//------------------------------//
// 23-3: Going somewhere? 
// Story: Imbalanced: Legacy of Light 
// by Nameless Narrator 
//------------------------------//

“Your Majesties, new reports from the south,” said the Hex Guard courier with a quick bow to the assorted four rulers of Equestria. He opened a scroll case, from which flew a stack of several sheets of paper which got quickly snatched by Twilight Sparkle’s purple telekinetic glow. 

“Unless there’s something along the lines of ‘the big bad army stopped killing everyone’, then it’s nothing new,” Chrysalis rolled her eyes, “Seriously, at this point the only question is whether you nuke them now or wait until they’ve destroyed Zebrica completely and sink their fleet.”

“You seem certain that warlord Stern’s army will continue heading north in case they succeed in their campaign,” commented Twilight, quickly reading the news.

“You know I often admire your positivity, Starbutt, but right now it’s just wishful thinking,” the changeling queen smirked at her.

“Indeed,” Luna added her piece, “Stern and his wizard haven’t shown any interest in ruling the conquered territories. This is total annihilation.”

“We could still go for the scorched earth tactic instead of the tac spell strike,” offered Celestia, “It would ruin more ground initially, that’s true, but it wouldn’t make any area completely uninhabitable for millennia like the dessicated deserts of the Griffon Empire.”

“Sadly, that would be possible only if we acted a month ago,” Twilight put the stack on the table around which the rulers were sitting, “According to the presumed path and the speed of the army, we only have two weeks at most, and they have enough mobility tools to get across anything we could make. I hate to say it, but that escaped zebra prisoner was right - tactical spell nuke is the only way I can think of.”

“Then the only question remaining is where and when,” concluded Luna, “My sister will add the divine aspect and focus, Twilight and I can prepare the targeting matrix so that we hit only what we need to, and nothing else. I only regret that there’s nothing like the pre-corruption United Orders of Wizardry to help increase the raw power of the spell.”

“I called for skilled unicorns from all branches of the guard and others shortly after we received the deserter’s account,” Twilight looked at her, “They’ve been gathering in Ponyville for a while now. We should have more than enough raw energy, we just need ponies skilled in the manipulation of magic to focus that power, which Luna and I should be able to do.”

“And I’ll keep an eye on the lunchbag- I mean on your subjects here while you’re in Zebrica. I don’t like the heat anyway,” Chrysalis shrugged innocently.

The other princesses just chuckled, much to the slight frown of the courier. They knew Chrysalis well enough to trust her. Twilight’s following smirk faded quickly, though, as she finished reading the report.

“This is a problem, though. It says that slavers have started attacking refugee ships in great numbers and selling everyone they catch to Stern’s army. We don’t have the navy to deal with this, and Northern Coalition ships are transporting enough zebras already to our southern refugee camps that they don’t have the capacity to bring soldiers for protection.”

“How can it be profitable to deal with a megalomaniac mass murderer who doesn’t have any territory?” asked Celestia, “Surely the army can’t afford buying slaves en masse, right?”

Chrysalis shrugged in response.

“If you don’t need to pay your soldiers, if you have no trouble killing potential deserters and rebels in droves, and if you straight up plunder everything you see, you can just spend all the gold on this, or at least the vast majority. I mean, Zach said the army had vast coffers to pay off those loyal to Stern despite everything, and enough slaves to carry what they found.”

“It’s not just refugees,” Twilight scowled, “While the slavers aren’t organized, according to this,” she flicked the stack of papers, “they’re raiding griffon coastal cities as well, straight up jacking everyone they can grab, no matter who they are. The Silver Sun assessment says Stern’s soldiers are sorting the newcomers out and... sacrificing them during massive blood orgies,” she growled.

“Blood magic fueled by mass sacrifices would explain the devastating power behind the army,” Luna nodded appreciatively. It was horrendous, but if someone wanted power, that kind of dark magic was the way to go, “Although doing this on such scale should be impossible under the oversight of the alicorn of Death.” 

Celestia shook her head.

“No one has seen Void for centuries now. This really looks as if he was gone and that the new alicorn of Death hasn’t been born yet. There is no protection for lost souls from necromancy and blood magic.”

“Same goes for Scream,” added Luna, “but we knew about her, because of Joy. It makes sense that the two lovers would depart together, but not without successors. Whatever you may think about Void, he knew his responsibilities. We could go and try to find a potential new alicorn of Death like you did with Magic and Twilight, sister.”

“I doubt we have the time to assess a pony for several years and then sing a song,” Celestia snickered at Twilight’s dirty glance to her, “This battle is on us.”

“Sadly, I have to agree,” Twilight nodded, “Let’s head south to have as much time to prepare as possible.”


***

The dark interior of the ship rocked gently, and most of the slaves had stopped weeping by now. Magpie had to admit to himself thinking the last part was heartless, but on the other talon it made it much easier to think. Over the two days, an amount of time he’d managed to figure out with Gem’s help as it turned out that changelings had perfect sense for that, Magpie had come to several conclusions.

One, there weren’t actually that many zebras on the ship, there simply couldn’t be that much space considering that he’d seen the ship from the outside when they’d originally captured them. Two, the slavers weren’t overly armed either, or at least none of the guards on the switching shifts had had any serious firepower on them. Three, the cages were solid, but clearly meant to hold someone either beaten up or resigned to their fate. Four, and this one was the most important, the patrol schedule was perfectly static. 

