"Okay, so. What if we got a really big fire-"
"It would be impossible to sustain."
"Well what if we made a light brightening thingy, captured lightning and-"
"How do you propose to do this?"
"With...lightning trapping...things?"
"Where will we obtain these?"
"Uh...Okay new plan. We find a glowing rock that is so big that it is basically the sun."
"No."
'Aw."

The planning was not going well. Ideas are hard and I'd already had my "Let's make a city with ponies/things we find and farm things and live in it." brilliance. Let's do a quick count of what we had. Ponies, about four dozen. Small rocks. Wood, mostly useless. Larger rocks. The ocean. A tiny changeling. More rocks.

Not good.

I think it was Crater that hit upon the idea to actually ask the ponies if they knew anything. This was the obvious idea, really. Although, their answers were very interesting. Tell you what, I'll give you the standard questions I asked them and my top three favourite answers.

Why are you in Tartarus?
"My trading vessel crashed through the storm while traveling to Saddle Arabia."
"I was a deliverymare dropping off a few letters at one of the experimental magic labs in Hayston."
"Murder. No, not really. I can't remember, all I remember is some formula about portals."

Are you seeing the pattern here? Because I did. Less than a quarter of ponies here were meant to be here. Magical accidents, shipwrecks, off course flight teams, there were a half dozen non-criminals for every pony actually convicted and for each innocent alive there were a dozen or more who didn't make the landing.

Have you seen anything useful here?
"My ship's a walk that way. I don't want to go back there, but the wood might be better."
"Rocks." I hated that guy.
"I saw something flashing in the sky. At first I thought it was a pegasus, but there's no magic here."

Back up. No magic?

"Professor portals, what's this about Tartarus having no magic?"
"Well, yes, it's a well documented fact amongst translocation specialists that the dust from Tartarus inhibits all forms of magic. Even earth ponies haven't been able to grow crops with the usual agricultural methods in it."
"And we know this...how?"
"Oh, that's simple. Most labs use the dust as an inhibitor when attempting larger and more dangerous spells."
"Well fair enough. Wait, how do you get this dust?"
"We buy it, of course."
"From who?"
"The government supplier-" The realisation hit him like a freight train, warning lights going off in his head like the screaming brakes.
"And where do they get it?"
"From Tartarus I assume..."
"And how do they get it out?"
"Magi- No."
"No. Do you know what this means?"
"There's a way out."
"Or there used to be."
"King Ayre, you are not an optimist, are you?"

I wasn't at that point. But that was a maybe. There's no use in letting a perfectly useful resource go unused. Speaking of, the ship. It was where the young sailor said it would be. It was sideways on the stony shore, masts broken, hull holed and I think the keel was embedded in one of the larger trees. It's my story, the keel was sticking out of a tree like a lazy nautical-themed sign-writer stopped getting paid halfway through a job.

The ship was covered in dust. It poured out of every hole blasted it by the rocks and weather every time the wind gently rocked it. Barnacles looked like they bled red along the keel, making the old trader look more like a great dying beast than an idol of wood. I won't talk about the bones. That's too depressing. They were small. Too small.

Moving on.

We salvaged three things from that caravel. Caravel, how do I know that word? Doesn't matter. Three things. The wood from the hull, the masts and the cloth. Gods if there wasn't a ton of it. Turns out that was it's main cargo and Saddle Arabia pays well for Equestrian wool and cotton. Oh, and the rope, we took the rope too. And one other thing.

It was made of what was easily recognisable as the hardest wood on the ship, and the hardest I had ever seen. It was barely two thumb-widths wide, and as high as my shoulder. It was carved with some manner of writing with a vine pattern twining along the length. A staff. A short one, anyway. Mine.

Now, what can we do with decent timber, three masts and a ship's worth of sailcloth? Other than make a giant tent, not much. So, we made a giant tent. The boards from the ship made walls and more of the mulched trees made a serviceable floor. Some of the ponies even made a chair. A large, Red King sized chair. I put Crater on it, then got back to work.

What? I was busy. I had hands and there was stuff that needed to be done.

So now we had somewhere to stay. A nice building-esque tent with a broken mast in the middle and sails draped over each-other forming the canopy. Nice enough. We all slept after that, in that half-sturdy tent. Synchronized our sleeping patterns, finally.

The dreams came again that night. The Heart spewed forth rivers and great flames in equal measure. The green was everywhere, reaching up towards the storm as if praying for their own salvation until the flames burned them to ashen cinders. The waters came after and they once more thrived. Burn and grow, burn and grow, the endless cycle.

"Have you lost your way, 'Red King'?" a familiar voice echoed through the dream, bouncing off the walls of green and flickering from waves of fire.
"Ah, blue one. Stumbled your way into my dreams again?"
"We have come to warn you from your course. Do not heed the damned rock."
"Sorry, can't hear you over the damned rock. Speak up."
"DO NOT HEED THE-"
"Yeah, yeah, heard you the first time. You know most of those ponies aren't criminals, right?"
"We are aware." She sounded sad. Ashamed.
"And you can't bring them out of there because of the antimagic dust. How did you get the dust out of there anyway?"
"What?" Shock, disbelief.
"Your experimental labs use it as an inhibitor. For giant spells."
"But there should be no way to remove the dust from Tartarus. We made sure of this when sister and I created the storms."
"Ah. The storms, yes. We need to talk about that. They need to go."
"We will not heed the whims of an Exile. You will remain in your prison until you are released." The shield of arrogance returned in full force. The righteous belief that she was Right. I hate that.
"No-one leaves Tartarus."

