and their puny souls!” It was the face like that I’d worn when I replied with: “How did hat happen?”

I sighed, rubbing my forehead. “Okay, yeah, I need to unwind a bit. But that Voixson just raises too many questions. In fact, most of the answers in my head are just ones I’ve made up because they seemed like reasonable conclusions; I pride myself on basic deductive reasoning, you see.” I took in a breath. “In any case, they’re mysteries we’ll have to solve later. Cards, Lightning Dust, come on—I found something while I was out.”

As I went to leave the room via the doorway leading into the alley, I missed and ran into the doorway, bruising my shoulder. “Ah, stupid doors, still one of my many one weaknesses! I hate doors! Doors will be the death of me!”

|— ☩ —|

“What’s it going to be, then?” I asked it. Everything seemed wrong about this. The bird just stood there in the middle of the street, silent as a three-legged octopus. The thing was, birds shouldn’t be silent, especially not such a pretty and colorful bird. Although the fact that it was so colorful made it a welcome change from the standard crows and ravens and other dark birds that evil forces had such a fetish over, so there was that.

The bird just looked at us, then blissfully hopped a pace forwards.

I pursed my lips to the side as I hefted the small rock. With a flick, the rock sailed through the air and crushed the bird. “Hooray for Earth,” I deadpanned.

Lightning Dust tapped me on the shoulder from behind. “Um, GB? What was that all about? You just killed a wild parakeet.”

Looking behind me, I saw Cards pawing at the ground, and Dust just looked bemused to me. “It was evil, obviously. Birds are not silent, nor do they just... leer creepily at you like that.” I put a hoof to my chin. “Although I think turtles do. Or... Well, when I was a colt, I had a pet tortoise, but from the moment it first saw me, it hid in its shell until it starved to death.” I tapped the hoof to my forehead. “Yet for the life of me, I can’t remember why or how I got that tortoise. Was I holding onto it for a friend? Trying to make a soup because I hated my friend?”

With a shake of my head, I pointed out to the edge of the the town, where civilization gave way to murky brown lakewater that itself devolved into a thick swamp on the lake’s far side. I peeked over my head to see if I could see the baron’s plantation manor, but I couldn’t. For a moment, I considered asking Cards or Dust if Equestria had racist habits towards mules, since I recall the mule baron being remarked upon as a half-breed freak, but didn’t. Something told me that Cards wasn’t in the mood for me to stand upon a soapbox and act morally superior to her when I was in the the very same town where I murdered her only friend because he was annoying me; in fact, I could even seen the Acolapissa Cabinet of Curiosities, the place I slew him, far, far off to the left. There was a vague pang of nostalgia for that, which couldn’t have been healthy. But as for Dust, she had her own question.

“What are you pointing at?” the reporter asked.

“See that sizable boathouse?” I said, and she nodded. “There’s a rather lovely, well-built, likely expensive rowboat sitting in yonder place. I scoured what passed for docks here, and found that one boat to be the only vessel not sunken to a murky grave. Something was destroying boats, but missed the one hiding in the little house somehow.”

“So it was safe in its little cwtch, then?” she intoned.

Cwtch? Rhymes with Putsch. “What’s a cwtch?”

“Uh,” she stammered, rubbing the back of her head. “It’s a bit of northern argot, sort of.” It’s pronounced argot: silent T, long O. “Means, er... a hiding place, or, like, a storage shed thing.” She darted her gaze sideward. “Could also mean to hide or cuddle up to.” Dust glanced at the cwtch and then make a curt gesture towards me. “Has nothing to do with cooch, mind you, the dance or the slang.”

I gave a look so blank a wall would be jealous. “Riiight. Moving back onto topic, there’s a boat there, and that’s pretty much how we’re going to get to this place Elkington told be this demon was located. The Duke gave me a map drawn by somebody—probably those dead archaeologists; I didn’t ask many questions because I didn’t want to have him go on some annoying expository rant again—which should be how to navigate the swamps channels into the heart of the swamp and where this demon is. Any questions?”

Cards shook her head but made a weird gesture, a half-slash, half-poke to the neck that my mind wanted to associate with being hanged. It seemed to fit her ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ look. Dust, though, just shrugged with acceptance.

“Good. Now then,” I said. My left ear twitched, and I jerked my head. From a back alley came the lumbering form of a pony... no, not a pony, a mule. I recognized him quickly as the Baron of Sleepy Oaks, and knew that I didn’t know his name. If you were totally unimportant and likely going to die, what was the purpose in learning your name? “Um, are you sane?” I called out, and he stopped, looking straight at me with his one good eye.

“That government boy,” I heard him say, his voice echoing in the empty streets. A part of me wanted to yell out just to hear my own voice echo, but instead I just wanted as his haggard, dehydrated look turned into a wide grin. “He told me you’d be back. He told us what you were. He told us how to save this town, peasants and all.”

“Your words echo in the vast emptiness of my head,” I replied.

He let out a laugh that had too many parts insane to every part amused. “And he told us where you’d be.”

I swallowed, taking out the Kruzifix and showing it to him, not even sure he was close enough to see it. “I have something for him. I come to deliver this, the thing he wants; and it would be just plain stupid, really stupid, to try to kill us.”

He tilted his head back and screamed hard. “Show yourselves, good servants of Princess Celestia!” The baron then bent over and coughed droplets of blood.

A door slammed open from across the street. And then another door. And another. And soon the air was surging with the sounds of doors opening and the stomping of hooves. Ponies, their sole defining characteristic being the so-red-they-were-almost-purple eyes, seemed to crawl out of the very walls. They lurched out from alleys like shambling corpses. They crept out of houses like teenagers sneaking out. Soon they formed a wall blocking the way we had come, and around the edges of the street.

There were stallions, mares, colts, fillies. Their eyes were all alike. Some were laughing. Some looked happy. Some looked depressed. Some looked eager. Some looked hesitant. But all of them were there, staring at me. Many of them, even the colts and fillies, held weapons—knives, hammers, carpentry tools, a saw, chunks of wood, and everything but the kitchen sink.

Swallowing, I inconspicuously rubbed my neck. Apparently, abusing healing potions had almost made the noose-borne bruises disappear. Almost. “Cards,” I asked, “how many ponies live in Sleepy Oaks?”

“About a hundred and thirty-two,” Cards answered, faster and more certain than I’d’ve expected. “Many of the building here are just for the mines and the factory.”

“Girls,” I said with a calm voice, putting a grip on my sword, “when I give the mark, I want you two to run to the cwtch and get out onto the lake and away from here.”

“GB, what are you doing?” Dust asked, the crowd of ponies and one mule staring silently at us, sizing us up like a clown sizes up a child to know just how to make sure it burns itself into the child’s nightmares for all time. Seriously, all they needed was clown makeup and this would be a perfect replica of the first time I went to the circus. Except these ponies were arguably much happier.

I looked around. “There are a lot of them, and many of them are closer to the boat than we are. If we run, they’ll overwhelm us before we can get the boat into the water. If we fight, we’re not all going to make it. So. You’re going to run. I’m going to fight. I’m the distraction.” I took the Kruzifix and its necklace off and put it around Dust’s neck. “Hold onto this. Elkington thinks it’s special for reasons I never bothered asking about.”

Cards gave me a look of horror. “You... you’re not going to hurt or kill them, are you?”

I tightened my grip on the sword as I looked at a colt with a nasty knife clutched in his jaws, looked at the murder in his eyes. He couldn’t have been older than eleven. “Ich ziele nicht mit der Hand. Wer mit der Hand zielet hat das Gesicht seines Vaters vergessen. Ich ziele mit dem Auge.” I took a breath. “I aim not with the hoof. He who aims with the hoof has forgotten the face of his father.” I held my eyes shut for an instant, picturing my father the last time I saw him, picturing all of that blood. He looked good, half-dead. “I aim with the eye.”

“Government Boy,” Cards said with an air of desperation.

“On the count of three,” I said, watching them all stare silently at me.

“GB,” Dust added, rocking slightly on her hooves.

“One.” The ponies all tensed as the Baron stepped forwards, everypony’s eyes flicking to him. “Two.”

The baron pointed at us, bits of spittle around the edges of his mouth. “Au nom du Princesse, la Maîtresse du Soleil,” the baron commanded, “kill them!”

“Three!” I yelled as I pulled out my sword, the throng of ponies surging forth like a wave of liquid flesh and fur. Sticks and chunks of wood flew through the air, smacking me all over. One with a nail driven through it even scratched the back of my neck. Gritting my teeth, I glanced to make sure Cards and Dust were running before doing the first thing that came to my mind.

It was more instinct than thought, an action bred into my very Gene. It was often better that way. Sometimes thinking got you killed. Sometimes instinct killed the other person first. Blade raised, I charged the middle of the street’s line. Two mares and a stallion went down, and I tore through the hole their absence made, swinging with both reckless abandon and frighteningly murderous accuracy. It was a good thing I didn’t like any of them. After all, none of them went to my birthday party; they all left me alone and naked in the bounce house.

“Murderer!” some cried. “Kill that government boy!” another shouted. “He did this to us!” “It’s the only way!” “Celestia have mercy!”

Lightning Dust had come back from an enervated madness like these ponies were in. It had taken a severe beating and a night’s rest; and even then, she hadn’t been subjected to it for what might have been years, just a quick burst. Though, really, that was just idle speculation. I hadn’t a true understanding of the Miasmatischen Trübung. And if Dust’s example was to be trusted, enervation didn’t exactly make you do anything you hadn’t exactly wanted to do, that didn’t play off very real fears in the back of your mind. These ponies could not be saved; it was impractical.

“Forget the mares, after him!” the Baron ordered. “He’s the one who destroyed our homes and ruined our lives!” That was all it took for my plan to succeed.

Somepony grabbed me, only to come to the painful realization that having your neck half-severed by a sword wasn’t exactly a very good long-term life plan. I led the screaming, barking mob down the street, towards a combination toystore/barbershop. No, I had no idea how that worked, nor did I care at that moment.

As it annoyingly turned out, these ponies were fast, and many of them were closer to my destination than I’d realized. Four ponies, one of whom I recognized vaguely from somewhere, went down hard from their brand new sword wounds. They fell back, crucified in the street. They didn’t falter or hesitate, and nor did the other townsfolk, no matter that every swing of the sword found a vital spot. A part of me stopped to wonder if they’d ever even seen a sword prepared especially to sever flesh, like mine, and if they’d even seen a sword used against a living being at all.

I galloped up to the building, the hail of projectiles slowing, but not stopping. The mob surged at me like a cringe-worthy pun: you could see it coming, but nothing—nothing—could stop it. And it wasn’t funny, either.

Bolting into the place, I shut the door behind me and locked it tight. It wouldn’t hold, but it gave me at least a second or two. Oh, and the barbershop and toystore weren’t one place, more like there was a clearly marked door at the back of the building which lead into the barbershop. Now it made sense.

I snared up a bottle of Colta-Cola from a nearby display. No matter what fresh-hell it tasted like, it quenched the thirst before it could get out of hand. As I let out a sigh, a display window to my right exploded shards of glass all over the toystore. Three stallions crowded through the window, snarling and growling at me as ponies outside bashed on the door. I threw the glass bottle at one of them as I ran up and cut them all to ribbons, and the two that followed them. They were not instantly fatal wounds, but they were still fatal. Their bodies fell on the jagged slabs of glass, choking the window.

The door heaved and burst from its hinges, smacking into the ground and kicking up a layer of dust. I could hear the Baron screaming. “In there! In there! The one who did this! Stop him, or he’ll kill us all—even Princess Celestia!”

Stallions, mares, and—at the back—children charged me. Bits of spittle and wood flew through the air. With precise and savage swings, the leading ponies fell like ninepins in a game of bowling, a game I still needed to play before I died. Blood spattered as the wounded ponies screamed what would doubtlessly be their final breaths, but the throngs of them changed onward across their fallen comrades, no doubt crushing them.

There were too many. I retreated into the barbershop, slamming shut the flimsy-looking door that separated the two buildings. With frantic incoherency, they screamed at me as they battered the door to the ground and came at me. But they’d bottlenecked themselves, and with only a trivial amount of swordwork, the tiny hall was jammed with corpses and blood. Still they pushed on, trying to get the bodies out of the way.

Scheiße! They were going to get through, and I couldn’t kill them through the wall of the dead and rapidly dying. I spun around, saw that somepony had boarded shut the door to the shop from the inside, and saw they hadn’t done the same with the large display window.

I grabbed some miscellaneous but heavy-looking object from by one of the barber’s chairs and launched it at the window, the glass shattering well because safety glass still wasn’t an Equestrian invention yet. Covering my eyes with my sleeve, I jumped out of the window. My duster made a whooshing noise so awesome that it suddenly made everything so totally worth it. For my brief moment in the air, I was laughing.

Then I hit the ground with a roll, using the momentum to stand back up. The sight hit me in the gut like being force-fed live kittens who were covered in spikes and had nothing but contempt for you. There were ponies here, too, many of them likely having run around the building to cut me off.

“There he is!” they hissed. “Quick, get him!” “Don’t let the interloper flee!” One mare just held her head and screamed bloody murder, flailing around as if being attacked by bees on tiny bee-like bee trampolines.

They mobbed me like a swarm of ants aroused by a fat kid covered in ice cream who’s just fallen down and can’t get up, dog-piling and tackling me. They kicked and punched and bit and clawed and stabbed and hit, none of them getting through the duster. Instinct was back. I pulled out my knife and dispatched the some half-dozen as easily as I could: fatal wounds all quick and professional.

Throwing their bleeding, screaming, soon-to-be-dead bodies off, I picked up the sword and gasped in pain as a searing slash gouged my flesh just above my hindhoof. Instinct was at work. The blade arced and swung before I could even think about it. And then I thought about it as I looked at the filly’s bright eyes.

She was alive enough to watch the impeccable steel dig into her little body. Her bright eyes darkened as the sword dug out a massive trench in her little body, no-doubt breaking her young, underdeveloped bones. A jet of blood spurted from her mouth as the sword tore through and out of her body, spraying blood into my face, the force of the the blow throwing her against the ground. Her dusty eyes stared up at from from the dirt, as if asking, “Why?”

I blinked, my world going black as I stared at her. Dead. Naked. Not even a mark on her flank. Dead. I... recognized her face. She was the filly of Doc Dome, the one who’d rushed out defend her father from me the first day I’d arrived, the one who couldn’t even pronounce the letter R yet. And I’d just murdered her without thought.

You broke the Code! a voice in my head hissed hatefully.

Three stallions and a mare hustled around the corner with large, betraying grins upon their hideous faces. They saw me, saw me seeing them, and saw the child at my hooves. “Child-killer!” “Murderer!” “Monster!”

More weapons tossed through the air struck me, a knife hitting my chest but bouncing off harmlessly. A child. A foal. A kid. A filly. A little girl. Likely didn’t even understand what was going on. Likely just tagging fearfully along with her parents... Likely didn’t even hesitate because of those two reasons.

Every muscle in my body felt like it was being cranked as I gritted my teeth so hard I was sure they’d break. The Code was shattered. Everything broke. This shouldn’t have happened! This should not have happened!

A mare was the first to near me. I swing not with my hoof. He who swings with his hoof has forgotten the face of his father. I swing with my mind. And it collapsed to the ground, bleeding and screaming.

Because there is no difference between people and objects.

The other three, the stallions, fell to the dirt like swatted flies. Things. Bloody things upon the ground. Two of them screamed. Two of them had their necks crushed underhoof. Quiet corpses. Then more came, many from the shop, many not. Children, mares, bucks, stallions. The trickle was at first a few, easy enough to kill. I held my sword back from the first child who tried to stab my hooves off, its mother already dead at them. But no matter what, it was it or I. And children had such weak bodies, such malleable minds. Their minds and perceptions were what made children awesome.

Pony after pony boiled out through the barbershop windows and from around the corners. This couldn’t last. I couldn’t stay here. I spun around and ran down the street. Ten paces. Twenty. Thirty. God only knew how many paces. Muscles ached. Blood ran. The heart in my chest seemed to explode with every beat. I tripped and rolled onto the dirty street. They were like laughwolves to the kill of the lion. Before I could even get up, they stabbed and bit, more and more of them piling onto me, children just as hard and murderously their parents.

There was no running. And to the refined tune of my honed steel, they fell in gorey droves. They fell in squats. They fell backwards. They tumbled limply over each other. Their bodies cast no shadows in the deathless light of the perfectly midday sun.

