Advent of Victory

I looked back at Gale as I gently pushed myself away from her. She was sleeping soundly with her wings and hooves still wrapped around me, which caused a small smile to grace my lips. Ever so carefully, I set her down on the ground, and did my best not to wake her up as I stood up. I looked back towards the horizon and noted that the sun would take a few more minutes to come into view.

The fire was nothing more than embers, and a few wisps of smoke continued to snake through the air above the hearth. The grass below my paws was chill with morning dew as I trudged through it with only small crunching sounds to mark my exit. When I reached the cart where my belongings were stashed I noticed that Deciduous was still curled up in the back of the cart sleeping soundly.

Silent as a cat, I moved around him and I walked away and grabbed our supplies that I had left spread out in the grass. I set the items in the back of the cart next to my slumbering companion and quickly walked away. I took the dagger with me since I wanted to see what I could barter it for.

Looking up I was unable to spot any clouds overhead, which dampened my mood somewhat, but I quickly renewed my enthusiasm at greeting the new day. I walked back to the center of camp and saw many ponies sluggishly moving around in the early morning light. I guessed that they preferred to move from dawn to dusk in order to cover as much ground as possible. I also heard Deciduous begin to stir behind me as I walked over to the pony that had hired us for this small journey.

“Hello,” I greeted as I approached her. She slowly looked up from the bedroll she was rolling up.

“Hello yourself,” she replied with a friendly smile.

“Sorry if I came off a bit mean yesterday. It has just been a stressful couple of days, and I was feeling a bit worn out. Let’s start over again shall we. Hello my name is Vixen and it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I offered her my paw, which she eagerly took.

“Think nothing of it. Name’s Copper Bit by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Copper. Now I couldn’t help but notice that this little caravan is made up of traders.”

“Naturally.”

“With that in mind I was hoping to purchase some necessities from you fine folk.” I could be nice when I wanted, or when I was trying to coerce someone.

“What are you looking for?” She inclined her head.

“If it wouldn’t be any more trouble could I see about purchasing a set of saddlebags?”

“Well I think we may have something for you if you follow me this way.” After motioning with a hoof she started walking to the only cart that didn't have a pony sleeping in it, and I quickly followed. I could see before we even got there that the cart had almost twice as many boxes as the others.

Copper Bit jumped into the back of the cart, and began to go through the various boxes. It took a moment before I saw her head pop up over the crates. “We have several different high saddlebags that we picked up from a caravan coming from the Zebra Isles. What color would you prefer?”

“Well, What other colors do you have?”

“Just name it, we have just about everything,” she replied as she went back to looking through the boxes.

I thought a moment before replying. “Do you have anything in white?”

“Sure we do.” I heard her pry off a lid and rustle through another bin before tossing a pair of saddlebags to the back of the cart. The saddlebags were a very pearly white with what looked to be ivory buckles. The actual bags seemed to be made out of some faux leather and had Celestia’s cutie mark emblazoned on them.

“That will be fifty bits,” Copper Bit informed me before I could get them a few inches off the cart.

I immediately turned and began to scan camp until my eyes landed on a sleepy earth pony. “Deciduous!” I called.

Slowly, he began to pad over to where we stood and looked up at me with weary eyes. “What?”

“Haggle with the kind salespony won't you?” Before he could reply I was already walking away from the two, and to the cart where our belongings were. The last time I had tried to haggle with that particular mare I was pretty sure that I had been ripped off, and I wasn’t about to let her do it again. Deciduous had a much better chance of getting a good deal since he actually had an idea of how much currency was worth here.

I looked once more to the horizon to see the light starting to spread in the sky, and figured that I had a few more minutes before the first rays of the sun would strike me. I started to buckle my new saddlebags into place to see if they would need any adjustments to fit, and luckily they fit like a glove. I opened the bag that I had looted from Raq and to put everything into my new shiny saddlebags. Once I had finished I stopped for a moment to look back at myself.

The saddlebags somehow managed to hold everything that I had in the bag I was carrying around previously including the bag itself. The weight of the various gems I was carrying didn’t seem to affect me in the least so after making sure that everything was snug, and in its own place I took off once more to where I had left me green companion.

Reveling in the fact that I was now clean and had a shiny new pair of saddlebags I hurriedly padded over to Copper and Deciduous who it appeared had just finished their argument over bits. “So what do I owe you?” I asked when I was finally standing before the two.

“Twenty-five bits,” they said in unison, and I had to stop myself from giggling. I really didn’t want to lose any more man points for giggling. I felt around in my saddlebags for a moment for the bits, and after a minute was able to locate them somehow. There was so much stuff in my bag that it was going to take me forever to look through it from now on.

”Now that my buying is done would you happen to be in the buying market for rare items?” I didn’t actually know if the knife I had was rare, but it looked pretty expensive to me.

“Depends on what it is honestly,” Copper replied shrugging.

Once again it took me a moment to locate the dagger that was buried under all of my random stuff. Eventually, I pulled out the dagger and showed it to her, but I couldn’t really judge her reaction. At first she seemed shocked that I was brandishing a weapon, but the fear quickly passed and gave way to curiosity. She motioned for me to pass the dagger to her and I did gladly.