She didn't have a response for that. The dream ended without fanfare, just one final cycle and it was over. Fire and water. In my post wake haze I thought of the burning cathedral. It was probably washed away by now. Fire and water. Sturdy really needs to stop burning things down. Fire. The rain keeps coming whenever I need it. Water.

Stop. Haze clears. Eyes wide. Fire and water. I stood. The others were asleep. Waked outside. Nothing here, nothing moved. To the water. The wind played in my hair. I didn't notice. Didn't notice when I was up to my knees. Nor my waist. Nor my shoulders. And when my head was under, well...

"Swim like a fish" is the most used euphemism.

I don't know how long I was under. But when I surfaced out of that darkened sea they were calling for me. Something about the water. Yes, I'm in the water and it's awesome. Yes, yes, the water. What? Get out of the water? Why would I do tha-

You know that feeling when you think there's one more step that there is? The feeing of falling briefly before the foot jarringly crashed down. It was like that, just with teeth around my ankle and no breathing. I saw glimpses of it as it pulled me under. Bone white skin. Flailing tail. Fins. Larger than me. It was fast and heading straight down. It left me deep underwater.

I could barely see. The surface was too far above me. The bottom was rocks and bones. Some of them shifted in the depths. It came at me hard. I don't think it even tried to bite, it just rammed me squarely in the chest. It was all sleek angles and bones. No skin, no flesh. Just bones and cold light. The shock took seconds to wear off before I grabbed whatever I could and tried to pull. Bones ripped away like twigs, but it kept going. The deep cold had numbed the pain so I just kept ripping. The skull was barely attached by the time I ran out of breath.

The thing kept going, further and further out to sea. My hands wrapped around it's skull and began to wrench. I saw it crack, saw the light begin to flicker and fade. Other things were passing us now as we hurtled far from she shore. Fish with lanterns danging from their faces. Strangely large multihued shrimp. I forgot about dying for a moment as one of the latter landed on my attacker's head and looked at me. Then it turned its bottom at me.

And shattered the skull.

The bone creature fell apart, leaving me to drift along, wondering what that little thing was. I looked down at the fading form. Cracks rippled through the water and I saw red start to pour from the teeth embedded in my torso. Oh. More of the creatures swarmed around me, a sea of bone within a sea of cold. the edges of my vision began to blacken as I did the stupidest and luckiest thing possible.

I opened my mouth and breathed in.

The black edges receded. The swarm stopped looking hungry and started looking...respectful. I touched the red seeping from my wounds. It was solid gritty, like dirt. No, not dirt. Dust. Red dust. Of all the pressing matters, I believed that could wait. For now, I had to get back and I didn't even know where I wa-

The bone fish glowed. Glow, if I am right, is magic.

The dust doesn't affect outside of the island.

Well now.

But first things first, I had to get back. The surface was my first stop. The air was a breath of fresh air. Well, stale air. Right next to the storm wall. It was silent like the skies above, not an arms length from me. So what do you not do when a magical storm is sitting right next to you? Touch it? Why not. I'm going to start thinking things through one of these days.

I felt like I was gone the moment my hands touched the curtain of waiting thunder. Floating high above everything, at a word I would be gone and nothing would hurt. That sounds nice, I thought. Peace forever. I thought about Sturdy. He would miss me if I was gone. He'd never show it of course, but he would. I thought of little Crater. She's miss her only source of food. I'm not sure what else i was to her, other than her occasional carrier. I thought of the others.

I thought of their chanting to live. Their determination that I sparked in their lifeless eyes. Something burned within them, and at that moment it burned in me too. A fire that scorched the despair from my cheesy wording and my soul. I felt more whole. The storm began to rage at my denial of it's offer.

"Oh shut it." I roared at the tumultuous din. "There has been too much magic crap today already. Why aren't you affected by the dust, eh? Is it because you've never touched the ground?" The storm quavered, a sour and defeated note. "It is, isn't it. Well. You want me to die? To give up? Screw that! Too many have died already, so you are going to listen. To. Me. from now on, you are mine. You got that!?"

Lightning asked out at me, ripping chunks from my partly corporeal form. It burned, gods it burned and I screamed my lungs out. It lashed again and again, as if trying to simply rip me apart. I tried to bat the lightning away, each time missing, timing poorly. In the end I just thrashed with the limbs I had. Not giving it what it wants. It killed everything I knew. Destroyed a healthy land for the sake of making it a prison.

This storm needs to change. The last bolt faded away and I was still alive. Red poured from me like rain. I'd lost chunks from both legs, both arms and I couldn't see from one eye.

"You...*gasp*...done already?"
Lash, I liked that bit of skin.
"Ergh, how...about...now?"
Bolt through a hip. I'm not walking for a while.
"You had..Grraaaah!..enough?"

And like that, it all stopped. The pain was gone. The storm stopped flashing. One last bolt thundered towards me with all the speed of a dead stone. The last flash hung in the air like a fading dream. I reached forward to the bolt, once more unstuck in the syrupy progress of time. It was round, not pointed. Arcs looped off it like vines trying to catch something to support it. So...I grabbed the arcs.

This is when I realised the flash had ended, and the bolt was pointed squarely at my head. It didn't move as much as it disappeared. The storm stopped moving and went silent. I fell.

Flying is nice. Oh look, there's that tent. I should bring them some rain. Wait, where did that come from?

The blur of motion is something I can't describe, I'm sorry. I remember the ground becoming glass and slag. I remember the ponies backing away from my sizzling and horrible form. I remember how Sturdy didn't even seem phased. I even remember what little Crater said before I just fell over.

"Do it again!"

Author's Note

So that just happened.