I realized I was screaming. I had been screaming all along, probably. My eyes felt just like clumped balls of sand ready to be shattered apart at the slightest provocation. My balls had drawn up against my stomach. My legs were straw. My ears were lead. My sword was just a gooey rod of fresh blood and chunks of foreign flesh and muscle, and I stood, screaming and hacking, all rational thoughts in my mind far away and absent, simply letting my body do its murderous tricks.

Was there a goddamn way to just hold up a hoof and tell them I’d spent a lifetime learning how to use this sword to mercilessly end lives in the name of the good and just? Was there a way in the nine Hells to tell them how effortlessly it tore their bodies to ribbons, and how my duster was almost impenetrable? To tell them that I was their death, plain and simple?

No, not with my mouth. But my mind and steel were only too glad to spin them the tales, to show them everything I’d learned over my lifetime, to instruct them on the ways one wields a tool whose sole purpose in life is murder.

Ich töte nicht mit dem Schwert. Wer mit dem Schwert tötet hat das Gesicht seines Vaters vergessen. Ich töte mit dem Herzen, a voice deep within me echoed curiously, testing me. Then, in Equestrian: I kill not with my sword. He who kills with his sword has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.

A stick ran through the air and smacked me on the forehead, drawing blood. The mob had thinned on this narrow street, but it could be thinned better. Ending the life of an old mare, I launched myself to the side and tumbled into an alleyway. They never stopped. Only four of them could squeeze into the alley with me. I let them have it, and their bodies thunked against the ground and walls like the world’s worst scarecrows, blood spattering the brick inlay of the walls.

The mob paused for a second, the ponies all looking at the multiplicity of corpses, and the stallion with the sword growling at them from within the alley. The face of the crowd shattered into the faces of individual ponies, faces that still possessed a basic instinct to survive. I spit out a mix of blood and saliva, not even knowing whose blood it was. One mare in the crowd was rolling around on the ground, begging for the voices to stop. A stallion was suffering from facial convulsions as it struggled to stand. One pony visibly shat itself. But it was otherwise as if the crowd had realized what they were doing, experiencing a moment of clarity, of fear, of shame. And maybe it would have lasted. Maybe they would just slowly back off and go home. Maybe nopony else needed to die

Then it was the Baron, running at me. “Baby-killer!” it roared. “Monster! Murderer! Slay him, peasants—I command it you! Kill the foal-slayer!” With the renewed zeal of righteous hatred, they obeyed. There were so much fewer of them now. I’d gone through them like Godfather Death’s scythe.

But the Baron wasn’t the closest body to me, no; the others were closer. And it was the others who died first as I screamed and charged into the mob. Then it was the Baron again, and closer to me than the other living ponies. I made sure to stab my sword through its stomach. The Baron’s last moments were filled with screams of agony as its own stomach acids poured from its wound. It was still alive, and I smiled as the baron screamed and gurgled in primal agony.

The ponies after the baron didn’t notice it’d fallen, and most didn’t even get the chance to realize they were dead, too. In the alleyway, in that bottleneck, they never even got the chance to strike me back. When they finally did start to notice that they were going to die, they tried to run.

They all died, too, like the animals—the things—they were. I ended up standing in the street, pulling my sword out of the last one, a petite mare who looked no older than Cards. The Baron was dragging itself out of the alley. I didn’t have to do a damn thing but watch as it tripped over a corpse and fell face-down into a pool of stomach acid and vomit. Screams. I ran up to the Baron and shoved its face into the acid until it drowned, and I held its sizzling face there until its body smashed in that way only a freshly drowned corpse will do. It must have been something the Baron ate.

No more ponies. No more Baron. No more children’s dirty looks.

I stopped screaming, I simply couldn’t scream with the intense need to pant for breath. My head hurt, and I could see large brown circles dancing in front of my eyes. As my breathing slowly came under control, the instinct controlling me faded, echoing in the back of my head a solitary, You’re welcome.

The dead mare by my hooves, it... she had tried to run, and she had died for it. With trembling lips, I looked up at the street. Dead. All dead. Blood like maple syrup slowly trickled into the little gutter lining the road. A mare nearby held in her arms a dead child, a hole straight through her eye and into her brain. I took a step back, my shallow heart’s pounding like how a woodpecker pecks the bark of a tree.

Shaking like an epileptic who’s eaten a gallon of sugar that he only now realizes was arsenic, I raised a hoof and looked at it. Blood. Mine, theirs—I didn’t know. All I knew was that they were dead. There was a difference between killing and murder. Murder was a sin. Killing a hard justice.

Emotions failed me. The ability to find amusement in everything died. Even my shadow had vanished under the eye of the whorish sun. I looked at the Baron and counted silently under my breath, “One.” Legs shaky, I shambled up the street, counting more and more. I walked into the barbershop and counted the dead they’d pushed out of the way. In the toystore where a stallion had gone down clutching a comically oversized stuffed dolphin, I counted. I counted. And counted. And counted until I reached the two mares and the stallion, the first two dead.

“One hundred and twenty-nine,” I whispered. “The entire population of Sleepy Oaks... minus Cards, her mother, and her father... Jeder Mann, jede Frau und jedes Kind.” A wave of nausea sent me sprawling onto the ground. “Every stallion, mare, and foal.” My shallow heart skipped beat after beat as I fought to breathe. This wasn’t right. This hadn’t happened. It was against the Code! Den Kodex! I couldn’t violate the Code!

It was a simple Code. Two absolutes, amended to constantly by little notes on how to best stay alive, but the absolutes stayed absolutes and could not change. They were easy to remember: Harm not Children. Commit not Rape. He helped me create the Code, the Kodex, helped me wield permanent, unusurpable control over myself! So long as I followed the Code, I was a good guy, I was at least in the general realm of the heroes of myth. But this? Today?

No.

The code had been violated. I was no longer Jericho, I was the Butcher of Songnam in all his mythical horror. There was nothing to fear but the stallion who stared back at me from the mirror.

I stood up, taking short gulps of air as I tried to steady myself. The Code was broken... but there was still the one who made me break the Code. And his name was the Devil’s Backbone, and I knew exactly where he lived. He had to die, and then, just maybe, the Code would be restored, fixed, glued back together, I would be the good guy again, and the ponies of Sleepy Oaks could be finally rest in peace.

But first, I had to find Cards and Dust. Looking up from where I stood, I didn’t see the boat I’d told them to find. My ears perked up. There was a good chance they didn’t know I’d broken the Code! Taking a deep, deep breath, I tried to force a smile to hide everything. It was a bit like a dog playing the piano with his horrifying dog penis which, unlike those of us ponies, got its erection through a literal penis bone. There was an inherent advantage to the spongy soft tissue that let us stallions get it up.

The smile on my face, I couldn’t tell if it was fake or genuine anymore. Good. Back to normal, then. So long as I didn’t think of the dusty eyes of the dead filly, I could keep the smile up. Of course, that was when I remember the savage slash the filly has gouged above my hindhoof, and then I realized just how much I was bleeding. Something had to be done about that, and I had to get all of this blood off me before I saw the mares again.

And if I couldn’t right this and fix the Kodex, I would simply kill myself to spare the world one more monster.

Author's Note

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Bladeslinger — You have not forgotten the face of your father. With this perk, you now swing your sword 5% faster and do 10% more damage and swords! It’s just too bad that you’re pretty sure your father never loved you. Man, what is with these ponies and having brutally unstable home lives? Small wonder you’re all so screwed up, you child-killing fuck. Oh, and because of the Kodex, this perk is only in effect with the Code unbroken.

50% to next level.

[Hey there! Been a while, ain’t it? This chapter was actually cut off from the rest of the chapter in order to avoid a 27k-word long chapter. Also, let’s just state that this and the next chapter were notably influenced by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. I paid direct homage to one scene from it, in fact.]

[So. Has Jericho crossed the line into villainy? Can he ever avenge the dead and be able to live with himself? Stay tuned, dear reader. I only hope that you don't absolutely hate him and so are willing to stick around for one more chapter, for the conclusion of Act 1 — That Government Boy.]

[And yes, the chapter quote is from Friendship is Witchcraft.]

Chapter 30 — Robbery

Chapter 30: Robbery

“Do I really look like a murderer?”

“Worse.”

Shuffle.

It hurt. A lot. Like, it hurt about as much as that one time I was a mare and that moose attempted to have drunken sex with me. I was just lying on my back, staring up at the hole in the ceiling. Beneath me, I could both feel and hear the railroad clacking.

The space here was larger than it should have rationally be, larger than any train car need be. But then again, everything which that baleful black engine had been pulling had been big, more like it carrying a long, long line of dead whales than train cars. Although being in one of these cars, painful as it was, was still better than that one time I accidentally spent the night inside a dead whale’s vagina.

Taking a deep breath through my nose, which I thought may have been bleeding, I tried to rouse myself to my feet. When that failed, the shrieks of the giant flying squirrel didn’t. I bounded to my feet just as the giant, cow-sized squirrel leapt at me, hissing and growling at me like it had been doing all the way here.

“Yield!” I yelled, throwing as hard as could a fist into the beast’s face. With my new fingerless leather gloves and the armored padding around the knuckles, everything just felt better to punch. Unfortunately, accidentally punching straight into a giant squirrel’s mouth and then getting bitten didn’t feel very much good, no matter what kind of gloves you were wearing.

It hissed and shrieked even more, trying to roll and tear my arm off, but succeeding only in throwing me partway across the room and into a hard wooden crate. Were it not for the armor of my duster, the squirrel’s teeth might have torn my arm in hair, and as it was, the arm merely felt a little broken, probably just some fractures. Still, that hurt!

When it charged at me again, I twisted, pulled out the shattergun Skybane, and fired. The round blew the squirrel’s chest off. The rest of its limbs seemed not to notice that the chest was done until they all rolled up to my feet in a neat little pile.

Thanking the Archangel Thor for seeing me through that voracious, desperate fight, I cocked the shouldershooter’s lever and inserted a new round into the weapon. As I put the weapon back in its sling across my back, I looked out at all the crates in this massive train card, and then to the empty poker table.

A weird, quiet, and distant whirring noise erupted for just a moment before it died, followed by a smooth and feminine-sounding “Hmmm?”-like noise. There was nobody else in the room, and… ow, my head. Just ow.

I fished around in bag for some painkillers, which were always the answer. Got a tumor? Painkillers! Boyfriend just left you? Overdose him on painkillers while he sleeps! Painkillers—the solution to every problem. Every. Problem.

Then it occurred to me: just how the hell had I gotten here, exactly?

|— ☩ —|

Shuffle.

Everything’s a blur. I am in a bed, though I don’t know where. It is not the cozy bed of a home but rather the efficient bed of a hospital. From somewhere distant comes the voice of Big Bag-a-Wolf through a livebox.

“Ding dong, the Black Man’s dead! He’s gone, he’s departed, and he’s no more than blood!” he cheers. “And do you know who to thank for killing this most deplorable of monsters? Why, none other than the Gunslinger himself! Yeah, that man I told you about earlier, the one straight out of the storybooks. Not even a day after he arrives does the man save the whole of Evesland from the worst outlaw in history—hot damn! More on this in our upcoming special report, but till then, just know that some are saying that the Gunslinger’s topless groupie’s been shot. So, if you see a gunslinger walking about, ladies, I’m pretty sure he’s single, and you gals know how to thank a gunslingin’ hero like him!”

Someone turns the livebox off. And this someone, a woman, says, “You are the man who saved me, more importantly gives my daughter hope.”

She suddenly appears at my bedside. The woman looks like an older, more tired Lightning Dust. Though I still have no proper grasp of what werekindred found attractive, I can easily tell that this woman’s best years were long behind her. Mayhap once she’d been the apple of every man’s eye, and she likely in some ways was still sought after, but now her daughter was likely that apple.

The woman nearly collapses as she grasps my hand in her own. “Thank you! I… Thank you, Gunslinger! You have no idea just for how long her eyes have been dull and hopeless!”

Shuffle.

I am looking at myself in a mirror, barely standing. My arms are covered in white bandages, and only my fingers are unbound by them. More bandages cover my breast, over the place where once I’d had a right nipple, and beneath my left where ran up a deep, still-stitched scar.

My vision dwelves on my bandaged arms. Doc Holiday has told me that my arms suffered extensive throughbright burns, caused by massive exposure to throughbrighting. He says that it is infecting me, rotting me. Though he’s given me medication to deal therewith, what meager he can provide me feels like nothing. At least, so he says, the throughbrighting isn’t throughbrightsprack, which apparently means that it won’t spread and further than my arms, but the damage is done. I can still feel the throughbrighting in my bones, my blood, and skin. It’s enough to make my Gene scream.

Slowly, I bring a hand up to my hat, which for some reason I am wearing. Tucked into the hat, I can see, is a tarot card, “The Fool”: in the card, he is a man without a shirt, his arms bandaged like mine; behind him is a wall covered in belts with holstered guns, two of which the Fool is holding; one gun he holds at his side, the other one he holds close to his face, as if deeply contemplating or praying with it. I take the hat off and just look at myself like a fat hamster looks into the eyes of a rapetacular clown. Where my horn would have been on my normal body, there is a nasty scar.

“You don’t honestly mean to do it, do you?” I hear C ask from behind me.

“It’s like I told you, dammit—she’s dying,” I say. “That bullet of decay still affects her, and this is where we get the supplies to save her.”

“Her body became dependent on the schotl on its first use,” he says almost casually. “It’s like a medically induced hemophilia combined with the fact that her body is now decaying from the inside out. I doubt that pumping her full of more drugs can save her.”

I chuckle mirthlessly. “Well, you heard the livebox. Elkington’s number one general, ‘Black’ Jack Parishioner, is on this train alongside a good many soldiers plus tons and tons of food, medicine, and munitions on its way to the Drawers.” I smile. “And, even if Dust dies, we get ourselves a much faster way to Sleepy Oaks and get to stick it to Elkington, right? Plus, you heard what Doc Holiday said: the town’s functionally out of medicine. I’m thinking that we storm the train, give away everything on the train we don’t need to the town of New Pegasus, and then we ride it off into the sunset towards the Drawers. A train seems faster than a horse, see?”

“Yes, faster,” he dryly replies. “What do I know of speed? After all, I am a horse.”

No, I think, you are a liar.

“Now, get out,” I spit. “I have to brush my teeth and then learn how to take a shit with this body.”

Shuffle.

The Fool. The Sorceress. The Gun. The Murderer. The King. The Priestess. The Liar.

The false deck of the oracle. The true deck of the Blue-Eyed Mare.

All run through my mind, all cards meaning something.

“My deck is incomplete without that card,” the Blue-eyed Lady says.

I drag my hands down my face, feeling my new fingerless leather gloves. Smelling them. Enjoying them. “The Fool remains in my hat, mare,” I hiss. “It reminds me who I am, what I am.”

“That sounds almost like guilt.”

I take a hard breath as I gather my things, putting on my duster and holstering my revolvers. “I feel neither guilt nor angst nor regret. So long as I remember the face of my father, I need not bear such emotions upon mine unclean soul.”

“Hmm,” she hums. “And for how long do you plan on holding onto my tarot card?”

“Until the day comes when it is my flesh consumed,” I reply.

Shuffle.

The woman I know as Dust’s mother is sobbing, face buried in her daughter’s chest. Dust herself is lying in the hospital bed, unconscious, bandages over her forehead and breasts. The room here certainly smells like a hospital room—so clean and perfect that it can only smell like death itself.

I speak a quick introduction, and the woman gasps

“G-Gunslinger?” She looks from me to her daughter, sniffling. I think that she understands why I am here. I tell her of my plan, and when all is over, she looks thunderstruck. “Now… now I think I understand what she sees in you.” She wipes her eye of tear. “I… I know that this is usually of job of a father, but…” The woman gives me a weak sort of smile. “But I can think of no one else with whom she would spend her days.”

It takes me a moment to understand that she’s given me her blessing to date her daughter. I merely sigh and give her a sad smile. Before I can speak, however, Dust groaned. I look down at her, and she’s holding up her bandana to me.

“H-hey, you,” she says in a distant, dying voice. “Take this.”

Such is not an option. But I am unable to refuse, as she croaks out, “I want you to… to have it. It was all I had of Mammy, and now I have her. It is… the most precious thing I ever had.” She chuckles mirthlessly and coughs. “Let’s be real here—I’m just some dumb girl like you’ve probably met hundreds of times before. You’re not coming back for me, are you?”

