Considering we had his permission, we decided to spend the night at Swift’s house. The lodgings may not have exactly been first class, the broken windows and general lack of care, kind of spoiled what would have otherwise been a nice home, but I’ve slept in worse to be honest. At least there’s a roof above my head here and plenty of blankets, luxuries I’ve not always had access to.
I awoke early in the morning, as is my custom, to find that Iron and Summer were still completely asleep. For a moment I considered trying to wake them so that we may face this brave new day together. Then I considered dragging Summer into Iron’s room and putting them into bed together in a compromising position. Then I considered finding a pen and drawing silly stuff all over their faces. Eventually I decided that all of these required far more energy than I was willing to put in so early in the morning and instead chose to stumble downstairs to raid Swift’s kitchen for food.
After somehow managing to navigate the ridiculously thin staircase, at one point weighing up the option of simply throwing myself out of a second story window and walking back in through the front door, I found myself in what passed for Swift’s kitchen. It was an incredibly sparse little room, pretty much just consisting of a small sink, some cupboards and a table with a few chairs around it.
Through trial and error I managed to figure out how pony taps worked. To activate it you pushed a large lever either left or right, depending on whether you wanted hot or cold water. The main effect of this brilliant discovery on my part was that I could dunk my head in ice cold water to try and wake myself up properly. So it was that I ended up routing around through Swift’s cupboards, soggy, dripping water everywhere but very much awake now.
My hunt came to an end when I found the most holy of treasures; food that hadn’t gone off whilst Swift had been imprisoned. The kitchen was full of rotting fruit and moldy cheese, which was no good really. At one point I thought I had struck gold when I saw something fleshy looking until I realised that it was just a frog that had managed to get in and, seeing as I wasn’t French, meant that I had to make do with what I had found, which was a couple of packets of crackers.
Admittedly, eating crackers without any cheese is an offence that would make Wallace and Gromit hire an assassin to take me out, but at least they were edible if you had plenty of water on hand, which I did thankfully. After filling myself up with crackers, and leaving plenty for both Summer and Iron, I decided to check on the duo. Upon finding they were still comfortably asleep and showing no signs of waking up anytime soon, I decided action must be taken.
So I left.
There’s still plenty of this town I haven’t seen yet and, whilst the docks are interesting and all, I’d quite like to see the market district a bit. So I grabbed my coat, strapped on my knife, and headed out to explore a little bit whilst my companions recovered from yesterday’s exertions.
An early morning fog pervaded the air, cutting down visibility to a mere few feet. The only ponies who would be up at this time of the day were those who had to get to work early to prepare for the coming day. Luckily, this select group included bakers, meaning that if I wanted to find the market place all I had to do was follow my nose. Admittedly my nose has misled me in the past, but on this I feel it can be trusted.
It was to my eternal surprise that I found myself at the docks rather than a bakery. My nose must have taken a wrong turn somewhere I guess. I was just about to turn around and head back into town when I noticed a shape moving through the fog to my right. From what I had seen yesterday, the docks were usually fairly empty. So why would someone be out here so early?
Some part of me refused to let the question hang as a rhetorical and forced me onwards. I quickly turned my coat inside out so that its enchantment was activated and began to follow the figure, making sure that I went unnoticed. Moving quickly, I managed to get close enough to recognize who I was following. It was the guard who had taken me onto the ship yesterday, the one that seemed to be in charge of the crew. If I had to take a guess, I’d say he was Thick Skull’s First Mate, before Thick Skull went for a sudden and unexpected dip in the water that is.
I was following the stallion so closely that I almost tripped over him when he suddenly stopped at the edge of a pier. Thankfully, the combination of my coat’s enchantment and the obscuring early morning fog meant that I remained unnoticed. Still, I chose to hide behind some nearby boxes rather than tempt fate further.
We waited for a couple of minutes, the stallion peering off into the misty sea to try and spot something whilst I in turn watched him. It was not long before a sound reached our ears, a light splashing, the sound of a paddle chopping into the water. A silhouette drifted out of the thick fog, a small boat with two ponies aboard, which, with an efficient professionalism of one of the boat’s occupants, was tied up. The other occupant, the one who had refrained from helping secure the boat, stepped out of the craft, a long cloak billowing around it.
The stallion who I had been following immediately fell into a bow before the new arrival, “I am sorry to have to contact you like this but...” He trailed off.
“Go on.” The hooded figure urged in a raspy voice.
“I...I regret to inform you that Captain Thick Skull has...has been taken out.” He gulped, shrinking back from the figure slightly. “And the...the prisoner, Swift Storm, has been stolen from us.”
The stallion cringed, expecting an angry reply from the figure, but there was merely silence. Eerie, pervading silence. Even the water seemed to be afraid of making too much noise, the splashing of the waves seeming muted.
“Who?” That bone-chilling, abrasive voice spoke out again.
“A unicorn, Summer Storm, and a minotaur called Iron Will. As well as another, a strange creature I’ve never seen before. I...I didn’t get his name, I’m sorry!” The stallion cried out his apology, almost breaking down in tears before the cloaked form.
“You have failed.” The voice beneath the hood stated simply. “Gang Plank will not be pleased.” With a small movement of its head, it gestured to the boat it had arrived on. “Get in, he will want to deal with you personally.”
