The sun was hot; the pace was merciless, and this time Sky Fire was actually feeling tired. It was two days after Trixie had recognized them; after thinking for a while she had selected six of the largest bulls in the army, and ordered them to take him and Sky Blaze to her ‘abode’ and that she would be there to deal with them 'at her convenience'.
At first, Sky Fire could hardly believe their luck. He and Sky Blaze had taken out at least forty buffalo the other night, and so leaving them alone with just six would be child's play once they picked their locks. To make things even better it seemed that where ever this 'abode' was; it was also the destination of most of the plunder taken in the raid. When Trixie had made her ‘judgment’ Sky Fire had seriously been scanning the crowd for Tungsten; thinking of how he could accidentally draw attention to him so they could escape together. If he had succeeded, Sky Fire would now be cursing himself, for leading his brother to his death.
Unlike the other buffalo he had encountered so far, the six brutes that Trixie chose to guard them carried themselves like they actually knew what it was they were doing, and took their position seriously. The first thing they did was a thorough search which revealed both their multi-tools. Then their wings were actually properly tied with knots made to press on the nerves in a way that inhibited flight. Finally, they hobbled both pegasi with heavy, freakishly short chains that cut into their skin, halved the distance of each stride and made effective front kicks almost impossible.
The pace was increased, and when they finally stopped for the night; two buffalo stood guard at any given moment, one alert for outside threats, the other kept watch over them who after taking their vitals deemed them in far too good of condition to let rest and took it upon himself to keep them awake the entire night, kicking them, growling at them and throwing sand in their faces. Apparently he thought they'd killed one of his friends the other night.
The next morning they started out again; by now the pegasi had managed to pace their steps so the shackles didn’t hurt quite so bad, but that could just be because shorter steps were more natural with how tired they were. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were a few mouthfuls of green mash and the water was about half what they needed. On the second night, they were allowed about two hours sleep, before being woken up by having sand poured over their faces. For crying out loud; these guys were even worse than mom and dad!
Whoever their head jailer was; he kept taking their vitals and seemed an expert in causing short term pain and exhaustion, without doing anything that would permanently damage either of them; and somehow kept rationing their water so they just barely had the strength to keep their pace, but would be taken down instantly if they tried to fight.
Sky Blaze tried talking to him, saying little proverbs and ditties that Sky Fire didn’t fully understand. The buffalo tried not to respond, but it was clear that her words had some kind of effect that made them uneasy; and resulted in clumps of Sky Blaze’s mane being torn out as punishment. She winked him a code saying that she thought the head buffalo here had some shamanic training; but given that they were both blinking dust from their eyes, it was hard to tell for sure what she was saying.
Today was the fifth day since leaving Ponyville; last night they had been allowed to sleep the whole night, as by now they were too exhausted to try to escape. His mouth tasted like leather and the last watering hole they had been to was dry.
This last part wasn't just bad for him and Sky Blaze, but meant the entire party didn't have the water it needed to get to the next rest stop without risking dehydration. There was a meeting; which the buffalo didn't even bother to hide from their prisoners, in which they finally decided to deviate from their original course; and delay arriving at 'The Oracles Sacred Abode' by one day in order to search for water in a series of rocky outcroppings which often preserved pools of hidden water. The plan was considered dangerous; though whether from Trixie or some other threat that guarded the water, Sky Fire wasn't sure. But to plunge on into the desert without fresh canteens would have been suicide.
They arrived in the hills a little past noon and began into the hills. At first there was only one obvious path, but about a third of a mile in, it began splitting and after a few hundred more feet, the party stood at a crossroads of five potential paths, including the one they just came. The head buffalo stopped and gave Sky Fire a shrunken canteen. “Drink everything that's left.” he commanded.
Sky Fire needed no more encouragement downed the contents in five gulps; then passed the canteen back and waited expectantly, but the buffalo just stood there. “Her turn now.” Sky Fire said, indicating Sky Blaze, “She needs it as much as I do.”
“No.” The warden answered, “You just drank the last of her water.”
“What!?” Sky Fire yelped; looking guiltily at the canteen like he could give back half the water he'd just taken. Sky Blaze was already swaying on her hooves; he knew she wouldn't say it, but she had been in slightly worse shape then he was, and wouldn't last much longer without a drink. “You need to give her something; now!”