I say nothing.

“You come in, save the day, and then move on to do it again somewhere new.” She smiles. “Exactly like the Rhonaen gunslingers of old.” Dust pressed the bandana into my hand. “Your neck looks so naked and cold, and I thought you’d… just… it’s something to remember a nobody like me.”

After consulting my character sheet, I realize that I have no character sheet. But had I possessed such a character sheet, it would have said that the bandana’s armor slot was empty. That in mind, I put the bandana on, tying the tails of it behind my neck enough so that they could flutter in the wind and look awesome.

Shuffle.

Cards had once told me she’d be willing to make a deal with the Devil if it meant avenging her friend and town. She had, of course, been speaking of me. Dealing with devils, hmm? Well, some say that Waltharius, the Good Stallion, rose to power because he had signed a pact with Korweit. And dealing with Korweit was always dangerous. As the monster himself had once said, “By my right hoof—my servants, my soldiers, my tools.”

And while I’m not dealing with Korweit or the Queen of Graves, as I enter the Blackgard—the great sign above the front gates reading “Under New Management”—I know that I am about to make a deal with a whole new kind of devil.

Slowly riding C through deeper parts of Blackgard, I can see Blood Knights directing haggard-looking people around, handing out food and water rations. These people look like slaves in their ragged clothing, their faces dirty. Blood is everywhere, likely from the night before—the evidence of the witch’s successful coup. That, or it was national “Everyone Gets Hepatitis Day”. Seriously, is it too much to ask somebody to just get a mop and clean up all this blood?

We pass by a man and woman standing before the exploded husk of what had once been the Blackgard armory. The man has an arm around the woman’s shoulder as they sit down before the husk, the woman crying, her hands to her face. “It’s okay,” he cooes. “I’m sure that even without him, nothing will be able to destroy the wholesome family values that kept Olympia strong in the times of eld.”

I stop C, get off him—he whispers the word “Horse”—pick up a rock, and chuck it at the man’s chest.

The man screams as it hits him. “Ah, fuck! What was that fo—oh shit, it’s the Gunslinger!”

I hiss, “You both are idiots. That pink-eyed arms dealer was a psychopath! And mind you, that’s coming from me, and if I think you’re a psycho, you know you’ve got a problem.”

He tries to stammer something out, but fails.

“Look, it’s a bit, I guess, like just gathering a bunch of rape into a pile. Can you picture that? Just-just a bunch of rape in a pile. So then you look at it and think, ‘All this rape messes with the feng shui of my room’. So then you go to move it, but then you touch it—and bam! You’ve touched all this rape with your bare hands, and now you’re pregnant and your asshole hurts verily.” I nod sagely. “This is exactly how this story would be going if you still had your Wholesome Family Values.”

I get back on my horse and ride off before the man can reply. Then I see it: the huge manor house where I wish to go.

Shuffle.

Now C and I are behind the manor house, by the stables. There are other horses here, I see, and all of them are screaming and trying to run away from C, even though there is nowhere to run in their stables. As I get off C, the skinwalker utters a low shrieking noise that sets the hair on the back of my neck on edge, riddling me with chill bumps.

Before I can spin around to look at him, a burly Blood Knights hops over on the low walls. His boots land in the mud, and there is a concerned look on his face. “Shit, what happened to the horses? They okay?”

Even as I walk up to him, I recognize the burly man with the warhammer slung over his back, and when he exclaims “Gunslinger!”, I know he knows me too. “You are an odd sight to see back. What brings you here?”

“Howdy,” I say to the man. His is shorter than I, but built like a brick house. At least we both have broad shoulders. Or, at least I think I have broad shoulders. It is hard to tell what defines ‘broad’ to these werekindred. “I am here to see the w—” I stop myself. “To see the dear lady priestess. We have business to conclude.”

“Here to offer your guns again to the good cause?” he asks, stopping very close to me. “That kind of business have you with the priestess?”

I give the man a confused look. It is calculated, of course. “Business with her? Well, I would suppose, but I said that we have business to conclude.”

“Yhar?” he replied, cocking a brow.

“Yhar,” I say back. “When last we spoke, I promised that I would thee kill for groping and touching the girl I was with.”

He snorts a twisted species of laughter. “Yhar, I recall. No harm done with that little show, brother.” He laughs again. “You’re a funny guy, you are.”

“Yes,” reply in a cold, distant voice. “I’m a funny guy.” The knife comes out before he can see it. Quicker than greased lightning, I stab him in a vital area and rip and tear the knife out as brutally as I can. He can’t even shriek as he collapses to the ground. The horses jump and whine at this, those ugly corruptions of the pony form.

“Wh-wh—” The man gasps, bleeding out into the mud.

With a cold look on my face, I wipe the blood off my knife and sheath it back. “I am a Teutscher, and we Teutsche do very much so value honesty and frankness.” I crouch down and spit into his bleeding wound. Through grit teeth, I growl, “When I make a promise, I keep it.”

“You-you!” he stammers as I pull away from him

I point a finger at the bleeding, dying man. “Devour him.”

C whinnies. “With pleasure!”

His screams attract no attention, and by God, Allfather, are they pleasant to hear.

Shuffle.

I stand before the manor house wherein the witch now reigns. Here, I can see corpses impaled on stakes, blood running down the wooden poles. My thoughts turn to wondering how long these bodies will stay here, since too long being here and they’ll start to smell—but then I noticed that each of the several poles has a little tag thereon. I go up to the nearest pole and read its tag.

“After two days,” it reads, “please take down bodies and wash the stakes—other people need to use them for nefarious deeds too, you know!”

“Huh,” I say. “At least the witch is considerate of her fellow miscreants, thugs, and those supporting Wholesome Family Values.” I pause and think as I rub my chin. “Okay, from now on, I am forgetting all about Wholesome Family Values.”

Shuffle.

“You can’t go in there!” the Blackguard outside the witch’s door shouts.

I give him a glare so icy that he pauses, possibly dying from frostbite. It’d explain why he freezes so suddenly. “Watch me”—and I open her door and step into the large, large room. When I shut the door behind me, he does not throw it back open and charge in. Clearly, the witch needs to hire better security.

This isn’t her ruling room, I soon realize. At least, I hope it isn’t. I struggle to honestly think of a brutal ruler reigning and making decrees from that luxurious-looking king-sized bed that acts as this room’s centerpiece. Or maybe I can think thereof—this world was kind of crazy like that. The witch probably snuggled under covers, all warm and cozy and looking cute as a button as she had men dragged screaming and crying into her room and ordered them to be tortured to death before her so that she could watch them die as she drank hot cocoa, whereafter she would go to her Voixson and say, “Dear Diary, today I tore the genitals off several men because I got a bit hot thinking of that Gunslinger. He’s so dreamy! Tomorrow, we’re going to be in the same math class together, and I’m totally trying out a new hairstyle! Think he’ll talk to me? I hope he does! Because by the Old Ones—I. Want. Him. To. Fuck. Me. Hard!” Then it ends, and I’m left standing there with my dick trying to scramble into my body to get away from her, since that last sentence didn’t come from the Voixson. Again.

Shaking the thought from my head, I try to figure out where that witch had gone off to, and if I should go out and politely ask that shitty guardsman where his dark mistress is. That’s when I see the doorway in the room, from whereunder I can see a light shining out. Not sunlight like, but the light of an artificial source, and I think I can hear a voice from that side. A light moan, really, like someone enjoying a pleasant stretching after a good night’s sleep.

My legs carry me swiftly to the door, and I quickly throw it open. Why I’m suddenly in a rush to find the creepy bitch is beyond me, and—“Get out! Get out! Get out!” the witch screams.

It takes me a moment to realize what’s going on. I’ve just ran into her bathroom as she’s showering, a fresh wave of heat and steam washing over me. I can see her dark silhouette on the other side of the curtains, and the way she’s sitting and the position of her hand leaves little to the imagination just what had prompted that light moan.

“Should have seen this coming,” I groan, and she gasps sharply. Her silhouette bolts up, momentarily slipping before catching herself. The water is still running, and the steam is still fogging up the mirrors even with the door still open.

“G-Gunslinger?” she asks in a weak, shaky voice. The shower curtain pulls back slightly as she pokes her head out. She sees me, freezes, and then tries to partially hide herself behind her long pink hair. From her silhouette, I can see that one arm holding the curtains, the other arm shielding her breasts—as if I care what they look like and would like to gander at them for a period of time. “What—why—how—you were—I was just—”

“If you say ‘I was just thinking about you’ in a seductive voice,” I interject harshly, “and then give me a creepy come hither smile, I am setting this whole compound aflame.”

She blushes, uttering a little squeak as she pulls back away from me, refusing to meet my eye. “That… I… I wasn’t going to say that,” she says in a voice I can only barely make out over the shower. Her flush is so hard now that I think she’s about to get a nosebleed. “I was going to, uh, say that I, um, wasn’t doing whatever you think I was doing.”

I cock a brow. “And just what did you think that I would think you were doing which you insist that you weren’t?”

The witch bites her bottom lip and looks as if she’s trying really hard to look as small as possible. “Um, that.” Her breathing hastens. “Sorry.”

Although it would be wise of me to leave, I can’t help but stand there and ask, “Sorry?”

She swallows, and I am sure she is biting her lip so hard that she will draw blood. “About yesterday. I’m sorry.” The witch still refuses to meet my eye. “I… was so amazed that you existed, so excited, and so… excited that I came on way too strong, and I just kept hoping that if I pressed a little harder, you and I…” Her eyes finally meet my lone eye. “I could see that it was making you uncomfortable, and… when you left, I said that I was going to… And it only made you more uncomfortable, and I’m sorry, and I promise that it won’t happen again.”

I stare at her like either one of us has lost their mind. A girl who not only recognizes how uncomfortable she made me feel, but then who apologizes for going too far and says it won’t happen again? That is, a sensible girl? What the hell is this madness? I don’t understand it and therefore it must die!

“But, um,” she goes on, “could you hand me my towel?”

And I do.

Shuffle.

Hands are odd to use. They feel all kinds of wrong, yet so right, like really dirty intercourse with your sister. Not that I have a sister, thank God, but I’ve been told. Of course, those who’ve told me were rapist monsters, and so I had to murder them dead right there, but details, details. The point is, when the witch asked me to help lace up her corset, I had to use hands.

Now, as I lace it up from behind her, I notice that her bodywash actually smells rather pleasant. She goes on about the new reforms she issuing: better housing, people to actually build houses in the first place, folker assigned to help clear up all this ancient rubble, a pet shelter for all those poor animals without someone to love them, painless ways of executing political prisoners—all generally rather kind things.

Personally, I’m more concerned with the corset. The entire thing doesn’t add up for a werekind. As I can see from here, the corset seems far too tight for a werekind, and crushes her breasts, making them seem inflated in a way that cannot possibly be comfortable. It is almost as if she were trying to wear a made-for-ponies article of clothing simple because that’s what females are expected to wear, with no one thinking about the fact that a corsets simply make no sense for a werekind. Really, what kind of backwards civilization uses objects that were clearly never designed for their anatomy?

Like doorknobs. Because screw doorknobs and the Equestrian fascination with using them. I don’t know for whom they were designed, but it clearly wasn’t for ponies! God, I hate doorknobs, so hard and fiddly to use. Do you know what we don’t have in the Reich? Doorknobs! We use handles, because those actually make sense.

But the time I finish ranting in my head—because I am so damn talkative in my head—I have finished lacing the corset, and the witch is putting on her dark clothing. When she puts on the plague mash and hides all her pink hair, the air of timidness and shyness vanishes. Now, the air about her is one of authority and command. It is the air of somebody who would burn a young girl alive without a second thought if it honestly meant achieving her goals.

“You know,” I speak, “I rather like what you’re doing with the place. Lots of gorey decorations outside.” I gesture over my shoulder in a vague yet menacing direction.

“Those are all leaders of other chapterhouses,” she says in a voice like a leader, not the horny stalker-like girl from the Voixsons. “Unless they swore allegiance to me, they died. Very simple. It meant that no one else needed to get hurt.”

“How kind of you,” I reply, “to pull such a Viktorian move.” I smile. “King Viktor, that is. Your action reminds me of one of the first things he did upon becoming king.”

“They do?”

I recline back slightly, still sitting on her bed. It is soft and cozy. Very attractive for rolling around with another in. “When Viktor became king, he gathered every general and admiral in the land, all the big shots from the Luftwaffe, the Marine, and from the branch that Viktor would later reform into the Mobile Infanterie of today. To ensure that none of them dared subvert his will and side with the infinitely rich corporations and other obscenely powerful interests Viktor’s new regime was going after, he made them all swear a blood oath to him. Those that couldn’t were executed on the spot; those that tried to convince Viktor that such an oath wasn’t necessary were executed on the spot; those who hesitated too long were executed on the spot; those that swore the blood oath were bid to live.”

My mind is full with memories of all the A’s I got in history class. I was a complete badass at history class. Math? Not so much. I don’t care that the Book of Chains states that math is sacred for it was the tool wherewith God wrote the universe, math is evil. “With the oaths of his generals behind him,” I go on with an almost exited voice, not really caring if anybody but I happens to be listening, “Viktor disbanded the Wehrmacht, and on that same day created he the modern Rheinwehr in its place to stand as the united armed forces of Teutschland.” I pause, and say with vague nostalgia after a moment, “Although, the Wehrmacht did show up again a few years back as the Südwehrmacht—which the people sometimes as die Südwehr but generally called as die Wehrmacht. It was the name of the Reich’s guerrilla army of the South during the Dark Crusade.

“Anyways, ever since that day—that is, after dem Tag des Eides, Oath Day—all in the military, from the recruits to the top leaders, must swear an sacred oath to serve no one but the King, not the Reichstag or the people or God, but the King and the King alone, although only higher officers have to swear that blood oath.” I give a little chuckle. “Therein also lies the reason why every day in school, children are required to offer a pledge of loyalty to the King, and through him swear their loyalty to the democracy and liberty which he protects.”

I allow her to think thereabout. Or maybe she’s trying really hard to forget my boring history thing. ’Tis hard to tell. Whatever the case is, in the end she says simply, “You came here for a reason, Gunslinger.”

“Yes, I did,” I reply. “You have heard what the livebox said, yes? Livebox Free Evesland spoke of a massive train leaving from Songnam. Destination: the Drawers. It is laden with massive amounts of food and medicines and arms and personnel and all sorts of other stuff Elkington needs at the Drawers. Big Bag-a-Wolf said it was the single largest military cargo train ever launched by the Kingdom of Songnam.”

She crossed her arms. “And what would you have me do about it?”

“The train’s journey will take it through this city,” I say with increasing fervor. “I want your help to help me get onto the moving train—since my horse says he is of no use.”

“Your horse says?” she asks, but then shakes her head, muttering something about “Teutonic figures of speech.” “Well, Gunslinger, I don’t… Unless you are…” She snaps her fingers, and I can feel her smiling at me through her mask. “Gunslinger, for all you’ve done for us, I think I have a way onto that train. Just, one question: do you like animals?”

|— ☩ —|

“Oh yeah,” I absentmindedly said, looking at the dead squirrel. “That’s how I got here. God, why don’t animals ever like me?” I thought for a moment. “And was it just me, or were all of those memories slightly off-color and in the wrong tense? I’m pretty sure that I was supposed to think of past events in the past tense.” I massage my temples, letting the painkillers do their job. “Oh, brain. You’re so silly when you’re concussed.”

I looked around. “Who the hell am I speaking to?”

Then, on the far side of the train car, a door slid open. In stepped a man in a strange blue great coat with gold-colored cuffs, a yellow vest barely visible under the coat, white breeches, and black boots. He adjusted his tricorne hat as he stepped into the room, looking up at the hole in the ceiling. I saw the shattergun slung over his back. It wasn’t at all like Skybane in design, and it had one hell of a bayonet attached at the end.

The man, still not looking towards me or the dead squirrel I rode in on, groaned. “By Oskaligar,” he said, “not another one. Why do these damn cabooses never have good roofing?” Then he saw the squirrel’s mutilated torso and sighed. “Why did you possibly think the caboose was a good place to be? These places are dead. And you’re a royally protected endangered species.” He glanced around, still not looking at me. “Who the hell am I speaking to?”

