Filthy Rich trudged along the open yard, pulling the loaded up supplies. He was still working for the older artisan stallion, but now alongside him there was the mare. The same dark blue one that whipped him before, and the same one that beat him and his wife last night. Brought in for backup to watch him.
She wasn’t filled with wicked grins or cackles today. Instead she took a few directions from the gruff artisan, and little else.
She was also wearing a full whip today, instead of holding a little switch like she had before. This seemed to be the new way things worked for both him and his wife. They weren’t being punished, or worked any harder, but the meagre trust that was built up was gone, and they were being watched.
Although… not constantly. They weren’t being watched now, for example. The mare was off watching someone else work. Maybe she was bored. It didn’t matter, because Spoiled was also not being watched.
Their eyes connected, and both of them slunk off to a nearby tree.
Filthy Rich started. “They’re really coming down on us, today. How are you holding up?”
She brushed her shoulder with her hoof. “It’s inconvenient, but they’ve kept their hooves off of me. I had hoped we wouldn’t be caught at all, but this is hardly the worst I could imagine.”
Filthy Rich smiled. “It looks like we got off lucky, indeed. What is our next move?”
Spoiled Rich looked over her shoulder. “We need a plan for getting out of our cage unnoticed, and then a plan for how to actually get off this island.”
Filthy frowned. “I can imagine that last part is… not easy.”
Grimacing, Spoiled Rich looked back to her husband. “No. Unfortunately, they won’t be taking us to the docks anytime soon, so we will be forced to improvise that part. We need to focus on figuring out how to escape without detection.”
Filthy nodded. “And that involves not causing trouble now.”
“Exactly, we can’t afford for them to crack down on us mo--”
There was a loud crack from a whip, and the couple both flinched, and a triumphant cry rang out. Both of them wheeled around to see the blue mare holding her whip in her mouth, grinning like a madmare through the grip.
She whipped a few times and pointed, and the couple marched off to the more common areas, where the mare presented them to the forepony.
She and the forepony exchanged conversation for a minute, until the mare slammed her hoof on the ground with a demand. The forepony retorted back with a forceful statement that seemed to leave her abashed.
He pointed to Filthy, staring at the mare and issuing her a command, shouted at another pony briefly, and then wheeled about, stamping off.
The other pony came around, escorting Spoiled, and the mare snorted and roughly shoved Filthy along. She stomped along, clearly having her no doubt sadistic plan shut down, and Filthy Rich smirked.
She wheeled around and hissed something at him. She spat out something that no doubt was completely vile, but that Filthy couldn’t understand at all. But what he *could* understand was that her hooves were tied. Whatever terrible threat she just uttered was completely impotent, and Filthy felt his smirk grow.
Filthy Rich practically strut into the cell that evening, his head held high. The rest of the day the mare had glared at him, practically itching to catch him, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. And he knew it frustrated her to no end.
Spoiled Rich laid down on a leafy pat, smirking. “You seem to be in a good mood.”
Filthy Rich sat down next to her. “I am. I know we have a lot more to consider, but it feels like we have some hope, now.”
Spoiled Rich smiled, and lay her head next to her husband.
Filthy Rich started to snuggle up to his wife when there was the sound of hooves approaching. The two of them shared a look and scooted away from each other, to the edge of the cage in preparation for the slop for tonight.
The two figures moved down the hallway, and what Filthy saw made his blood run cold. These were not the guards presenting them with their bowls of goop. It was the blue mare, accompanied by the stallion from last night. They had bowls of food, which were placed by the far wall, and they approached the cell.
Opening the cell, the mare stepped back and gestured for them to exit.
Eyeing her suspiciously, Filthy Rich complied, only to find that, as he stepped out he was grabbed by the neck and yanked out by the stallion. He hit the ground roughly. Groaning, he tried to stand himself up and was rewarded with a hoof on his back, shoving him down to the ground. He twisted his head around, looking up at his captor.
The mare above him smiled a wicked smile, her white teeth flashing in the dark. She said something sweet and mocking, and shoved him over and gave him a swift kick to the gut.
Filthy doubled over, his breath knocked out of him. He grit his teeth and looked up at her, at her sadistic grin. He may have somehow had a reprieve when the forepony was watching, but here, in the dark, she was in charge, again.
She kicked his chest, knocking the wind out of him again. She started talking to him, walking around him, in that language he simply could not understand. Her threats were lost on him, but the tone was not, and neither were the blows.
She stepped back, addressing someone behind Filthy, and he wrenched himself over to look. The stallion was looming over his wife, facing away from him. His wife was creeping back toward the wall slowly as he approached her, and in the darkness Filthy saw just a tiny glint of metal from his mouth. He was brandishing a dagger at his wife.
He was threatening his wife with a dagger.
Anger surged through him, and he scrambled to his feet, rushing at the stallion. Spoiled Rich darted to the side as he collided with the stallion, tackling him to the ground. The dagger was knocked aside, and Filthy Rich struggled with the stallion for a moment, before being kicked off.