The warden struck him across the face; waited for him to calm down, and then took a long rope from his dufflebag and began tying it around Sky Fire's hind legs. “I will untie your wings; and you will fly to the end of the rope, and tell us where we can find water. If you try to undo the knots, you will be pulled back to the ground immediately. If you manage to escape; your sister will die more painfully than you can imagine.”
'Yeah, right.' thought Sky Fire, 'like that wasn't already the idea of what happens once Trixie gets her hooves on us.' Needless to say, he said nothing. She was a pain in the flank, and a nag, and in serious danger of one day becoming a total bitch; but no one was allowed to kill his sister but him.
Who knows, maybe if he pulled off a good enough rescue here she might even get off her vendetta about trying to ruin every score he tried to set up; or at least earn him enough credibility that she would stop taking any side that would make him look bad. If he was supremely lucky; maybe he could convince her to abandon her edited version of the disaster with the Mcpie sisters. She never believed him about what really happened, just because it went against the laws of physics, math and time; but for the record, he never set out to seduce Pinkie's daughters. Those girls had come onto him!
The warden had finished triple tying the knots on Sky Fire's legs and with a nod, Sky Fire took off. Twenty foot gorges of sharp stone gave way to blue sky, as Sky Fire circled around a few times, testing the ropes with his legs and searching for the telling glare of sunlight off of water, failing at both. At worst they would need to dig in the dirty in the crevices for water the cliffs had saved from evaporation; but with all these slopes there had to be somewhere where the runoff from rain would congregate naturally. There had to be.
Sky Fire twisted his legs again, trying to get an edge on one of the knots. He heard a furious grunt from beneath him that made him shiver but before they got a chance to pull him down; Sky Fire began dropping on his own accord, feigning oblivion to the shout and any accusation that he tried to undo his ropes. “I saw a pool.” he said confidently, “This way.”
The warden looked at him suspiciously but followed him none the less; knowing that they all needed water in order to live. Sky Fire himself had no idea where he was going; but he'd been able to see that three of the new paths didn't look like they had water in them. This one was a complete mystery.
He led them through the snaking path for three twists and four turns; and then, just when he felt like the chief warden's eyes were goring holes in the back of the back of his head he heard something. He paused, but the looks on the buffalo's faces showed they'd heard it too.
The party continued around the final bend and saw a broken wagon, several sacks and boxes including two water tanks of water lying on the ground and one cloaked, orange buffalo cow trying to hold the wagon up on her back, while using her cloven hooves to try to reattach the separated wheel and failing miserably.
The head buffalo drained the dredges of his canteen and then approached the cow who jostled when she heard him, dropping her wagon, and stepping back quickly. “Ephrolay” he said gruffly, “We are soldiers on the business of the oracle; but have run low on water. Give us one of your tanks and keep the other with the oracle’s blessing.”
The cow backed off; swallowing hard, “Ephrolay warrior; I wish that I could grant your request but I cannot. My family needs both tankards very badly, and I cannot afford to take a second trip to the well again today.”
The head buffalo shifted; apparently not used to being denied; “I regret that I must do this; but I and my party must drink as well. Give me water, in the name of the oracle.”
The cow trembled slightly; but she didn't move. “The well is in the north eastern corner of the promontory; three hours journey from here where you and your party may drink all you wish. But my son is sick, and he needs this more than you do. I beg of you to have mercy.”
Sky Fire clenched his teeth. He may have been soft at the start because she's his own kind; but Sky Fire knew their warden wouldn't back down. If this cow didn't fold she would probably get hurt, not to mention her thirsty kid. The warden narrowed his gaze, “If I lead my party three hours north east, then three hours back again; we are delayed by another day. We are late as it is.”
“If she complains; then you can tell her there's a sick little bull who didn't die of dehydration because someone stole his water when he had diarrhea. She'll understand; and if she doesn't then maybe she's not that great.”
The warden stiffened. Sky Fire hated himself for leading his captors here... but then something seemed off about this entire situation. This cow here, was pleading for the life of her son if you believed her, but she wasn't afraid. If anything Sky Fire wasn't certain she wasn't resisting breaking out into a smirk.