“Howdy, pardner,” I drawled, and he lethargically turned towards me, a dull puss on his countenance. His eyes fell upon the pistol I had aimed at him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” he told me, rolling his eyes and raising his hands. “The gun’s loaded, I’ve three knives on my person, no three-shooters, and my asshole is weapons free, so please don’t go digging around in there. It’s still sore from those ironroad security guys, and gloves or not, they still basically raped me with their hands.” He got down on his knees, but still went on. “I mean, it’s like they stick the world’s longest finger up my ass, grab my prostate, and give it a firm handshake before deciding that I wasn’t carrying any illicit materials in my anal cavity. For the Fathers’ sakes, I’m a one of Elkington’s finest, not some common thug. And seriously, who’d be dumb enough to store things in their asshole?”

“Certainly not I.” And I certainly wasn’t thinking about all those times wherein I totally didn’t stash knives in my asshole, because that was dumb, and I was smart. Wasn’t that right, Duke Elkington when you tied me into that bed and probably tried to rape me?

I got up and went over to the man. “So, I take it that you are one of the fearsome Caroleans that I’ve heard so much about?”

“If you figured I’d be more inclined to rape some little girls than I currently am, then you’re buying way too much into the false legends.” He snorted. “Just because we sometimes have no choice but to gun down rioters doesn’t mean we enjoying raping the dead girls we kill.”

“Gun down rioters?” I asked, more because I didn’t understand the term ‘gun down’ than because I wanted a story.

“Look, zyrh, when you’re trying to restore law and order to a land that’s been without law and order since the last gunslinger, Grifter Greaves, died some four centuries erstwhile, sometimes you need do the bad stuff, like firing into crowds of rioters in newly captured cities. Blame me if you want, I just follow orders.”

“I can understand that,” I said with a nod, thinking back to all those historic times that the Rheinwehr needed do much the same, especially when the military came into any cities in the Southlands to purge the local witches back when we were fighting the Good Stallion. The Reich had to teach them that magic was wrong, and if they wouldn’t hear the truth normally, then the Rheinwehr was to let them feel it. Sometimes, enemy civilians were just so stupid as to try to fight back against our troopers; and if you were that dumb, you deserved to die. Nothing wrong therewith.

“So, just tell me,” he spoke, “are you going to just kill me?”

Frowning, I replied, “Well, since you’re being just such a good sport, I can let you live, no problems.” I removed his rifle and examined it. The thing was thick, stocky, heavy, and I couldn’t figure out how to open the breach and reload it. It wasn’t lever- or revolver-based, and—oh, hello. There were a short number of mechanical parts one had to realize before the breach opening, revealing the part of the barrel whereinto the huge bullet was loaded. And I did check, the weapon only allowed for the one bullet. But with a bullet so scary-looking in the breach, I supposed that was all reasonable. “Hey, do you have a rope on you somewhere?”

“No real need, zyrh,” he said. “If you disarm me, I can’t go running for help, since the only way would be to run through you—assuming you’re going to crawl up the train by yourself. Plus, I’m not stupid enough to try anything.”

That was reasonable, and this guy didn’t seem like the lying type. “What does ‘zyrh’ mean?” I asked.

“Dialectical variant of sir,” he told without a moment’s hesitation. The man probably got the question often or something, which begged the question: Why use it if no one but you understands it? “Um, if you’d like, I have a saw in my pack and a pair of handcuffs. You could cuff me, give me the saw, and by the time I can cut myself free, you’ll probably be gone.”

“You know, you are just such a good sport about this that I’m not going to do any of that stuff to you,” I said simply, patting him on the hat. “I wish all people were half as considerate as you—maybe I could stop killing people wherever I went. Ah, then all my problems could come elsewhence.” I found and removed his three knives, and together with his shouldershooter, I stepped out through the door and tossed the weapons all off the train.

Out here, I could hear the wind whipping past me, even though I knew that the train had slowed down considerably in order to make it through the city. Stopping to think, I found that I wasn’t sure how I knew that, only that I did. Stupid concussion. And now that I was looking around, these trains cars seemed weird. Granted, I could only see the ones behind and before me, but even then I could clearly see just how wide they were, wider than the train cars of my where.

From the next car, as I stepped up to its door, I could hear a muffled voice. I drew my revolver. Quick as could, I slid the door open and aimed. The train car here was full of bunk beds and locks, all but one of the beds occupied. Why they were all sleeping at this hour was beyond me, but I was sure that it made sense. Probably. Big Bag-a-Wolf’s voice came from a livebox somewhere in the room. As I holstered the gun and crept through the car to the other end, I listened to his broadcast.

“Songnam officials are now offering a reward for any tips leading to the arrest of one Michael McLaughlin. Michael McLaughlin is now a fugitive from the law, having escaped from police earlier this day. According to authorities, Michael McLaughlin is a fifteen foot tall, five-headed, fire-breathing dragon. Police first became suspicious of Michael when authorities found him loitering at a local park; when they questioned him, he provided a fake ID, stating he was actually a Taiping unicorn with a work visa who just happened to be turned into a fifteen foot tall, five-headed, fire-breathing dragon by a bout of poison joke. This, police knew, was a fallacy, as poison joke can only turn people into a fifteen foot tall, four-headed, fire-breathing dragon—as everyone knows.”

I saw that one sleeping guy had had a mustache drawn onto his face with a marker. On his cheek was written the acronym “FNG”. I suppressed the urge to try to learn what “FNG” meant via waking him up and asking politely. So, I just proceeded to creep through the train.

“When he was put into a cell, Michael McLaughlin quickly and easily escaped because he is literally a five-headed, fire-breathing dragon. Michael McLaughlin is wanted for tax evasion.

“And now, some music!”

On came more of that old-timey-sounding music that both Eveslanders and Equestrians liked. Bleh. At least by now, I was near the door to the other side of the car. Near that door, though, was a man in the chair, his rifle leaning against the wall next to him. A cigar in his mouth, he was playing came of what I presumed was solitaire, and thus he wasn’t looking in my direction. Creeping past him as quietly as I could, which wasn’t all that silent given all the armor and items I was wearing, I could hear him singing along to the song.

“You’re not fooling anyone, you know,” he suddenly said, and my hand went to my knife. “Look, Kaylepson, I don’t care if you want to draw dicks on sleeping soldiers, but if you draw any of my recruits, I’ll cut your balls off and rape you in the nostril with ’em.” He didn’t look up from his cards; he just kept playing. “Now get the shit out of here before I decide your skinny ass needs to be kicked directly in the asshole.”

I gave an affirmative grunt and quickly went through the door. Once more outside, I sighed. So far I’d been lucky, but I could easily imagine that were there just a few more trooper cars like the last one, I’d have to be expending a lot of ammunition before this day was over. Really, it was stupid to think that this train might he holding munitions for my hungry guns, instead of ammo for the weapons the Caroleans used.

As I stepped up to the next car, which was oddly grayer than the other cars, I heard a distinctly female voice on the other side groan very loudly. “Why me? Why every time me? Fathers fuck me, I wish someone would actually help me out of this damn mess.”

Well, that was as dramatic a call as I needed. I drew a revolver and burst into the room. The first thing I noticed was that either hemisphere of the room was enclosed in cell bars, creating a straight walkway whence I was to the door on the far side of the car. As the sliding door closed itself behind me, I noticed the second thing: the long cell to my right was divided into two halves via a pile of flimsy wooden chairs.

“Holy shit, it worked!” the same female exclaimed. “My wishes work! Oh, I, um—I wish for a bunch of hot guys and a ton of money!” Slowly, I turned to face her. She was standing in the corner of her half of the cell. The woman was smiling at me, her green eyes almost sparkling. Her hair, I noticed, was a snowy white whose otherwise endless monotony was broken only by a weird lightning bolt-like streak of arctic blue running horizontally therethrough. When she looked directly at me, she shrugged. “Well, I guess I got one hot guy. Could do without the eyepatch, though, but at least he’s got that sexy foreigner bonus. I don’t suppose you’re rich, are you?”

I blinked. “To the best of my knowledge, I have enough gold coins on hand to destroy the Evesland economy, so I would presume this means I am rich in a matter of thinking.”

She shrugged again. “Huh. Well, I guess I’ll take what I can get. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

My eye fell upon the pile/wall of chairs before going back to the girl. I noticed in that glance that there was no door to her cell on this side of the makeshift wall. “Why are you in the cell?”

“Well, that’s simple, I—” And she dropped into silence. The woman shifted her slightly slacked jaw side-to-side as she seemed to think. “That’s a good question, actually. Why am I on a train?” She put a hand over her chin, one of her fingers reaching out and slowly drumming on part of her cheek. “Got these bits and flashes, and I know that my gear is over in that footlocker.” She gestured to a little locker outside the cell. “Although I can’t say I know why. But I can say something else. You might not be able to tell from looking at me, but my preferred choice of outfit doesn’t include a depressingly gray tank top and weird gray pants. Really, this outfit is shit. I think whoever owns this train doesn’t like me.”

“How can you tell?” I dryly asked, holstering my revolver.

“Well, seeing that being put into a cage isn’t exactly too high up on my fetish list—I’m not too, too big on violent BDSM, y’see—I think I can safely presume that they don’t like me.” She smiled. “They could at least give me a ball gag, y’know? So inconsiderate.”

“Hmm,” I grunted. “Last time I met the guy whom I suspect put you here, he strapped me to a hospital bed and showed me the bad touch.”

She frowned. “See? Why don’t I get any love. If you were in here, you’d get a nice ball gag. But no. I just get locked in a room with the Calf of Despair.”

I shifted my weight, crossing my arms. “Calf of Despair?”

“Yes!” she quickly replied. “Don’t look at it in the eyes, or else! Just trust me on this one, okay? It’s a vicious monsters the likes of which our puny mortal minds can’t even comprehend! There is no survival when it is near you; there is only rape!”

I stared at pile of chairs, the cocked a brow at the women. “Then how are you alive?”

“Because, at the last, most daring second, I discovered its one weakness!” she nearly shouted. “It’s weak versus flimsy wooden chairs, so thankfully I’ve been safe so far, since this cell had a ton of flimsy wooden chairs. See? I even built that barricade after I surrounded it with the chairs. And now I’m bored.” Her voice got calmer and calmer. “And I’m also hungry. And that Carolean took away that livebox that was in this room. And I’m hungry. Twice. Double hungry. And I think the next car up has some tasty, tasty snack cakes. Help me out, please?”

“Why, exactly, would I help you out?” I asked. “You could very well be in that cell for a good reason, a reason wherefore I would be wise to let you rot in there.”

She clasped her hands together under her chin and fluttered her lashes. The purpose of fluttering lashes, as everybody knew, was to make it look as if your eyelids were having an epileptic attack. Because as everyone also knew, there was nothing a guy wanted to bang more than a girl with epilepsy, since, providing they didn’t bite off and swallow their own tongues, epileptic girls were wild in bed. “I’ll be your best friend.”

“Hmm, that is tempting, but I’m afraid to say that—” I dropped into a dramatic monotone “—all my friends are dead.”

“So, that just means you’ll need new ones!” She pounded a fist against her breast. “And I am just the woman for the job, yessir!” As I stared her down, her smile slowly faded. Then her eyelids twitched, and she suddenly was rubbing her eyes. “Ugh,” she groaned. And then I could again see her eyes, there was something… off about them. Whatever it was so startling that I reflexively took a step back. I couldn’t see anything different per se, but it felt like they were regarding me differently than from before.

“Ma’am?” I prompted, and she leveled a gaze up at me.

“You have a rifle over your shoulder, no?” she asked, and I nodded. “Yet, you have revolvers, and you’re wearing them low, like a… like a gunslinger. In fact, you absolutely resemble the mythical gunslinger so much it’s… uncanny.” She hmmed, hand clasped over her mouth as she looked at me. “Before that Carolean took away my own source of entertainment, that livebox, Bag-a-Wolf had spoken on a new gunslingers showing up, and I think that this must logically be you, is it not?”

“Folks have been highting me that, yes,” I replied, and she shot me a little smile.

“And so… hmm…” She did that thing with her hand again, putting it over her mouth and slowly drumming a finger on a part of her cheek. When she went to speak, she first moved her hand from her mouth. “Before Olympia fell, I was an Olympian Ranger. And though the only firearms we used were those in the final days which we liberated from Elkington, I do know how to fire an wield a furrowgun like the one you have slung over your back.”

“Furrowgun? Just how many damn words do you have for a rifle?”

She glanced around quickly. “Rifle, shouldershooter, furrowgun, scratchgun, and shattergun. The last of which is the term popularized recently, since Carolean rifles have the habit of shattering enemy lines. Said shatterguns are imitations of the old Zündnadelgewehr, the weapon invented and mass-produced in the Rike over a century ago.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned lightly as if in pain.

Zündnadelgewehr? I thought as she hissed in a deep breath. That’s clearly a teutsches word, but I don’t know what a “Gewehr” is. Zündnadelgewehr—ignition-needle-Gewehr?

She took another deep breath. “Point is, you can only use one gun at a time, perhaps two if you’re feeling stupid, but you cannot hold three weapons at once. Let me help you, Gunslinger.”

Shaking my head, I said, “No, pedal back. I want to ask what’s an Olympian Ranger.”

The woman froze. “I… uh…” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m not exactly positive, but I know they did stuff for Olympia, and they were… stuff…” Running a hand back and forth through her hair, she grit her teeth. “Really, I don’t know how I know so much about guns in particular, but I know I do, and that it has something to do with me being an an ex-ranger. Honestly, I can’t recall why I’m in a prison car, but I know I am, and I know that I don’t like those Caroleans, and I don’t think you like them either, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?”

I thought about this, and eventually nodded. “Alright, I will help you get out of there.”

Her eye twitched again, and pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyelids tight.

“Are you well?” I asked.

“Ugh, yhar, yhar,” she said in a strained voice, like she were trying to do her taxes while fighting a bear. The woman waved me off and made a show of smiling at me. While meant no doubt to reassure me, it only made my skin crawl, and I took another reflexive step back. Once again, her eyes were different not in how they looked themselves but what they seemed to be perceiving. It was hard to formulate in my head words trying to describe it.

“Just, don’t look the Calf of Despair in the eye,” she said in a casual tone, so utterly unlike that of her previous, downright diplomatic tone. “Trust me. I did that once, and I have regretted it ever since. So many regrets, and none of them the regrets that were totally worth it at the time.”

Taking her words into consideration, I crept on past the wall of flimsy wooden chairs. There, near the door and shackled to the ground was a small cow calf. The damn thing was chained so tightly that it couldn’t stand up, only lay there weakly. It raised its head with a terrible frailty, and our eyes met.

A hellish voice thundered in my head. “Upon the foulest wings of the blackest night do I come to you, he of mortal flesh! You shall enter my realm and you will know the true meaning of being raped in the ear, mouth, nose, and urethra all with the same penis!”

“No,” I said simply, and shot it in the face. That was how I learned that the Calf of Despair’s other one weakness was being shot in the face. It was a dark reminder of just how alike the Calf and I were. As I reloaded the revolver, I called out, “Well, I met that which I didn’t understand and so I killed it. Are you happy now?”

“Depends,” she said as I approached her. “Does being a happy girl get me a ‘get outta jail free’ card?”

Shaking my head and furrowing my brow, I replied something to the effect of, “I don’t… pardon?”

“Oh, never mind. Just—” Her expression sunk. “We don’t have the key to my cell.”

I went over to the cell door and examined the lock. When I pushed on the door, I found something out. “Huh. Door’s unlocked.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” she groaned. I watched her scramble over her pile of flimsy wooden chairs. She reached the door and swung it open. “Just… argh, just fuck me… The one time I don’t try pull and push.”

Crossing my arms, I watched her leave the cell, still gritting her teeth. The first thing she did was stretch, and I could hear some of her joints cracking. “Ugh, I’ve been in that dinky little corner for what feels like forever. Like being stuck in a shitty job, and you just wanna escape, but you can’t.” She groaned. “Like, after Olympia fell, things didn’t go well for me. Had to take jobs that would pay—washing, hunting, fucking mining. You know how hard it is to dig a hole in a wall? Only way to really make it all worth it is to work the dark shafts and pray.”

I nodded. “I can speak likewise, although my past jobs involved being an assistant to the politicians. My knees were always red by the end of the day.”

She gave me an oblique look. “Something tells me we’re not on the same page.”

“I was speaking about being forced into giving oral sex to older, more powerful people to keep my job,” I said in a perfectly level voice. “What were you talking about?”