The stallion, whimpering in fear, obeyed nonetheless. What could cause a being to walk into certain doom like that? Perhaps the knowledge that worse awaits if they try to run? The hooded character leaned down and whispered something to the boat pony, who nodded in response, untied the craft and swiftly began to row out to sea, leaving the intimidating figure behind on the dock.
“Huh, bloody fool.” The voice that emanated from beneath the hood had changed dramatically, going from a deep, rough voice to a soft, almost gentle, feminine tone. If it wasn’t for the language she had used, or the fact that she had just sent a pony to his likely death, I’d say it was Fluttershy beneath that hood, so similar were the voices.
I didn’t have to wonder for long. The figure quickly lowered the hood on its all-concealing cloak to reveal a mild pink mare with a golden mane. The mare may have been considered beautiful once, but the scar that marred the left side of her face ruined all that. This was no attractive warrior’s scar, but a horrid disfigurement that twisted her entire face, forcing one eye to remain permanently shut and causing her mouth to twist into a permanent scowl.
Definitely not Fluttershy then.
I had seen some fairly bad injuries sported by the various members of London’s undercity; homeless cripples with twisted legs, criminals sporting everything from burns to missing eyes, the occasional thief who had, at some point in the past, had a finger or even a hand removed as a warning to them. However, this is the first time I’d seen a injury being sported by an Equestrian. It just looked so...out of place.
The mare’s only working eye scoured the pier, causing me to cower behind the pile of boxes. Even with my enchanted coat, I didn’t want to go testing it against such a sharp gaze. The mare grunted, seemingly satisfied that she wasn’t being watched, and began to trot off down the pier into town. As her hoofsteps faded, I made my move. Removing myself from my hiding place, I set off following her, being wary to keep plenty of distance between us.
The mare moved swiftly and with a definite purpose to her step. However, she was far more cautious of pursuers than the stallion had been and kept stopping to check behind her, forcing me to remain at least partially hidden to keep my coat’s enchantment from being seen through. We played our pursuit tango across the docks, with her trying to pull the occasional trick by heading down alleyways only to suddenly spin around to try and catch any pursuers, whilst I remained hidden behind boxes and in doorways, once even going so far as to climb onto a roof and continue my observations from an elevated position.
Eventually though the mare must have figured that, if someone were following her, she would have caught them by now and decided to lead me to her final destination, a large warehouse near the end of the docks. She looked around once more before heading inside, locking the door behind her. A quick inspection of the lock proved that it would, like most pony-made locks, be completely incapable of keeping me out. However, I refrained from opening it and walking through as that would be way too obvious and would probably end up with me getting caught by my overly cautious target.
Instead I slipped around to the back of the building and found another entrance, the lock on which barely managed to last a few seconds against me. I slowly crept inside and closed the door quietly behind me before turning to observe the interior of the warehouse.
Unsurprisingly, the warehouse was being used to store, wouldn’t you know it, wares of all things. Wooden crated with labels on the side were piled high, forming corridors and twisting mazes in the large storage space. The only sign I could see of where my target might have gone is a faint light coming from the back corner. Now it was my turn to be the cautious one, checking around every crate and down every aisle as I moved through the warehouse.
Eventually, I reached the source of the light. It was coming from out of a small room built into the back of the warehouse, presumably the manager’s office. Whilst the room lacked windows, being only a cheap room, the light was managing to escape through the cracks in the top and bottom of the door.
Kneeling down, I placed my eye against the keyhole and peered through, searching for my target and, more importantly, who she might be meeting with. I was met with disappointment though as the room appeared to be completely empty. Where the hell did she go then? Maybe some kind of secret entrance to an underground lair?
If I were back on Earth then that postulation would have seemed ludicrous. However, this was Equestria, home of cliché cartoon villains, and thus, was entirely reasonable.
I grasped the door handle and, to my surprise, found it to be unlocked. Well, if people aren’t going to bother locking doors after themselves it’s almost like they want me to break in and rob them. Pushing the door inwards, I walked inside, quickly glancing around for anything that may obviously conceal a hidden doorway. Things like out of place carpets, or bookshelves, or a candlestick that doubled as a secret lever. You know, the sort of stuff owners of haunted castles must have shipped in from specialist dealers.
“Ahem,” A sickly sweet voice suddenly said, causing me to freeze in place and slowly turn my head upwards towards the ceiling. There, concealed in the rafters, was several pegasi, as well as the mare I had followed here. “Welcome,” she continued, “to the beatdown warehouse. How can we help you with your beatdown needs today?”
I began to slowly back up towards the doorway, countering her predatory grin with a nervous smile of my own. “Hey,” I said, trying to keep the rising fear out of my voice, “I think I might be a bit lost, must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. So...I’ll just be leaving and, you know, be out of your hair.”
I turned around, prepared to flee, only to be confronted by several dozen more ponies. These were all unicorns and earth ponies who must have been hidden in the warehouse I had just passed through. Combined with the pegasi who had now landed behind me, I was well and truly surrounded.
“I don’t suppose we could discuss this like civilized folk?” I asked, my eyes darting round for an escape route whilst my mouth tried to stall for time.
“Doubt it.” The mare replied and, with a gesture of her head, set her companions on me, killing any chance I had of escaping.
“Bollocks.” I managed to get out before a furry storm of pony flesh slammed into me, almost immediately plunging me into darkness.