Judging by the shape of the general area and the daylight sometimes coming from the trap door in the ceiling, the deck had to be right above them, and the zebra sleeping quarters were either in the raised front or back of the ship. Magpie wasn’t a nautical griffon, and terms like port and starboard to him meant either something to drink or to ride on… wait, no, that was a skateboard.

Putting all recent discoveries together, Magpie had come up with a plan, and when the regular zebra patrol came and left, he knew he had time to set things into motion. He stretched and reached between the bars of his cage up to an oil lantern hanging from a beam above, unhooked it from the curved nail it was hanging from, and quickly unscrewed a circular brass ring from the top, upon which the square glass cover neatly came off.

Next, he presented the ring to Gem observing him with one eye raised, and carefully unscrewed the suppressor off of her horn, switching it with the simple ring from the lantern. They were roughly the same size, which allowed Magpie to use the suppressor to repair the oil lantern and hook it back up. When the trap door opened for an inspection again, Gem was pretending to be asleep, only partially covering her head to show there was something on her horn which the bored zebra didn’t examine further, and left quickly. Thankfully, none of the other captives blabbed to gain themselves more favorable standing with the slavers. They were all either smart enough or broken completely.

Step two wasn’t on him, but on Gem who could now manipulate her transformations a lot better, and simply changed her size to slip between the bars of her cage.

“Yesss, let’s go kick some ass!” hissed Harriet, much to Magpie’s and Gem’s surprise.

“You okay?” asked the griffon.

“Scared… no, terrified, but my eyes hurt from all the crying, and this cage is too small for me,” she grabbed two bars with her claws, and her massive booty squeezed hard as she pressed her hind legs against the bars on the opposite side. The poor metal had no chance against Harriet’s glutes of legends, and bent enough to let her through, “I’m also really, like really mad,” she grinned with a hint of nervousness.

“Yeah yeah, save the speeches for when we have time, and let me out, you crazy overpowered creatures,” Magpie tapped the padlock of his cage. 

Gem simply spit into the hole, and the padlock came open when she pulled on it.

“Alright, who’s with us? We’re taking the ship,” Magpie unhooked the lantern again, and grabbed it like a grenade.

Every raised hoof or talon was answered by Gem melting the insides of their padlocks and letting the captives out. Unfortunately, the power player they needed the most was Prominence who was still complete mess, and according to Gem wouldn’t get better until she got on land. Pack Rat… was currently hallucinating something and mumbling about spiders in the walls. Well, it’s not as if he was a fighter anyway.

“Alright, I’m going first, blasting the first bastard to go through the trap door, we rush up, and take them by surprise. There’s...” Magpie counted the willing helpers, “eighteen of us, and there can be only about ten of them. It’s not too favorable, since they’ll be armed, but it’s this or whatever life awaits us as property, got it?” 

“Wait wait wait wait!” Gem whispered, and quickly started licking the metal bars of the nearest cages.

“Iron deficiency?” Magpie smirked.

“Dumbass,” Gem rolled her eyes, and tossed a bar with two corroded ends at him, “We can try to do this unarmed, but we don’t have to.”

When everyone is armed, and Harriet gave her bar a practiced swing, Magpie just waited for the lock on the trap door to click. Taking one zebra out immediately would help immensely.

Finally, the endless and at the same time too short period of time ended, and the trap door cracked open.

Magpie, waiting on the short set of stairs leading up, pushed his full weight upwards and heard the zebra say “What?” and tumble. He’d kept the lit lantern close to his face not to be blinded by daylight, which helped him rush up, throw the lantern at the nearest zebra drawing a sword, and smash the guard on the floor with the crunch of cracking skull.

The ship felt strangely still now for some reason.

With one slaver in flames from the shattered lantern and one knocked out, Magpie rushed forward, captives pouring through the small door. He’d been right in his assessment of the shape of the ship when the bigger door leading into the inside area of the raised front end opened, and another zebra came through, quickly eating Magpie’s steel bar through his eye socket. He pulled it out with a wet squelch, and rushed up the side stairs to the rudder and a strangely calm zebra drawing a cutlass with his mouth.

A big mistake doing that against a griffon fighter like Magpie whose main choice were blunt weapons. With the blade of the cutlass jutting from one side of the zebra’s mouth, Magpie easily took a light swing from the other which dazed the stallion trying in vain to dodge, and gave enough time to Magpie to rear on his hind legs, and shut the zebra down with a much stronger smash, probably forever.

Then he looked around at the strangely silent situation, and-

“Oh for fuck’s sake...” he cursed.

That’s why the ship was motionless. They were already docked in a bustling port, and a stream of zebras with hoof-held guns were standing on the deck, aiming at the prisoners who had given up immediately when they saw what was going on. Fighting several zebras with melee weapons and small firearms at most was one thing, fighting dozens of potential reinforcements with rifles was suicide.

“Well, well, well...” a smirking zebra stallion wearing a wide-brimmed hat walked up to the griffon, “The leader of our little mutiny,” he punched already stunned Magpie, “I guess you’ll do well in the arena. Now give up and I might-”

The zebra would never say anything else ever again, because Magpie rammed the cage bar up his muzzle and into his skull.

Unfortunately, that last act of defiance was quickly stemmed by a stream of zebras rushing up both stairs and beating the everliving shit out of him. He tried rolling with the blows while blocking his face, but there was only so much he could do before he lost control of his limbs and the world started swimming. 

Next hit shut him down completely.