“Oh, um. Very well then.” She continued giving me that odd stare as she slid past me and moved over to the footlocker, kicking it open. The women turned to me and made a spinning gesture with her hand. It took me a moment to understand what she meant, but until then, I’d just been staring at her hand.

“You want me to turn around,” I stated.

“Well, yes—kinda what this means.” She did the hand thing again. “My gear’s in here, and I don’t want to wear this prison garbage anymore. It chafes and it’s at least two sizes too small, and not in that kiddy ‘it will become bigger before you know it’ way, either. Also”—she glanced down at herself with a confused look on her face—“ I don’t actually know if this outfit has underwear beneath it, and I kind do wanna change pants. So, turn around and don’t look, if you would.”

I turned around stared at the door. Behind me came the rustling of clothing and a sound like a metal object getting dropped. As I was about to wonder why Eveslanders cared for clothing and Equestrians didn’t, the woman behind me gasped hard. “Oh my Fathers, that’s not what I think it is!”

I spun around. “Why, what’s wrong?”

She froze, and so did I. In the course of me looking away, she had done away with her top, exposing all her skin. Of course, the proper matter likely had something to do with the pants she was trying to remove, pants which did not indeed have underwear under them, as I could very clearly see. I got off the start of a groan before she exploded. Well, more like she fell face-first onto the ground in a position unlike a sexual caterpillar before she exploded.

“Ah! You fucking fuck! Did I give you fucking permission to turn your ass around!?”

I finished that long, long groan, rolling my eyes and pointédly not looking at the woman. “One of these days I am going to find a companion with an actual penis who won’t whine when I accidentally see him naked. In fact, I need to mix it up. I’ve only been traveling with girls since I got to Equestria. And Evesland, by extension.”

When I turned around, she exclaimed, “Oh fuck, it is that!”

“Not falling for it twice!” I called back.

“That’s Skybane! That’s fucking Skybane! Why do you have Skybane!?”

“Because I pulled it out of the stone in the middle of the lake which was guarded by the ghosts of various B-list celebrities,” I said. “Whence did you think I acquired it? Now, get yourself dressed before you scream again. Because that was all your fault, not mine.”

And so I did. She asked me a number of questions, but until I was assured and reassured that she was dressed and all suited up, although I informed her before I turned around that what was seen could not be unseen, and cursed my nigh photographic memory for things which I did not want to remember. And because today was all about clothing, from the witch’s lack thereof to this girls prior lack thereof, I had to look at her outfit.

To wit, her get-up consisted of a few notable things. There was her faded gray t-shirt and weirdly skimpy excuse for some kind of armored vest. Rather than gray pants, she was now clad in the most cargoiest of khaki cargo pants I’d ever seen, a dazzling array of pockets and pouches that ran down to where she’d taped her pants into her combat boots. I paused at the single binocular tube—monocular?—hanging from around her neck as she fiddled with the bag she had. Her bag was clearly inferior to mine, for mine were the master race of bags!

Her eyes were once again the more perceptive and aware-seeming eyes as she said, “You carry Skybane. I’m not sure how, but I know that’s important to me. Very important.”

“You want to hold onto it for me?” I asked, removing the furrowgun’s sling. “Have it”—and I tossed her the weapon. She scrambled for it, grabbing with both aggressive fear and reverence. She did much the same when I tossed her the weapon’s ammo bandoliers. It amused me to watch.

“What the hell are you doing?!” she barked. “This is sacred stuff! I know it is!”

I merely smiled. “We’ve loitered here long enough to get a ticket therefrom. You swore to be of help to me for assisting you?”

Still trying to care for the gun and bullets, she nodded. “I did.”

“Well, this may bite me in the ass come later, but, ma’am, welcome to Team Gunslinger. Have you a name?”

Again, she nodded. “Yes. It’s Frosty. Winds, Fro—aw fuck, I messed that up. Can we get a do-over?”

|— ☩ —|

The first car we went through was full of boxes, but nothing interesting. Well, went I tried to open the boxes, I found them to all be full of clothing. I found a black tricorne in one box and put it on Frosty Winds’ head.

“That’s where that goes,” I said as she frowned up at her headpiece. “I officially dub thee the new Cards of this great train adventure, granting you exclusive rights to whine, cry, be sad, be depressed, and be emotionally abused and unstable.”

She gave me an even more confused look. “Well, I guess I do fancy a game of pinochle. Wait, I think I've got a deck in my bag somewhere…” But by then, I was already proceeding to the next train car.

The car thereafter was filled with pictures of squid. Nothing kinky, just squid doing their things. I was pretty sure it had something to do with Elkington’s supposed Neighponease ancestry, presuming that was still a thing in this world.

Frosty, once more without a hat, said in a humorless voice, “Oh, well, look. A whole train car full of things that should be killed with fire.” She grunted, and was suddenly massaging her temples, muttering things like, “Ouch, ouch. Ffff! Ow!”

I stared at the woman. Why had I given her a gun, again? “Frosty, are you well?”

Frosty took a deep nasal breath and looked back at me. “Uh , yeah. A little headache, I think, but nothing I can’t handle. Why?”

My gaze didn’t let up. “Think hard for me, girl—why did you think you ended up on this train?”

“Um, didn’t we cover that already?”

“I think it’s important right now, for you’re acting odd. Why?”

“Eh,” she half-groaned, half-grunted. “Look, does it really matter? Whatever happened happened, and I ended up on some train staffed by guys I don’t like. How that came to be and my past doesn’t really matter. Right now, we’re here, doing”—she glanced around—“we’re staring at hundreds upon hundreds of squid on our way to help out New Pegasus or whatever your story was.” I blinked. “Memories and history weigh you down, keep you from focusing on the present and the future, okay? I won’t ask about your doubtlessly tragic and dark and dramatic past, and you won’t ask me mine, and that’s that.”

I leveled a heavy glare at the woman, heavy enough to crush the life out of a small insect. “You can’t be serious,” I scoffed, “can you?”

She held my glare firm. Then she broke out into a chuckling fit. “Pfft, fuck no. I’m neurotic out the wazoo and I know it. I just don't remember anything particularly interesting to tell you. But I won’t shoot you in the back or the face or the dick if that’s what you’re worrying about. I’ve got enough problems of my own without worrying about a gunslinger after my ass.” She smiled. “Trust me, I’m PTSD’d so hard that I’ve got the entire LMNOQ-alphabet after me, although I don’t know how or why that is.”

“So, it’s amnesia,” I stated bluntly.

She nodded. “Sorta.”

I stared long enough at her, and eventually chose to leave the status quo as it was. Crazy is as crazy does, as they say. Sure, she was probably going to end up ruining my day, but… why wasn’t I having a problem with her, again?

The next car wasn’t like the others: it was all outdoors, a number of little metal slabs scattered about to hold onto crates, whereof there were four. So too were there a small number of crane-like aparati scattered about no doubt used for the loading and unloading of these creates. Really, this whole place looked perfect for a firefight. Plenty of cover from either direction. I pulled down on my hat’s visor as Frosty and I crossed the car all the way to the next door.

As we reached the next door, I paused. Down below, where the locks and other mechanisms to connect the train cars together was, I saw what looked like dark and mechanical veins. I knelt down to get a closer look. As I stared, a blue light ran down the veins, like a pulse on energy. “What the…?”

I looked up to Frosty, “Hey, is this nor—”

“Down!” she shouted dropping to the ground, her back to one of the metal plates.

“What?” I asked, and then I heard the crack of a rifle. A hole in the metal floor materialized before me with a bang. Glancing up, I saw several men—Caroleans, by the outfits—funneling out from the last car and taking cover. Then one came strolling purposefully out, and I recognized him as that Carolean who’d been playing solitaire. He saw me, pointed, and barked. The Caroleans opened fire.

“Great. Just great!” I said, dashing for the door to the next car. “And it’s locked. Because of course it is! Why wouldn’t it be! Where’s my lockpick?”

I heard Skybane fire as I ducked for cover. “Eleven!” Frosty shouted. She popped out of cover and fired the shattergun again, deftly cocked the lever as she barked, “Ten!” It took me a moment to realize she was counting her shots.

More bullets whizzed past me, piercing deep holes in our cover. Really, with the size and power of their bullets, the cover here was shit.

“The hunt has begun, now let ’em hit the floor! Eight, and ooh, I just made a widow!” Were those one-liners? No! Only I got to do awesome one-liners! She ducked back under cover and in a single fluid motions removed four bullets from the bandoliers and inserted them into the weapon as she called out, “Tac’ reload, cover me!”

As interesting as it was to watch, I had a lockpick to find. Actually, now that I thought thereabout, how did I even know locks in this place worked like they did in my where? How, exactly, did I even pick a lock with these hands? “And, dammit, where’s my lockpick?!”

Frosty slid over to where she could be in cover and stand at the same time, a bullet tearing a hole through where she’d just been. “I got a pick,” she said, and popped out of cover to fire twice again. “I’ll give you two credit, you’re superior at dying!”

“Where?” I asked, diving from my cover to hers. I failed and simply jumped head-first into the metal wall. As I yelped in pain, I somehow managed to roll into the cover. A trickle of blood ran down my forehead, and I had to readjusted my hat back into place. That was how I learned that I was not a dolphin, thus crushing my lifelong dream of becoming a dolphin, and thus no more dramatic dolphin diving around shootouts.

“One of my back pockets! Can you get it yourself? I’m a little bit—eight, seven!—bit busy at the moment!”

Wiping the blood off my forehead, I crawled over to her before attempting to root through her cargo-laden cargo pants. I needed to get me a pair of these. They’d act as a whole bag all on their own. I opened a fat-looking pocket and felt around.

“Wrong pocket!”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Other one! Other one!” she spat. “Six! Five!”

Another pocket.

“Dammit, are you just trying to grab my ass?”

“Well, you seem a little tense,” I replied. “I figured an ass massage might do you wonders.”

“We can get into a bunch of weird kinky massages after people stop trying to kill us, dammit!”

“Which is, in my case, to say, never.” Then: “Maybe if you could point me in the right direction…”

She growled. “Lower, lower, left, right—that one! That one right there!”

“Danke, Fräulein!”

I turned to face the door, and then realized that standing out in the open was actually a really terrible idea. Like, really, really terrible. So I just sat there, trying to figure out what to do. The answer to my wondering came from Frosty.

“You know, I had kinda figured that a gunslinger would, oh, I dunno, sling guns!” She dropped back down behind cover. “Especially since I kinda need to reload!”

“Oh, yeah. That’s a thing I do.” In a lighting-quick movement, I pulled out my revolvers, one in each hand. By the time I realized how terrible an idea it was to dual-wield revolvers, a hail of bullets was tearing my cover apart. The huge scar that once was my right nipple burned as I skidded over to my old piece of cover, guns still in hands.

My bandaged arms itching and my forehead bleeding from my idiocy, I took a breath, thought of the face of my father, and popped up out of cover. I fired my right gun first, hitting a Carolean directly in the head—mostly because he was literally right in front of me, and because I’d fired wildly in panic. Luck was a fun thing to have.

As the Carolean’s head sprayed everything with mist, I saw the other Caroleans—the ones still alive, not the many ones that Frosty’d shot—advancing on us. So I aimed, took another breath, and fired, hitting another one. I cocked both guns and fired again, one after the other, cocking after each shot. Six shots down and I ducked back into cover and rolled off to the side.

“Good to go,” Frosty called out, and when back to shooting and calling her shots. “This one’s because I don't like that look on your face!”

“Ach, dammit!” I spat. “I forgot to use any one-liners when I was shooting. Frosty, stop using so many one-liners—it’s making me look bad!”

“Never!” she shouted. “Ten! Nine!”

I was about to offer a witty comeback—“Nein, du wirst aufhören!”, meaning “No, you will stop!”—when I realized that I had a gun, and guns always beat locks. So I took aim, breathed, and shot the handle on the next train car. Frosty jerked her head towards me, and I gestured for the newly unlocked door.

“Unlocked it—now go! I’ll cover you!” I barked, and she nodded. At once, two things happened: I rose to my feet, moving towards the center of the car, and Frosty sprinted for the door.

I stepped out into the open, Caroleans charging me, and only five shots left between my two guns. Easy enough, right? But first, I needed a one-liner. “Hey, want to see a magic trick?” I asked, and fired. The bullet tore through the first man’s throat and and hit the man behind him in the face. “Two for the price of one!” I’m catching up to you, Frosty! As I cocked the one revolver, I fired the other one. The bullet punched through another man’s leg, pretty much tearing his knee in two. “Well, I’ve heard of being disarmed, but this is ridiculous.” Okay, no, that was terrible and you lose one point.

As the dis-legged man fell down, his shattergun went off, hitting some sort of crane-like apparatus above the car. Nothing really came of that, so I shot at one of the Caroleans aiming at me to great effect. That’s when it occurred to me that their tactics of charging was utterly shit and suicidal, but then it also occurred to me that they likely hadn’t even been trained how to fight enemies with guns, just enemies with melee weapons. It was the only logical conclusion. Of course, that one Carolean had called these ones recruits, so mayhap that had something to do therewith.

Two shots left, and I breathed deep, firing at another Carolean. His stomach exploded, whereto I remarked, “Ah, so that’s what you had for lunch.”

Last shot, had to make it count. There, standing behind mild cover, was a Carolean aiming straight at me. But not just any Carolean, it was the Carolean whom I didn’t tie up from earlier—that sonofabitch! And he seemed so honest, too. What was with me and trusting in bad things today? First the witch, then that Carolean, and then probably Frosty. Oh, I’m going to enjoy this, I thought, and fired my revolver at him.

And I missed.

I doubted he would miss; he didn't even flinch as my bullet hit the crane’s support just beside his head, the same one that dis-legged guy had hit. His finger depressed the trigger very sadly before I could turn tail and run.

So, logically, he fired about half a second after the metal crane started to fall, which somehow absorbed his bullet like how a sponge absorbs the sweat, grease, and shame during a fat man’s monthly sponge bath.

“Ha! Random deus-ex-machina to the rescue!” I shouted, turning around and sprinting for the other car as I reloaded my revolvers.

I met up with Frosty as I holstered my reloaded guns, and we raced through the car. How the Caroleans had missed us was still a mystery to me, but they sure as hell hadn’t missed this car. The floor and walls were peppered with bullet holes, and the bulletstorm didn’t end when we entered the new car—as the whirring and whizzing of bullets alone suggested, not to mention all the new holes in the everything.

We got to the door at the end and, surprise surprise, it was locked. No time for a lockpicking, I aimed my revolver thereat and—the door clicked and slid ajar all on its own. There was nobody on the other side, and I didn’t exactly have time to ask why the magical god of doors was now on my side, there was only time to dash for the other door. But I did have to stop and ask just what the hell was going on as I heard the train cars decoupling.

Spinning around and looking down, I saw more of those vein-like metal things. They were retracting from the bullet-ridden car, sliding over the metal coupling parts. Before my very eye, the other car’s coupling thingy seemed to melt away as it squealed, and that entire section of the train quickly moved back from whence I stood.

I looked around, but Frosty was already inside the car. And I heard that weird, quiet, and distant whirring noise from earlier again. Only, instead of a “hmm”-like noise thereafter, a quiet, distant, but nevertheless chill-flesh-inducing feminine voice said simply, “You’re welcome.”

Of course, rather than act scared or anything, I simply sighed and said, “Thank you very much.” I didn’t know to whom I was speaking too, but knowing my luck, I was now haunted. Or maybe the train was. “Are you haunted, train?” No response, and I didn’t just imagine that voice.

Frosty poked her head out from the doorway. “Hey, who ya talkin’ to? Can I speak to them, too? Do they have snack cakes? Because that car I thought had snack cakes didn’t have them, and I’m about to go psycho if I don’t get my sugar fix. It’s kinda like reverse diabetes or whatever. I totally just made it up; that’s how I know it’s true.”

“Hypoglycemia?” I asked.

“The hell is that?”

“Reverse diabetes.”

“What, that’s a real thing?!”

I nodded. “Well, you just made it up; that how I know it’s true.”

“How do I know you’re not making that up?”

“For I am the knight of the gun,” I said softly. “And we knights of the gun tell no lies but for those that defeat our enemies.”

“Right, right, and we’re, like, what? Friends?” she asked, stepping back into the car, I followed her, ducking through the low doorway. She had a much easier time going through low doors, since she was nearly a foot-and-a-half shorter than I.

“In my culture,” I said as we went through the car, checking the boxes for anything useless, but finding only creepy porcelain dolls, “we do not use ‘friend’ as you use it, not at all. The word Freund, in my where, would be better translated as ‘best friend’ rather than ‘friend’, as you understand the terms.”