As he pulled himself up off the ground, from behind him he heard a wild cackle. He turned around just in time to have a powerful sting erupt on his shoulder, accompanied by a loud crack. Crying out in pain, he collapsed back onto the ground.
He pushed himself up off of the ground, and the sea pony stallion, rubbing his shoulder, moved alongside the mare, who was flourishing with her whip, swinging it lazily back and forth.
The stallion said something apparently to Filthy Rich, and reached his muzzle to the side and drew a thin blade from a scabbard strapped to his side. He grinned from out behind the sword, and he and the mare both approached Filthy.
The sword came down on his left and Filthy dodged to the right. He could hear it whizzing past his head, but he successfully avoided the slash. And was successfully whipped on his right a loud crack accompanying a new gash on his shoulder.
He grit his teeth and stepped back, not crying out this time. The mare swung her head again and Filthy Rich hopped back, the whip cracking loudly right in front of him. He winced.
When he opened his eyes a second later, the stallion had closed the distance, and Filthy Rich scrambled to the side, the sword grazing his shoulder with a sting.
Filthy Rich stepped back again, only to bump up against the wall behind him. Shock lanced through his mind and he froze. The mare and the stallion crept toward him, knowing he had nowhere to go.
He grit his teeth and pressed up closer against the wall. From his mind, another surge of power tingled, right within reach. He let the instinct take him, like he had before. Raising up on his hooves, he called out an incantation in an ancient magical language, and slammed them down on the ground with a thunderous clap.
The stallion and mare were blown away, the stallion thrown against a cage, and the mare knocked out into the open, gracelessly falling into a heap on the open floor. Filthy Rich stared at his hooves, astonished, but heard the mare groan from the ground as she stirred.
He darted over to her, and she pushed herself up, brandishing her whip. She whirled her head back, but he closed the distance and tackled her, pushing her back to the ground. He lifted her head up, and came down with all his weight on it, smacking it against the hay covered floor. He did it again. And again. Until she stopped moving.
Filthy Rich stood up over the mare. She had coughed up a little blood, but seemed to not be further coughing… anything. Was she dead? Filthy felt sick to his stomach momentarily. Holding his breath, he lowered his hoof down to her neck, trying to remember where to feel the pulse.
A sharp lance of pain erupted from his side as he felt something slice across his ribs. He was rewarded with more pain as he twisted back to see the stallion with the sword, haggard and hunched over. The stallion lurched forward again, and Filthy Rich stepped back and stumbled over the mare’s body on the ground.
The stallion stood over Filthy, glaring balefully at him, and as he stepped forward, he made a noise sort of like a party goer about to upchuck, but instead of doing that he collapsed in a gurgle. There was a knife sticking out of in his back.
Behind him was standing Spoiled Rich, breathing in and out heavily, her eyes as ragged as her breaths. Between them, in the dim light, they could see a growing dark pool beneath the stallion, as his blood bled onto the ground.
Biting his lip, Filthy Rich scrambled to his feet to the stallion, and grabbed the dagger, using it to start slicing his clothes off of him.
“What-- what are you doing?” Spoiled Rich gaped at him.
“What does it look like,” Filthy Rich announced. “I’m trying to get a clear view of the wound.”
“Filthy, this stallion tried to murder us.” Spoiled stamped onto him and he made a coughing noise. “He led us here to beat us and goad us into making a move to justify our deaths.”
Filthy was momentarily stunned. Was… that what happened here? “Still, I won’t be party to killing this stallion if I don’t have to.”
Rolling her eyes, Spoiled Rich knelt down to help, rifling through his side gear to find another dagger, helping cut off a strip of cloth. They lifted the stallion and tied something around him to staunch the wounds, with no clue if that would actually save this stallion’s life, but he didn’t stop breathing, and the pool stopped increasing in size.
Walking over to the other mare, Spoiled Rich started rifling through the pouch at her side. “Spoiled,” Filthy protested, but she held up a hoof.
“I may agree with you that we should try to save their lives, but I will not be polite enough that I won’t take whatever they may have to help us escape.”
Filthy looked dubious, but turned around to the cage anyway. He cast the sticky hooves spell, and reached up to the top of the cage, reaching up to where he had hidden the key, in a place it would be impossible for him to put a key without this spell.
He unlocked his hooves, and walked over to Spoiled Rich, who was attempting to strap strap a scabbard onto her side, with a short something loaded in it. There was also another scabbard, although without a strap on the ground, and a few pouches.
“Let me help, dear.” Filthy Rich used his magic hooves to help loop the scabbard around her, and linked it together with his mouth. And he held up the key, grinning.
When she was also freed from her bonds, and the additional scabbard tied around Filthy’s barrel, and the two pouches, which were mostly filled with silver and gold coins, and a few other simple things like matches, were also attached to them.
They nodded at each other affirmatively. They could not stay here, anymore. They headed out, into the dim light of the compound proper.