“This is really impressive,” she told me as she examined it closely.

“How impressive exactly?”

“It is expertly made, and would fetch a great sum to a collector. I myself am not a collector of weapons so you won't be getting its full worth from me.” It was amazing that she was so honest.

“Well how much will you give me for it?”

She continued to study it for a long moment before answering. “I can go as high as five hundred bits for this particular item. Like I said you can probably get a better deal from a collector.” She tried handing the dagger back to me, but I waved her off.

“You are a gem trader though aren’t you?” I said. I needed to unload all of these gems that I had hidden away in my saddlebags.

“Why do you have any to trade?” That seemed to perk her interest.

“As a matter of fact I-“ I was cut off by Deciduous putting his hoof in my mouth. I know that it is really funny in the show and all, but it tastes terrible. He was very fortunate that I didn’t dislike him or I would have bitten down, hard.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” It wasn’t so much a question as a demand, and he was quickly walking away to somewhere more secluded.

He walked to the edge of the clearing near the tree I had been practicing on the night before. I wasn’t about to just let him get away with being so bossy so I walked over to where he was waiting ready to give him a piece of my mind. Unfortunately, he cut me off once again before I could get a word in edgewise. “What are you trying to do?”

“I am trying to unload all of these gems we got of course,” I replied motioning to the saddlebags I was now wearing. I had almost forgotten that I had nabbed the gems before he had the chance to get a good look at them. I opened the bag and allowed him to take a good long look at the gems inside. If his face was anything to do by I had a lot of bits worth of gems with me.

“You got all of these from the diamond dogs?” he asked, practically drooling.

“Yea, why?”

“There has to be eight thousand bits worth of gems in these bags.” I swatted away his hoof that was reaching for the gems expectantly.

“Is that a lot?” I still didn’t really have a handle on how much a bit was.

“Is that a lot!” he exclaimed, “You could buy a house with that much.” Oh finally a frame of reference. Where I came from the housing market was actually doing pretty well, and the average two story ran around 210,000 dollars. 210,000 divided by 8,000 is 26 ¼ meaning that it takes 26.25 bits to make a dollar. Give or take a lot of variables that I hadn’t included, but this was a rough estimate. Wait, that means I bought a pair of saddlebags for two dollars? Yea, all of that calculation was for absolutely nothing.

Well now I knew that I had a ton of equity just sitting in my saddlebags and nothing to do with it. The smart thing would have probably been to wait until we arrived at town shop around a bit and find the best dealer to trade with. The fast and easy thing would have been to go ahead and sell these and the dagger to Copper Bit for whatever she was able to get me. I am American, which do you think I went with?

I grabbed Deciduous’ bag that he still had for some reason and poured all of the gems into them before shoving it back to him. “Take these and get us a really good deal on them. I am trusting you with a big responsibility here Deci, so don’t let me down.”

His face lit up as he nodded eagerly and returned to the mare that was still holding the dagger and waiting patiently for our little sidebar to finish. Deciduous didn’t waste any time in negotiating and the conversation actually became quite heated more than once, but in the end they settled on what seemed to be a fair price. Copper Bit agreed to give us 7,000 bits for the dagger and the gems, and even threw in some basic camping supplies for us since we didn’t really have any aside the flint I got off of Raq.

As we were walking back to the cart where I had planned to take a very long and peaceful nap after being up all night a thought struck me. “Hey Deci, where did you learn to haggle so well?” I asked.

“My dad owns a lumber company,” he replied after several moments, “he taught me all about negotiating prices and getting the best deal possible.”

As I climbed into the back of the cart I thought over what he had said; that was the first time Deciduous had ever really talked about himself. I had still to share anything real with him about my past, but I was probably going to put all of that off indefinitely. We were going to be splitting up in not too long anyways.

The day was blissfully uneventful, and I managed to sleep through most of it. We were still trudging along slowly towards our far off destination that we had no sight of, but the road ahead of the ponies pulling the carts was smooth enough to allow the wooden wheels of the carts traction, and didn’t jostle those riding in them too much. I woke up sometime around late afternoon to find that the cart I was sleeping in was inhabited by another pony.

Sometime during the day a yellow pegasus mare had curled up in the back of the cart, and was taking a nap. I sat up out of my small fort of boxes that I had used to block any of the sun’s rays that would have would have kept me up if they had been shining in my face the whole time and looked around. As opposed to the landscape we had been traveling through this morning, the scenery was much more lively.

Rolling grasslands filled the landscape as far as the eye could see, and with my new eyes that was pretty far. Several groups of small birch trees dotted the ground every couple of hundred feet, and swayed slightly in the nice afternoon breeze. In the distance, nearly a mile away, I could see a couple of large cats lounging under the shade of a tree. Who had known that there were natural predators just hanging around on the outskirts of Equestria?

I chanced a momentary look at the sun, and was rewarded with several black spots in my vision. I had been able to deduce just a second before I had been blinded that there was likely only one or two hours left of daylight, which left me with nothing to do, but think for a while longer.