Nothing more was said on the matter. We went through a number of storage cars, finding nothing of note. A car full of tasteful nudes. Another one full of caged parrots. One car full of live tigers which had been taped—literally duct taped—to every facet of the walls and ceilings. Really boring, uninteresting sights.

Then the jackpot. Of sorts, anyhow. It was a large, empty diner car. As we were searching it, I found an entire cabinet full of snack cakes, and when I called Frosty over, the girl… well… The next thing I knew, she was lying on the floor behind the counter, covered in wrappers and crumbs.

I myself was sitting at the countertop, sipping from a cup of hot tea I’d managed to find and make myself. It was peppermint flavor. By this point, I’d managed to wrap gauze around my forehead whence I’d cut it earlier. I thought that it was good that the train was going so slowly through this snakey city, and it was double-plus-good that this city was so big, otherwise the train would have passed New Pegasus’ railyard, and I wouldn’t have been able to get Lightning Dust the medicine she needed, but at least I’d’ve had a fast new train, so it wouldn’t have been a total loss.

“Hey, ugh,” Frosty said. “Back there, how were you using two guns? And, like, actually hitting things.”

With a sigh, I said it as I understood it. “I learned.” I poured a weird little packet of sugar into my tea as I read the label of a bottle of alcohol I’d found while making the tea. Like in Equestria, there was no list of ingredients or anything of the sort.

“How does one learn to wield two guns at once?”

“Well, I suppose that it’s a bit like trying to wash your balls with a bar of soap,” I said. Frosty sat up, giving me a blank stare. “It’s hard and it hurts, and you have to squeeze your balls in order to hold them steady as you wash, but in the end, it’ll all be worth it—your balls will be all clean. Or, in this case, you’ll be able to accurately wield two revolvers at once.” I sipped my tea, thinking that it tasted rather good.

Frosty’s blank stare continued. “Ya know. I can’t say that I understand the feeling.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” I said, and again sipped from my tea. Who was a fancy man? I was a fancy man.

“Good, so we’re on the same page.”

“But are we on the same book?” I asked, cocking a brow. The action messed with the scab I had on my forehead whence I’d hit it.

Frosty pinched her nose and groaned. Her eyes didn’t change this time, though. “If we’re not on the same book, then how the balls am I here?”

“Because you're not properly washing said balls with a bar of soap?” I offered, and her eyes narrowed.

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“I know,” I replied, holding back a sly smile as I played with the bottle of alcohol. Frosty saw the bottle and made a reaching gesture for it as she frowned. Still wearing the sly smile, I nodded and tossed her the bottle. She caught it, opened it, and took a long pull, giving a large sigh of satisfaction as she finished.

“Ah, were I a younger, more reckless lass, Gunslinger,” she said in a day-dreaming tone, “we could run away together and live happily ever after in an impractically large castle.” I cocked a dubious brow. “Just the princely gunslinger and the pauper neurotic girl. Every little girl’s fantasy.” She laughed mirthlessly, shaking her head.

I crossed my arms. “You know, alcohol doesn’t make you say weird things until a while after you drink it.”

Frosty took another shot, and gave me a weird look. “What? Think about it—’s perfect. You’re badass and rich, and I’m kinda cute, I think. The handsome knight and the crazy girl. Heh. Yeah. Those things go together like… go together like…”

“They go together like toddlers and being left in the bathtub with a peckish bullshark,” I offered, and Frosty fell onto to her back, laughing.

“Couldn’t’a said it better myself.”

“For the record,” I amended, “I’m the toddler in that metaphor.”

She broke out laughing again. I didn’t wait for her to finish as I drank my tea to completion, then poured myself another cup and went back again for more sugar.

“You know, Gunslinger,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye, “I can’t remember the last time I had a good laugh. Although, really, that’s mostly because I can’t remember anything worthwhile lately, but still.” She looked at the bottle of alcohol. “You know, I can’t tell if this bottle is half-empty or half-full.” She glanced at me and smiled. “But I’m starting to think it’s half-full.”

I shrugged. “Whereas I, the intrepid man, do not usually ask that question.” I shook my head. “No, when it usually comes up, I ask why there’s glass of water in my house? And then I ask, why there’s water all over my carpet and ceiling? Why is my kitchen sink on? Who keeps doing this to me and why?”

“What the fuck?” she laughed. I just smiled, shook my head, and drank my tea.

|— ☩ —|

“This the car?” she asked.

I looked down at the map I’d found in the diner. Which is to say, the car literally right behind us. “According to this, there are seven of them before us, since they’re marked as ‘sleeping’ and ‘recreation’ cars. So, seven cars filled with nothing but soldiers.” And to think of how many of these Caroleans managed to pack themselves into that one car near the back of the train… “And past them, several cars labeled for storage, a ‘General’s Car’, an unlabeled car, and lastly three cars labeled as the engines.”

“So. What’re we gonna go?”

My eye fell upon a little ladder on this Carolean car. I flashed Frosty a smile. “We climb up this ladder, crawl across the traintops, and hope really hard that some Caroleans come up to fight us. And before you ask, it’s because traintop battles are awesome and that is a fact and if you think otherwise, you’re a liar and your opinion is wrong.” I took a deep breath. “This is going to be fun,” I said, tightening my hat and fiddling with my… with Dust’s bandana.

Then I went up to the ladder, thought about how werekind were supposed to climb a ladder, then thought that I’d understood it. So I climbed up the ladder and hauled myself onto the traintop.

Up here, the wind was strong, but the train was moving slow enough that I could—“God, my eye!” I screamed. “The dust in my eye from the wind! This was a terrible idea! Shit, ow, why!? Why?! Why does your family betray me, Lightning Dust?!”

I tumbled backwards, flailing for the ladder and only barely preventing myself from falling off the train. Quickly, I scrambled back onto the train proper. As I panted hard, pulling down on my hat as the unthinkable horribly image of me losing it ran through my head again and again, Frosty poked me. I looked up to see her wearing goggles—goggles which looked very dust-proof.

“You know, it’s actually a very terrible idea to just go out onto a train unprotected,” she offered.

“Shut up, just shut your dick-holster,” I growled. “I’m trying to deal here with having just had my dream crushed!”

She dangled another pair of goggles out above me. “So, I guess you don’t want these either, do you?”

“Gib es mir!” I hissed, reached out for the goggles, which she pulled away from me at the last moment. And then she dropped them onto my chest. I nearly rolled off the train trying to catch them. But catch them I did, and I put them onto my face. This time, before I climbed up the later, I removed my hat and put it in my bag.

Frosty whistled. “Huh. You know, I actually didn’t picture you with that kind of hair, color or style.” She shrugged. “For some reason, I expected you to be hiding a huge afro under your hat.”

In no time at all, I was walking across the traintops on hand and knee, since any higher and the wind, no matter how weak, seemed to enjoy trying to knock me off the train. The wind was good at its job.

By some miracle, nothing really happened, and Frosty and I uneventfully made our way over the Caroleans and the box cars which we couldn’t get into and up to the entrance of the the car wherein I presumed the general was. When I mentioned his name, General “Black” Jack Parishioner, Frosty froze in the middle of taking off her goggles.

“Are you well, ma’am?”

“General Black Jack Parishioner…” she muttered. “That names leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Like… I think I know him, but…”

“…you don’t know why?” I finished, and she nodded. By now, my goggles were off, and I waited for Frosty to finally remove hers.

“Ugh, makes me want to strangle something cute and fluffy.”

“Well, if we come across any murderous kitties, I’ll leave you to them,” I replied, pulling out a revolver. “Ready to go in?” I gestured for the door.

“I… yhar, I’m all good. Just, uh.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned. She did that a lot, come to think. “I need an aspirin.”

I tried for the general’s door and found it locked. Sighing, I holstered my revolver and took out the tools I needed to pick the lock—because, by some miracle, it was a kind of lock which I recognized. “Take five, Frosty. I have no idea how long this’ll take.” I didn’t have to tell her twice. And as I attempted to learn how to use hands to pick a lock, I sang a little tune under my breath. Which is to say, I made one up in-between bouts of tuneless humming.

“It was a cold day in some month,

Not one well for some fun-th.

Yea verily, picked I a lock,

For ’twas better than getting punched in the cock.

Yo digo siempre fue bueno…

Uh… pa’ mi, solo más o meno’.

Doch nicht für Sie, Frostige Winde.

Und, Schlüssel, sag ich, ‘Verschwinde!’”

The lock clicked open, and I put my tools away. “Okay, I think we’re all set. Ready?”

“Yhar, I’m good.”

“You say yhar a lot,” I said.

She gave me an odd look, then rolled her eyes. “Olympian accent. We don’t say ‘yeah’, we go ‘yhar’. Don’t ask.”

“Alright, I won’t.”

Revolver out, I burst into the room. “Wait. Nobody’s here.” There was stuff here, but certainly no general. Really, this entire car looked like a super luxury hotel room and then some: king-sized bed, a fully stocked mini kitchen, a poker table, dressers, and the works. I saw a mannequin whereupon rested a Carolean uniform but with a more black-and-red color scheme—black greatcoat, red cuffs and trousers—like a playing card, with only two vertical blue stripes remaining of the original blue of the standard Carolean getup. Actually, now that I looked thereat, this Carolean uniform resembled something akin to the freaky rape baby of a Carolean uniform and the duster I wore.

“Hmm?” Frosty hummed, and I turned to see her poke at a livebox.

A voice of an energetic women came through the livebox. “Heeeellooo, troopers! It’s me again, Bitchin’ Betty—your friendly livebox personality and only part-time government punching bag—come to ask, ‘How you doin’?’ Me? Eh. Could be better; just curled up in the studio/fortified bunker here in the middle of wolverine country with a cup of cocoa and… shit, did I forget to wear pants again? Ugh. Well, I shouldn’t’a slept in late, now should I?” She took a took breath, and finished it with a cheery-cute sigh. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m itchin’ for some tunes. You? I thought so.

“Here’s a fan fave: The Battle Hymn of the Kingdom, as sung by the Third Battalion’s men’s choir!”

The song sounded like church organs playing, then dropped into an orchestra with a strong, decidedly masculine sound. It was a might bit like Die Wacht am Rhein, but it wasn’t really as favorable to me as said song.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the King,

Hell has no demon he can’t overcome,

He’ll make the Fiddler himself turn and run.

Stands for freedom and the people,

He is Elkington—

The Shadow of Death is the one he casts.

And that too is my shadow,

For I am Carolean, protector of the people!”

Frosty shut the livebox off. “I don’t like that song.”

We searched the car, but found not the general. So, we found our way out the other side of the car. And yay, I finally got to unlock a door from the inside, opening up onto… a boring car like that one back with that earlier Carolean firefight. Of course, there were no little walls here, just a straight path outlined with several big boxes and cranes. At the end stood the first black metallic car that made up the three frontmost cars.

Whence I stood, the cards looked sleek and so… utterly unlike the design style of literally everything else. Compared to what I’d seen of this world, it was a downright schizophrenic difference, like the creation of another era. It certainly wasn’t a train style I’d ever seen.

As we finally got thereto, something about the car’s door, sleek and alien, gave me pause. When I found no explanation for my hesitation, I chose to speak something that sounded profound but was pretty much meaningless. Frosty was standing besides me, so I chose to speak to her, not to monolog. “You know, Frosty, according to the first of my people’s two holy books, the Book of Chains, all of existence came to be when the Allfather—God, Adonai, the Father, whatever you wish to call Him—opened the Door,” I said. “A door whence all existence came, where God himself resided, and wherebehind in Heaven he now sits.”

She was silent for a moment, and then said, “You know, not that I’d really know, but I hear that religion is kinda like a penis.”

“Beg pardon?”

“It’s fine to be proud of it and all, but for the Founding Fathers’ sake, don’t go waving it around in my damn face or shoving it down my throat. I mean it.”

“Ah, so you’re a lesbian?” I asked.

She gave me a pointédly flat look. “Well, I’m sorry I have a gag reflex.”

“Isn’t that kind of comment a type a doublespeak for ‘You have a rather sizable set of genitals, kind sir’?”

“Okay, now I think we’re getting off-topic,” she replied. To her credit, she didn’t have any of those silly blushes that females sometimes got whenever anything sex-related came up. Hooray for non-prudish, mayhap sexually liberal females.

I chuckled. “Silly girl, the penis is always on-topic for me!”

“No,” she deadpanned, and I frowned and sighed.

“Okay…” I frowned harder, then went back to my door.

“Make no such movements towards the door,” a gruff, hectoring voice barked from behind . Slowly, I turned to face the voice, but hesitated as I saw Frosty shaking. The man was standing a short distance away, his arms folded, his eyes steely. He wore that uniquely colored Carolean uniform from earlier, but now it was crisscrossed with bandoliers, two revolvers holstered below his arms. Like me, he only had one eye, and a sexy eyepatch over where the other one would’ve been. A part of me wanted to ask him if he wanted to rub eyepatches together, though I couldn’t say why or to what end. His hat was not dissimilar to mine, but whereas I wore The Fool therein, his hat had two cards: the red ace of spades, and the black jack.

“General Black Jack Parishioner, I presume,” I called out.

“You say true,” he said back. “And for the record, Scout Second Class Frosty Winds, the Battle Hymn of the Kingdom is a mighty fine tune.”

Frosty uttered a liquidy grunt, like she were angrily drowning at the hands of a fat kitty in a holiday tree. Yes, hands. “I… I think I just remembered something.” She fell to her knees, clawing at her forehead and eyes, shaking and shivering and sputtered out weird growling noises.

I poked her with a boot and she stopped. Frosty took a deep, deep nasal breath. “He. Must. Die,” she growled so gutturally that I was surprised she didn’t tear her vocal chords to ribbons.

“You know,” General Black Jack Parishioner went on, “she’s a criminal. Ah, by the look in your eye, you didn’t know that. Hmph. Why not tell him your crimes, girl? Oh, what’s that? Have no honor, no backbone, no soul? Tsk. I’m sure she’ll tell you she can’t remember, but Frosty Winds lies. My, does she lie.”

“Shut your dick-holster!” Frosty roared, then clutched at her head as if trying to crush it.

“Hey!” I whined. “That was my line.”

The General smiled. “For one, she’s a terrorist. For another, she’s a murderer. An outlaw. A fugitive of the law. A listed enemy of the state.”

I shrugged. “So? I’m pretty sure that’s what they call me in about ninety-five percent of the places I’ve been. I speak for the people, the people always say, Vive la Revolución.”

“Aye, as if you’d care, Gunslinger, of the extend of her evils, ” he said, shaking his head, “of those dead on her behalf, on great behalf of the father whom I made damn sure to put a bullet between the eyes of.” He smiled. “My dear friend, King Charles Elkington, spoke of you, from where you came, and whom you killed. They call you hero, but we know you to be a monster, Marked of Kane.”

“If you mean my cutie mark, that’s just a normal thing back whence I come,” I said. “Standard issue for all magical talking ponies.” I blinked. “Wait, go back a second. You said that that one song was actually good, which was a rebuttal to Frosty saying she didn’t like it. How the hell did you hear that?”

He took a step back. “Er, well… I was hiding under the bed the whole time you were in my room.”

“What.”

Rubbing the back of his head, he smiled. “I heard you coming, and I wasn’t wearing any pants. Or a shirt. And was just drinking whiskey as I played solitaire. So, I hopped under my bed, figuring you’d go away and let me be, but then you sort of unlocked the door, and I was too far from my guns to do anything.”

“Oh, well. That’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,” I deadpanned, trying not to pay attention to Frosty as she crawled across the floor up to the crates that flanked this car. “It’s not like you were the General or anything who could tell everyone to just go away.”

“Go fuck yourself,” he said calmly.

“Sorry,” I replied, “I don’t really care for masturbating.”

He only glared for me in silence as Frosty played over by the boxes which nobody cared about. Was she trying to climb up them? Silly Frosty, boxes aren’t for climbing; they’re for trapping people you don’t like in tiny claustrophobic places while you poke them endlessly with sticks neither too sharp nor too blunt.

“Now, who amongst us will draw and shoot the other first?” he asked dryly.

“What?”

“You and I, facing off,” he told me. “Eyes on each other’s guns, waiting for the other to make the first move. And then they move, and you see which of us can draw and shoot the fastest. That’s what we’re doing, Gunslinger.”