He widened his vision. There were hoof prints behind him and the other buffalo; because the ground was soft, and there was no wind. The heavy laden cart that the cow had supposedly been pulling, didn't have any tracks behind it; and the spoke that was missing a wheel was dusty, without a ring that would suggest a wheel had been there until recently. It was almost as if - “Rattlesnake!” he yelled out, jumping back from the imaginary serpent, “Rattlesnake!”
The warden swung his head around to face Sky Fire, and that was his final mistake as the cow drove forwards and gores her right horn into his vulnerable neck. He had just enough time for a cry, turning back to her with his eyes wide with pain; making his left eye a perfect target for the cows follow up attack.
A second bull tried to butt her from the right, to which she simply stepped back, letting him fall forward and form a running ramp which she used as a launch pad to launch into the air; somersaulted, and came down horns first onto a third enemy. Her weight pulled the impaled buffalo to his side, but when her cloven hooves hit the ground she turned, lifting that bull into the air and then dropping him on top of a fourth enemy who was gored to death before she could get herself unpinned. Launch-pad buffalo had spun around and was coming at her from behind, and was answered with a very precise return charge. The orange cow's head, and the head of the other buffalo moved with the rest of her body; but his body did not, though it did echo with a very impressive crack.
Sky Fire... had once promised himself that he was only ever going to do mares; but if this cow wasn't four times bigger than him and old enough to be his mother, he would totally make an exception for her.
The two wardens that had been standing either side of him and Sky Blaze were now dead too. One had a spear sticking into its back and the other a pair of darts in it's neck. A few hairy heads looking down at them from an overlooking precipice informed why.
“Ephrolay” panted Sky Blaze as loudly as she could, “May the Logos guide you.”
The cow quickly surveyed her horn work, making sure she didn’t miss anybody and then turned towards the pegasi; her face showing that she hadn’t made up her mind on whether to kill them or let them go. The twins subconsciously took a step closer together.
The buffalo mare flinched slightly at this; but didn’t lose her grim expression, highlighted by the blood dripping off of her horns as she stalked closer. “Who are you?”
“I'm the guy that just helped your ambush by distracting our common enemy.” smiled Sky Fire.
“Proving that you are skilled in deception and that it comes easily to you. Who are you!?”
Sky Fire was about to speak but Sky Blaze beat him to it. “My name is Sky Blaze, and this is my brother Sky Fire. We are Equestrians from Canterlot City, we were visiting family in a town called Ponyville when it was attacked by the oracle’s army.”
“Why was your town attacked?”
“We don’t know, several hundred of us were taken captive; when the oracle saw us she wanted us sent with some of the plunder to her personal abode.”
The buffalo mare came closer, almost face to face, though she didn’t lower her eyes to meet theirs, “You’re manes” she said after a tense pause, “Why are they colored like that?”
“...Excuse me?”
“Why are your manes six different colors!?”
Sky Blaze bit her lip, “… we were born like this; we got them from our mother.”
“These colors are hereditary?”
Sky Blaze nodded, “It’s a rare recessive gene that only manifests in pegasi.”
The buffalo mare took a step closer, and then without warning jumped to the side and bowled Sky Blaze over. Knocking her fettered fore-hooves out from under her with her left paw, the cow then brought her right paw down onto Sky Blaze’s back and pointed her horns at Sky Fire, like she was daring him to try to stop her.
After a tense moment in a staring contest, Sky Fire relaxed and the buffalo began digging around Sky Blaze’s mane with her free paw, examining the roots of each section of her mane carefully as if to check if they were dyed. After a meticulous search, the buffalo let Sky Blaze up then looked her in the eye. “Who was your mother?”
“Her name is Rainbow Dash.”
The buffalo took a step back, her face twisting into a startled pause. “I think I’ve heard of her; does she have a white coat, with cutie-mark of a pair of multi-colored wings?”
“... No.” Sky Blaze admitted, “Her coat is blue… and her cutie-mark is of a jagged rainbow coming out of the cloud."
The cow swallowed; "Your mother came here once, a long time ago, in the company of a purple dragon. What was her name?"
"...His... name is Spike." said Sky Blaze cautiously, "And I swear by his name, that we are not your enemies."
The buffalo thought for a long moment, then smiled. She turned and walked to the corpse of the head buffalo’s buldio, took the key ring off it and tossed them towards them, “Nice to meet you Sky Blaze. I’m Strongheart.”