I sighed and settled back into my small alcove of crates, and desperately tried to find something to ponder that would keep me occupied until nightfall. Thinking critically was an easy way to waste time, but it was often much better to have a partner to bounce ideas off of if you wanted to truly get anywhere. It was such times as this that I found myself carrying conversations with an imaginary representation of myself just to get anywhere down a certain path of logic; a tool that I had decided to employ now.

“What do we really know about this world?”

“We can be pretty sure that this is Equestria, and until proven otherwise we can also assume that this is a different dimension,” I answered.

“Of course, but what I was getting at is what do we *know** about this world. Do you think that events here unfolded as they did in the show?”*

“A valid point. I would pose a counter question, why do you think that Victoria would send us, a brony, to Equestria if it did not follow the same rules and timeline as the show. She would be much better served sending someone with some actual survival training into this environment. Therefore, I think we should conclude that the timeline would be the same up to a certain point.”

“Perhaps it is the knowledge of canon that would give us a true advantage here. However, we have no idea about where exactly we are in the timeline. That is something we need to figure out.”

“I will concede that.” I stood up and looked around for a pony that didn’t seem to be doing anything.

“You there,” I called to her and she quickly looked over, “what do you know of Discord or Nightmare Moon?”

“I heard that Discord turned an entire city upside down.” She answered immediately. “As for Nightmare Moon, are you talking about the monster that they talk about to scare children during Nightmare Night?”

“Don’t worry about it. Will you tell me what feelings you have if any in regards to changelings?”

“In regards to what?” She just looked at me confused for a moment before shaking her head and going back to what she was doing. I think I heard her grumble something under her breath along the lines of, “crazy fox monster thing.”

“Well that seems to answer that,” I thought as I engaged once again in my imaginary debate.

“I agree, it seems that we are somewhere between the release of Discord and the attack during the royal wedding. I wonder why she didn’t know anything about Nightmare Moon though.”

“Celestia probably covered up the incident during the Summer Sun Celebration so that Luna didn’t get any bad press, but forget about that for a moment. If we have arrived in this world before the attack on Canterlot then we can warn the princesses about it, and probably get some huge reward.”

“Yes, because that went so well for Twilight didn’t it. Some random fox running into the middle of the castle screaming that Cadence is actually a changeling. If they do even take long enough to listen they will no doubt be fearful of our carnivorous nature, and kick us out on principal. Aside that they might find out that we are actually human, and if our theory about Celestia and Luna being in this game also is correct then that could be the end of us right there.”  There were a lot of cons to that plan it seemed.

“Perhaps we can send a letter to warn them?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Actually that might be a bad idea,”[/i] a third voice interrupted. Now the discussion was getting really heated.

“Why would it be a bad idea to warn them,”

“If we were to warn them that changelings were going to attack during the royal wedding then we would likely cause events to change. We know that they are able to beat back the changeling threat on their own, and we wouldn’t want to stop that.”

“What if we did?”

*“Why would we want to? I don’t see any way that could be beneficial to us. The entire idea of changelings taking over Equestria was dumb in and of itself. A changeling occupation would eventually be beaten back by sheer numbers and rebellion. If the ponies threw off the shackles of their conquerors how kindly do you think they would look on another creature that eats ponies. We would do well to not get in the way of Equestria’s triumph over Chrysalis,” I shot back at the second voice.*

“We don’t eat ponies!”

“That isn’t the point.”

“Maybe it opens an opportunity though.”

“Care to explain?”

“We know the day that all of this chaos is going to ensue in Canterlot. We know that the ponies are going to triumph, and we even know that they don’t even need the Elements of Harmony to do so. What if, during the massive hysteria of that day we stole the Elements of Harmony?”

“That could be lucrative,”

“I don’t think that any amount of ransom money we would be able to get would be worth the wrath that the princesses would bring down on us. The elements are essentially the most powerful magic weapon that Equestria has, and we wouldn’t even be able to use them. There would be no reason to risk ourself to steal an artifact that we can’t even use.”

“Okay scratch that idea then. What if we used the chaos to make off with some artifacts that we were able to use? I am sure that the princess has acquired many magical items over her thousand-year rule. Just think about what we could do with all of them?”

“That plan has merit,”* I admitted, *“and it is unlikely that any of the guards would be worrying about one unusual creature while changelings are running around everywhere.”

“We could also hit the treasury,”

“There is one huge problem with this plan though.”

“What?”

*“How are we going to fight through a horde of changelings during the middle of the wedding?” The question struck the other two selves silent, and made the third one leave altogether.*

“That is a good point.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Okay, well I have noticed that we actually have some pretty impressive magic. The ability to stop time is extremely useful all we need to do is figure out how to use it without almost killing ourself.”

“It is true that it saved us during our encounter with the snake, but do you think it could be that useful against an entire army of changelings?.”

“It seems that we need to learn some more magic then,”

“Would we even be able to? What if our newfound powers only extend as far as stopping time momentarily? We cannot possibly know until we are able to actually find out more about magic in this universe.”

“Well the solution is quite simple then isn’t it?”

“What would that be?”

“We need to visit a library.”