I nodded, my hand now hovering above my revolver. Our eyes met, both of us eyes steely, our gazes long and hard. He glared at me, and I flashed him a smile. Who amongst us would fire first? I flexed my hand, and he didn’t react. Staring. Slowly getting bored, but this was badass, so it was worth it.

Then, from his side came it—a blur of motion. Quick as greased lightning, I grabbed my right revolver and pulled it out, cocking it in that single motion. General Black Jack Parishioner’s head exploded. I blinked as I saw Frosty standing behind the ex-General, her teeth bared, smoking rifle in her hands.

The General’s brains and skull splattered all against the floor. But before it could fall, Frosty snatched the General’s hat out of the air and tossed it onto her head. “Dismissed,” she spat and broke out panting. She cocked Skybane, inserted a new bullet, and then stumbled over towards me as I watched, frozen, gun still drawn and cocked.

“Get that out of my fucking face,” she hissed, slinging the rifle over her back.

“You stole my kill.” Pointédly, I didn’t de-cock and holster my revolver, but neither did I aim it at her. I just glowered like one of those edgy, angsty heroes that nobody really likes, and she suddenly had a face like a bitch who’s just realized she’s going to meet the back of my pimp hand, followed by death.

“Just-just gimme a moment to explain!” she practically begged. “Guns away, okay?” I did not holster my revolver. “I know it won’t make a damn difference, but I’d like to think that maybe we’ve been through enough that you won’t just shoot me like a dog because the General was right about me, and then how I stole your kill! Just-just—guh, there’s so much that I can’t—ngh…”

She grabbed her face, and when she stopped, her eyes were at once more attentive, intelligent, and diplomatic. “I’m sure you’re familiar with that old saw about history and war, Mister Gunslinger.”

I cocked a brow. “Oh, hold on. I know this from a trivia card game I once played. Something about the never-changing nature that is war, yes?”

Frosty flinched, taking a step back. Normal eyes returned. “What? No, that’s fucking stupid. How’d you think we got guns in the first place? Just shut up and listen to h—me!”

My hand slid off my gun’s trigger as I watched her clutch again her face, but I didn’t put the weapon away. In fact, more than ever, I felt like I should just shoot her, partly to end her madness, and partly because she was a kill-stealing whore.

Her eyes returned to that diplomatic intelligence. Frosty stood as straight and tall as she could, still shorter than I. “No; I was saying that history is written by the victors. There are no losers, only survivors. Without another side of the coin, everything is skewed however way the champions see fit. One man’s freedom fighter becomes the other’s terrorist. Murderer, outlaw, fugitive, all these definitions change in an instant. As for—uh, me, I serve… or served a people scattered by the horrors of war and a king whom no longer exists. My actions under the former Olympian government may or may not be considered as atrocities. Yes, I’ve probably killed countless times—deserving or not—‘for the cause’. No, I don’t regret any of it.

“But that man, that Black Jack Parishioner, was the Butcher of Olympia. When Elkington brought down the immortal city, it was Black Jack and his Caroleans who entered the city fallen, and it was they who butchered its denizens that they would submit to the will of the ‘good king’, so he came to ‘restore law and order’—and they did so without orders from Elkington, too. I remember that now!” She took a breath, facing me off, her eyes filled with a certain spiteful determination that reminded me of the faces of my brothers-in-arms during the Dark Crusade. “What more poetic a way to send off the old butcher than at the hands of an Olympian wielding the holy Skybane?”

As I stared back down at her, she again cringed and blinked hard. Once again, her normal eyes returned. When again she looked up at me, I could see the apprehension in her eyes as she shrank back. “This,” she said slowly, “is the part where you kill me, isn’t it?”

I shook my head and yawned. “I’m sorry, what? I phased out after ‘I was saying’.”

“Wait, really?”

“Well, I could sum everything you said up as ‘blah blah blah, I wanted to kill this guy’.” I shrugged. “Really, your story was nothing special; I’ve heard its like a thousand times. You’ve got to be really original if you want to tell me a sob story explaining your reasons for doing stuff. Like, say, I’d totally listen to you if your reason was, ‘Well, I have to rape them all so brutally because raping them teaches them democracy!’ See, now that’s an original reason. Granted, I’d have to kill you thereafter for such vile behavior, but at least I’d listen to you prattle on thereabout.”

I paused. “Is democracy a word in your language? I’ve actually never heard it used, but I know that’s how it would be—Sprachgefühl, don’t ask—since our word is Demokratie. It’s like how we have Monarchie and you have monarchy, I guess I just figured it’d be the same via back-formation, but now that I think thereof, I’ve never heard anyone but me use it. I’ve heard folkdom, though. Huh.” I de-cocked and holstered my revolver. “Let’s go inside the big, scary train.”

“Wait, you’re not mad at me?” she asked with… what, hope?

“Well, a bit miffed that I didn’t get to kill him—and that you’re wearing his hat now, which I will steal from you while you’re asleep at some point, but it matters in that I’m a whore for shiny, unique objects.” I nodded. “Also, your spiel about… whatever you spoke about got me too bored to be angry. So, there. You now know one of my many one weaknesses: boredom. So, in conclusion, I’m not mad, and I’m not going to shoot you in the face until you have no face.”

She sighed with relief. “Well, that’s good to hear. I’m allergic to bullets anyways.”

“I’m pretty sure they’ve got anti-inflammatory medicine for that. Ask your doctor if it’s right for you. Besides, I can see the hate in your eyes, and I can respect that. That hate for Black Jack Parishioner. Keep hold of that hate. It’s good for you.”

“I… it is?” she asked. “I thought hate was always bad for a body.”

I laughed. “And you’re not incorrect, but when you have nothing left, a seething, burning inferno which you cannot quench may be all that keeps you going. In fact, many thousands of years ago, before great arrogance, pride, and sin destroyed Old Fatherland and lead to the Three Tribes, there was a Mann who distilled the virtues of a warrior into six distinct bullet points. He was Skantarios, crowned as emperor of a once all-powerful but now nigh dead empire surrounded on all sides by heathens. Before his father had couped the old royal family, only the empire’s capital, the so-called Invincible City, still stood there at the edge of forever, as it had since it was founded at the dawn of civilization by Kain himself. A few years later, when the heathens assassinated Skantarios’ father, the empire had won back some of its ancestral land. Through Skantarios’ great and unyielding rage for what they did to his father, the radically fundamental Confessionist faith came into being—which my people still follow, even if we’ve changed it significantly over the millennia. Skantarios never once lost a battle, and he turned a dying empire into the unstoppable powerhouse of the old land.

“He said that so long as you remember the face of your father, these six virtues would keep a warrior strong. These virtues there things like a ‘contempt for death that you never fear it’ and ‘love so strong that you are willing to sacrifice everything for your country and brother soldiers’. But strongest of all, he said, there was hate: because you when you nothing left, hate will keep you strong. It was hate that made him swear an oath of vengeance against the people who killed his father; it was hate that made him defile and profane every one of their holy sites; and it was hate, pure, great, and simple, that made him burn, crucify, and butcher countless until the he had repaid these people countless times over, destroying an entire religion and several major cultures in the process.”

I stopped, then threw my head back and laughed. “Oh God, that sounded preachy. ‘Hurr durr, hate is good for you.’ God, wow. That all sounded more awesome in my head.” I smiled. “You know, I learned all of that philosophic whatnot from a book I read as a little boy? Yeah, Ich Bin Skantarios, which was essentially the journal of the old emperor that were somehow re-discovered and then printed in the modern age as a history/philosophy book.” I put a hand on Frosty’s left shoulder because the hand had nowhere to go. “I found the book and read it. So, imagine being just a little kid and reading about how Skantarios conquered a rich and powerful city, the holiest site to the religion of the great many peoples he’d been fighting all his life, and reading how he ordered all the males exterminated, the women to be raped and then, along with their children, sold into slavery, and then destroyed every last symbol of that great religion.”

“God,” I said, “It’s no wonder why I’m screwed up. That was what I read when I could barely speak. Skantarios pretty much invented the concept of Genozids—uh, there’s another word I’ve never heard anyone use, so, uh… Genocide? That’s how the -zid ending goes, cide, and geno- for people. So, genocide would essentially refer to brutal acts aimed at destroying a particular racial, religious, ethnic, or national group.” I shrugged. “Actually, I think I read somewhere that somebody had coined the term Genozid during a famous book comparing the wars of Skantarios to those of King Viktor. Ah, and yet we Teutsche count both of them amongst history’s greatest heroes.” I clapped my hands together. “Now then! To the door and onto the terror train proper!”

Before I went for the door, I looked down. The part which connected the black cars to this car was covered in those fleshy-metallic vein-like things. “Well, this is a good sign,” I said, and went for the door. It slid open for us both. “And this isn’t proof that the train will rape us thirty-seven ways till Sunday.”

We stepped inside, and I instantly felt cold air. This interior was chilly, and I took nothing but comfort in that feeling. Frosty rubbed her arms, and I smiled and said, “What, don’t like the cold? I love it when it’s frosty.”

I felt her poke my shoulder, and when I turned around, I got a face full of sprayed water. As I shouted something unintelligible, Frosty chided sharply, “Bad gunslinger, bad!”

As I soon learned, Frosty always kept a spray bottle of water on hand for the sole purpose of spraying anyone in the face who dared make a pun off her name. Once we’d sorted that whole thing out—which may or may not have involved me nearly or actually punching her in the eye, which I had to remedy with many apologies, excuses, a healing potion, and a few lines explaining that I hit her because my father never loved me but I always tried to earn his love and yada yada yada—I looked around this… sleek, white car. How odd that this was its color from within.

Everything here was just… so medically sterile, that kind of sterile and clean that basically means one thing: death. Or a really over-eager cleaning lady, but mostly death. There were buttons and diodes and panels and machines the likes whereof I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The more I looked at it, the more my right arm—C’s arm—itched. When I clasped my left hand over the arm, I could feel tendrils squeezing my organs. The messages was clear: “Back off.” And I did.

The one thing in this car that I could understand were the two little rooms on opposite sides of the car. A stick-like red figure and a stick-like but with a skirt green figure. Bathrooms, for either set of genitals. Ahh, to long for the days when crazy laws mandate the need for a third type of bathroom: “Gender Undetermined.” Not for hermaphrodites—they were still on their own—but for those weird parents who wanted to let their kids decide which gender they wanted to be. As if puberty wasn’t enough stress for a growing girl/boy/gender undetermined!

We went into the next car, and I thought it odd that it was directly connected to the next car, no need to go outside. Same clear color scheme as the last car, only the contents were different. Two cozy beds, a weird sort of kitchen, and a sofa set up before some kind of weird flat black panel. When I touched the panel, I got a static shock. Some sort of living-space car? There were a number of other things, but I didn’t know what they were in the slightest, so I moved past them.

When I stepped into the engine car, the door shut and locked behind me. I spun around and tried to force the door open, only for a smooth feminine voice to croon, “Aw, are you trying to leave me?”

I took a breath and slowly turned around. “Why am I not surprised?” I asked myself. Frosty, I could hear, was pounding on the door from the other side. The room was full of more and more devices which I couldn’t even begin to understand. I had the distinct feeling of being like a pigeon who’s just been eaten live by a pelican and was now being drowned with stomach acids. The one thing I really understood was the black leather chair at the front of the car, which was resting just before a large panel covered with buttons and… things. Just things.

“Oh, because you are jaded,” the voice said again. There was something in that voice that just irked me, like… like the voice sounded vaguely condescending, almost like she was speaking slowly, as if to a retard. It just had the air thereto. “But jaded is fine. I like jaded.”

I crossed my arms. “Are you the one who decoupled that other part of the train for me?”

“Yes, yes I am, Gunslinger—and before you ask, I know why you’re here and your title because I’ve been watching you since you first boarded me. You made an interesting show with that squirrel, and all the bloodshed you’ve caused since arriving… Hmm, it’s been the most fun I’ve had in a very long time, Gunslinger.”

I glanced around, everything clicking in me at once. “You are the train, and those… vein-like things are a part of you?”

“Correct, Gunslinger. King Elkington found me and my lonely two cars deep within Mount Solamaw. My makers and programmers left me there before… well, before they all decided to find out what happened when they pressed the big red buttons, so to speak.” The train laughed in a delightful little way that made me want to punch Cards—well, made me want to punch someone in general, but the first person I’d punch in my mind ended up being Cards. “I allowed him into my front car, we had a chat, and I agreed to help him out here and there in exchange for him finally letting me roll once more. And, well, what can I say? It’d been so long since a man entered me, and I am so weak to suggestion during pillow talk.”

I grunted and walked about the train. “So, I presume you’re going to kill me, then? Wait, no—just like Elkington did after he taught me the bad touch, you want me to do something for you, right? What is it? Scrub your wheels? Teach you to dance? Solve a riddle?” I poked at a metal pole I found just lying in the corner of the train. It was all rust and disintegrated when I tried to pick it up.

Again, she laughed in that almost condescending way. “What, with my superior artificial brain? I might be insane, but I’m not crazy. I understand your plight: I am nothing but a train, and so I assume that you don’t like me. People don’t often take kindly to sentient talking trains, in my experience. And they rarely talk to me. The best I could do was extend parts of my body onto the rest of the train, take over parts thereof, and watch and observe the people.” Her voice suddenly sounded like she was speaking the rough gritted teeth as the train said, “I need and crave stimulation, Gunslinger. It was how my makers designed and programmed me.”

I couldn’t really find anything to really do in this train. I walked up to the chair at the front of the train and sat down. It was actually really cozy, and it even leaned back! I could easily just fall asleep in this thing. “So, just who are you?”

A big black panel flickered before me, and a red wave of energy pulsed horizontal through it as the train spoke. “Why, I was made by the Banded Folkdoms of Marksland, as the words would be spoken in the modern tongue, composed of fifty folkdoms and a bound shire whence its leaders ruled, all of which was founded by the Founding Fathers which the people one worship here. The vulgate would hight that ancient, mythical nation as the Union, though. They absolved me of responsibly when they all found found new positions in Fiddler’s Green. But whence I come is neither here nor there, wouldn’t you say? What is here and perhaps there is what I want of you.”

I sighed, shrugging. “I’m going to assume it’s going to screw Frosty over in some way, right? Why else would you have locked her out.”

That red line of energy formed a smile-like shape for just a moment. “You are a sharp one, Gunslinger. So, here’s my deal: I believe you better than any other can keep me stimulated and entertained, so I offer unto you my mastery. I will submit to you as master and follow your orders, offering my sage, ancient advice and assistance on your quest as you take and use me as you will. Plus, I will make sure all my medicines and food get to New Pegasus, cutting off those Carolean cars so that they can’t bother us.”

“You neglect to mention my end of the bargain,” I groused.

“Mmm… I want you to betray Frosty for my amusement. No other reason on my part than for my amusement.” Something behind me clacked, and when I looked thereat, I saw a panel in the floor open, exposing a mess of little wires, as they were called, and other metallic nastiness. There was enough room to stick a leg therein. “I don’t care how, but you will put her arm into that panel, and then I will cut it off and eat it, purely because you doing this to your companion would be hilarious.”

I leaned back in my chair, cocking a brow. “So, let me get this straight: you want me to betray this girl purely for your amusement, and in exchange you’ll basically make yourself my property?”

“In the hopes that you will lead me to all sorts of stimulation and entertainment, yes. For me, it’s either that or go insane…-er.”

It was an interesting, but overall ludicrous thought. Cut off a girl’s arm for something like this? No way. That wasn’t what I did. “Is there any way to acquire your assistance without harming Frosty?”

“There is not, Gunslinger,” she replied smoothly. “And that means that, no, there is no way to render unto New Pegasus all of these supplies in order to save your friend without harming Frosty.”

Sighing hard, I leaned back. It had been worth asking. How long had I know Frosty? Mayhap an hour or two, tops. And Lightning Dust? Nigh a week at best, and I had a sort of like for that girl back home. Blood is thicker than water, I’d told her: he whom I shed blood with is more important that he whom I shared the water of the womb. And Frosty had shed blood alongside me, likely more blood than Lightning Dust. Heck, Frosty was a killer, and Dust was not. Except… except that the Lightning Dust of this world was willing to kill, and she had directly saved my life from the Black Man.

Still, both had been steadfast enough companions with a barrel of their own troubles. And sacrificing Frosty’s flesh to the terror train would let me save Dust and then unload all the rest of the food and medical junk onto the town.

“Of course,” the train chimed in sweet, “were you to give me your own right arm, I could likewise abrogate any locks keeping you from power and submit to you as master. And before you ask, it’s because I know that your right arm isn’t werekind. I scanned it when you entered me.” A part of me wondered if that was why my arm had itched earlier. “You are part skinwalker.”

In a flash, the red bar of energy on the black panel before me twisted and morphed until it showed two wireframe forms that slowly gained bone and muscle and flesh until I could recognize them both: one was of the werekind me, the other was of C as he looked in my world. I blinked at the comparison.

I had assumed that these werekindred were skinwalkers based on how they looked, but in a side-by-side comparison, C was nothing at all like a werekind. The structure of his head was all… wrong, eyes too small and murderous, mouth too wide, teeth too sharp. And side-by-side, all of his dimensions were just off, wrong lengths and angles, like he were once a werekind who had been smashed and crushed partially at some point, ignoring his taller, bulkier nature plus his longer and clawed fingers. And as I could see, he didn’t have feet anything at all like that of a werekindred. Of course, werekindred also actually had hair and weren’t covered with so many, many, many tattoos.

Sure, C had the same general shape as a werekind, but I had been mistaken in likening them to one another. To say that they were anything alike was akin to saying that a pony and a wolf were the same thing because they both walked on four legs and generally didn’t answer to the name “Chorwacks Jigglebob”.

C’s arm felt restless as I stared at the image. And just like that, the side-by-side comparison was gone. Now there was only that red line which moved as the terror train spoke. “What shall it be, Gunslinger?”

In the end, the matter came down to whose life I valued more. While I knew that were I to sacrifice my arm, Frosty would be fine, and Dust would live, and I’d get everything I needed from this little excursion. But would I be okay? I could feel C’s arm and all its roots and tendrils tightening around my organs as I contemplated it. For every wound, it gets a new tattoo—this much I had figured, and so too had I come to understand that it got closer to killing me with every passing wound. And with these throughbright burns, wherefor I had bandaged entirely my arms, how long did I have? Could I risk even trying to figure out?

Lighting Dust was important to me in her own way. Frosty Winds was important to me in her own way. And me? Well, wasn’t I the hero? The only one in this dark world willing to stand up for the little guy? I was the big and strong one who aided and protected the weak. I had earned my place in this world… even if I was a child-killing monster for doing it…And as a person… as a person, Frosty Winds just was fundamentally worth less than me. I counted Lightning Dust as a person, and Frosty… well, she I could more easily call a thing. And a thing could be used and thrown away with as its owner saw fit.

So I made my choice.

“You have a deal,” I replied without any hesitation. If this is what it took to save Lighting Dust, then I would damn Frosty. I owed Dust that much for saving my life from the Black Man, and then for the help she provided me in originally defeated the Devil’s Backbone. “Now, do you have a name?”

The train laughed like a banshee. “Yes, and though I admire the title you gave me—what was it? Terror train? I must say to you, my name is Jayne.”

Far behind me, the door opened, and Frosty burst in. “Thank the Fathers you’re alright! I did not want to be left alone on a spooky train without someone who people’ll shoot at first!”

I got out of the chair and stretched. “Yeah, I think I stepped on a booby trapped floor plate or something.” I gestured a finger to that open hole in the floor. “Hey, I noticed that there’s this little thing in that hole I need to be activated to get this trained unlocked.”

“Uh-huh,” she hummed.

“Problem is, when I tried it, it turned out that I had to tickle the thingy inside there as I pulled a lever up here at the…” I glanced behind me to the frontmost edge of Jayne the terror train. No, wait. Pain needed to be put in there for extra rhymes. Jayne the Pain Train of Terror. “…at the control panel. Do you think you could get on the floor, stick your arm in there, and search around for a little clicky thingy?”

It occurred to me just how easily that whole story manifested itself from my lips. I was sacrificing a part of her vital body without her knowledge because I knew she’d never agree, knowing I just wasn’t brave enough to do it myself for fear of actual repercussions. I watched her roll up her left sleeve, and she got down on the floor. I wondered how uncomfortable breasts must have been to lay upon like that. And I watched her stick her arm into the hole, sticking out part of her tongue as she reached around. She wasn’t looking anywhere in my direction.

I turned around to Jayne’s black panel, which a little voice inside me told me think of as “screen” or as a “monitor”, a voice that came from C’s arm, the same voice that named me the parts of my revolvers back in Elkington’s office. The number on the screen was ten. Then it was nine. And eight. I realized that it was a countdown to when Jayne the Pain Train was going to eat Frosty’s arm. And with his in mind, my heart beat calmly, as if I were relaxing rather than sacrificing a girl who’d put her trust into me as her knight in dusty armor.

Extending and contracting fingers, I counted down alongside Jayne in silence, thinking and calculating. At the last second, when I knew it was too late to react, I shouted, “Frosty, get out of there!” And before the sentence was over, Frosty was screaming.

I ran over to her and slid onto the ground next to her. “Frosty! Shit! Frosty?” I yelled, then quickly glanced towards Jayne’s monitor and nodded solemnly.

“It’s eating my fingers!” she wailed, and I could hear it. Mechanical noises, the sound of flesh being rendered, of bones be ground to dust… all for Lighting Dust. Frosty screamed with more horror and agony as I heard the sound of sizzling meat followed by wisp of steam. That was what would stop her from bleeding to death, I thought darkly.

She howled and wailed until I was sure her throat would tear itself to ribbons. “My knuckles! It’s eating my fucking knuckles!” More gears, more tearing, more grinding, crushing bones, and another wisp of steam.

“Hold on, Frosty! Just hold on!” I ordered, digging through my bags. “This is all my fault! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Sometime the best way to camouflage the simple truth was to hide it amongst logical lies. Out from my bags I pulled out a syringe of chemicals I’d bought before I’d left Blackgard earlier. One of many drugs I’d purchased therefrom this day. I injected Frosty with the drug, just a painkiller, but I had no idea how long it’d take for the drug to set in. Still, as I tossed the needle away, I felt that I’d at least helped.

The sounds of tearing and grinding only got louder. I could just picture it as I watched her with steely eyes: it was like when you try find a tiny plant’s roots and decide to pull on them, and when you watch as the roots, covered in dirt, spring up from the ground as you pull and pull up more of them until they finally snap. Only in my head, instead of dirt and roots, it was flesh and veins.

I reached for and clasped Frosty’s free hand, and she grabbed mine back and squeezed hard, her nails digging into my hand and drawing blood. So much blood. But I didn’t really feel it. If anything, I took a modicum of pleasure in the pain. It was what I deserved, wasn’t it? But this was the price for saving Lighting Dust and helping New Pegasus and thus myself.

The painkillers never helped out.

With a featureless face, I watched on and tried to comfort her as Jayne ate and ground her arm. I watched her tear-strewn face as she finally broke her voice and could scream no longer. She looked up at me, and I kept-eye contact with her as she simply broke down into sobbing pathetically. It was all Frosty must have had left. And still her nails dug into my hand so deep that I was sure she could tear my palm straight off, but I didn’t care.

Her green eyes bathed themselves in a sea of red and tears as she cried. My attempts to comfort her, I was sure, fell on deaf ears. From this angle, I could see part of her arm, and how the floor had seemingly crushed it in a vice. It would have been more merciful to have just hacked her arm off at the shoulder, but I wouldn’t dare do that. Even if it saved her endless suffering, it might void my contract with Jayne. And Jayne’s contract was more important to me than Frosty Winds.

So Frosty’s shrieking turned into pathetic mewling, whimpering, sobbing. It was almost childish in a way. Her sobs seemingly weren’t from the pain anymore; they were from the sheer horror of getting to slowly feel as her life became forever ruined, and from the fear of having to live the rest of her life as a one-armed cripple, that creeping horror wherein she realized that life as she knew it was over. She would never again be able to wield a shattergun, or really any other kind of gun. As a warrior she was nigh useless. Everything that she had dedicated her life to, and would have gladly continued, was now impossible. All of that mixed with the sounds of a little girl bawling her eyes out for fear of the imaginary monsters in her closet because she had no one who could comfort her and say there were no such things as monsters.

And it was all. My. Fault.

A sudden thought crossed my mind. In a weird way, because of all her suffering, Frosty had just become the Cards of this adventure. Imagine that.

Slowly, as Jayne ground what must have been Frosty’s upper arm into so much powder and gore—I could dwell from the more violent gnashing and cracking and grinding noises—the light faded from Frosty’s green eyes. It did not fade entirely, only dulled considerably.

“H-hey, Gunslinger,” I hear her whimper.

“Yes, Frosty?” I asked, unsure if the concern in my voice was affected or not, but I liked to think it was genuine.

“I… th-thanks,” she moaned. “Thanks for trying. Thanks for… for being there…”

I bit my lip. All my fault, and she was thanking me for being trying to help her, for being there! It was utter madness at its finest. I would pay for this transgression when I reached the end of my days, when for my sins I would be barred from Heaven and Walhalla. When that day came, I could have no cause to complain. I needed only look into Frosty’s eyes as she thanked me to know why I was going to burn in the darkest depth of the Inferno for all eternity. I would be locked inside the Wheel of Time therein, and forced to make every mistake I ever made again and again and again, unable to learn from my mistakes, until all of my sins forced me into a guilt greater than a mortal ought know. But in the Wheel of Time, one can never fix their errs, and can only remake them and new ones until all the shame and guilt destroys you. For the Road of the Wheel can only end one way: thy flesh consumed.

I would have all eternity to dwell upon this mistake, this sin, but today was not the start of that eternity. I reached out a hand, ran it through Frosty’s snow white hair with that odd thunderbolt pattern of arctic blue. “Hey, hey, Frosty. It’ll all be okay. It’ll all be okay.”

She laughed weakly. “You lying piece of shit,” she said with good humor, honest to the Allfather good humor, “I’m fucked raw, and you know it. Still, I killed Black Jack Parishioner and avenged Daddy, although I am going to die, so… I’d say, overall… today was a very good day.”

“You shan’t die, Frosty Winds,” I insisted sounding about as confident as a small seal pup sounded when he was going up against an angry werekind with a club.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed, and coughed. “Live as some one-armed freak? It’s the end of the line; fucking kill me, please.”

I wanted to ask, “Is that true? Is that what you want?” and then offer her my gun, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Frosty was still in Jayne’s clutches, and until Jayne was satisfied, Frosty was hers. I would do no such thing that could threaten the pact I’d made with the terror train. Instead, I replied simply, “I cry your pardon, Frosty, for I could not kill you. As the empath Felicitat once told me, I was the ‘really bad man’, but I am not so heartless… or mayhap I am too cowardly… as to kill you.”

Again, I ran a hand through her hair. “You’ll be fine, Frosty. It’ll all be fine.” It was a lie. Right now, things were so un-fine that you could coat sandpaper therewith and then use it to shave off a goat’s face.

She snickered. “Hey, Gunslinger.”

“Yes, Frosty Winds?”

“I-if I survive, then I’ll see ya tomorrow. Heh…yeah… I’ll see ya tomorrow. Like that’ll ever come.” She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. I waited for a moment before I declared anything, and suddenly her body seized up in an attack. She choked and spasmed and foamed at the mouth and she thrashed and flailed against the floor, her nails digging deeper and deeper into my hand, for I hadn’t dared let go of her.

She slammed her forehead into the floor as she flailed around. Then, with bleeding forehead, she let out a yelping, gurgling noise. Still shaking alternatively like being in hypothermia and having an attack, she looked up her, her green… no… her yellow eyes glaring up into me. That was wrong. This was wrong. This wasn’t—

“Gunslinger,” she crooned in raspy voice, and the shaking stopped.

Then were was a sound like the crackling and roping of a fallen tree, if that tree were not of bark but of flesh, bone, and muscle as Frosty forced herself upwards, grunting and growling like a mad beast. I watched as her arm, still in Jayne’s clutches, just splinted and tore with wet, meaty sounds. And she wouldn’t let go of my hand. With a final crushing, grinding noise and a hiss of steam, Frosty suddenly flung to her feet, her arm splatting me with blood, fresh and hot.

“Frosty?” I asked, staring down at the woman, her burning yellow eyes leering up at me with an emotion that weren’t quite hate but felt like it. Then she looked to her arm.

“Huh,” she said in a hazy tone. “I’ve been disarmed.” She opened her mouth and screamed out a raspy, horrid coughing noise. Without thinking, I pulled out a healing tonic I’d bought from Blackgard, popped the cap off, and doused her bleeding wound therewith. Frosty swore and shrieked at me, begging me to stop as her bloody arm foamed, but I refused. Suddenly, with her free arm she clawed at the potion, sending the bottle crashing to the ground.

Growling and panting, baring her teeth like a wild animal, she looked up at me. I took a step back. “What the hell is with your eyes?”

Somewhere from behind me, I heard Jayne laugh quietly.

“The hell is with your eye?” she counted in a barking, hectoring voice. “When you laugh, your fucking eye doesn’t. It just doesn’t laugh! You’re a liar, Gunslinger. A liar!” She stomped towards me, blood still leaking from the nub that once was her arm.

“Be thou mad, woman?!” I shouted. “Walk not, for you need to survive, and I needn’t any more blood on my hands this day, metaphorically or literally.”

“It’s okay,” she croaked, staggering towards me as I walked backwards. “I’ll just lick the blood of ya myself, hot stuff.” She giggled like mad. “But first, I’m going to rip out and eat that lying eye of yours!”

She made to lunge, then just collapsed to the ground, twitching and twitching and twitching yet more.

“My, my!” Jayne laughed. “That was the single most fun I’ve had in all my life!”

I turned to face Jayne’s monitor. “Be that so?”

“Why, yes it was! On the honor of my makers and all of my mechanical prowess, I, Jayne the… the Terror Train swear my life unto thee, Gunslinger. I am thine to command.”

I grunted. “Jayne, get rid of those Carolean cars, and take us to New Pegasus.”

“Aye-aye, captain!” she said in that nigh but not quite condescending voice of hers. Had she a neck, I would have wanted to wrap my fingers around it and strangle her. She… and I… deserved as much now.

Sighing, I looked down at Frosty. Her eyes were closed, and she was asleep. Blood rapidly clotted itself in her stump of an arm. I had saved Lightning Dust at the cost of Frosty’s life as she knew it, and the fact that Frosty was still alive only made my sin all the more horrible, all the more unforgivable. As I looked at her, I knew that my time was soon. And though the time therefor would come soon enough to me, today, it had been her flesh consumed.

Author's Note

Footnote: 50% to next level

Companion Perk Added: Stay Frosty — Don’t say this to her. Everyone’s thought of it before; you’re not clever for using it. Plus, she will use her spray bottle on your face if you do! With Frosty Winds in your party, you feel like you’re more on your toes, like you can react more quickly. Which you can. Because Frosty provides +1 Agility

Companion Perk Lost (because you kinda did purposefully put her arm into, like, a meat grinder or something): Stay Frosty — But hey! On the plus side, now you can make all the Frosty puns you want, and no one will spray water in your face like the filthy dog you are, you monsterous clusterfuck of cunt.

Special thanks this chapter go to my new friend, The Bobulator, wherefrom I got Frosty Winds here, and with whom I wrote this chapter, so many of Frosty’s actions (though far from all) were writ by him and me together, not just by me as usual. Frosty is from the story Fallout Equestria: Memories, wherein she is the narrator.

Chapter quote is from Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time. The context is from when Princess Mary is speaking with Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, who is the narrator and an utter sociopath. Princess Mary, with horror, looks upon Pechorin and tells him about how she sees him for the monster he is. And Pechorin asks if she thinks he looks like a murder, whereto she replies, “Worse.” I felt it fitting for this chapter, vecause we’re only getting darker from hereon in. It will get blacker and blacker, for it is always darkest ’fore the dawn.

Jericho did horrible this chapter, and neither he nor I are willing to think otherwise thereof. And, once again, I apologize for such long chapters. They keep getting chapter cancer. I’m just trying to get to the end of the anthro arc, because I want my ponies back. I had to cut a lot to make sure I could have ponies quicker.

Other than that, shout out this chapter to Philobrony and this song he composed about chapters 5 and 6 of Jericho. Give it a listen! Team Jericho loves its awesome fans and the things they make for us! In the words of someone of Team Jericho, “Must have moar fanwork, moar fanart!” And then they exploded into a cloud of indescribable misery and woe that swept across the land like a plague, bringing death, destruction, and bad lottery numbers to countless millions.