• Published 2nd Jun 2015
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The Dusk Guard Saga: Beyond the Borderlands - Viking ZX



Blade Sunchaser is a griffon on the run. Six days ago she was in a jail cell. Now, she's out, and she’s got a job to do, a job with a payoff bigger than any she’s earned before. And she'll do whatever it takes to see her mission through.

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Chapter 1 - Northgait

Northwest Rail Line - Six days after the ERS incident

This is unfair, Sergeant Nimbus thought as he turned his head to look out the window once again. Completely unfair.

The train window began to fog as his breath hit it, the cool glass first growing blurred, then white as the chill outside the window turned the wet coating to frost. As close to the tail end of the summer as it was further south in Equestria, this far north it was already cold enough that there was a thick blanket of snow outside the train, a white carpet that covered the landscape like frosting on a cake.

Cake, he thought as he shifted his wings. I won’t be seeing any of that for a while. He winced as one of his feathers caught against his armor, and he glared down at the golden-colored plate, as if it were the cause of all his troubles. It wasn’t though. No, his commanding officer had made it very clear what the source of his problems was.

The problem is you, Nimbus,” he’d said, shaking his head. “Not the Captain of the Dusk Guard, not the specialist who called in for support, but you. And until you’ve figured that out, you’re going to be on ice-duty.

Ice-duty. One of the dullest, most mind-numbing and dreary of all the duties that could be assigned a member of the Guard. And one of the coldest, most hoof-numbing as well. Assigned only when a pony’s number came up—or when the pony in question had done something particularly stupid. At least, that’s what he’d been told. I never expected that I’d be the one being told I’d done something exceptionally stupid. He gave his head a small shake and then fixed his eyes back on the snow-covered landscape outside the window. It’s all that stupid little pegasus filly’s fault, crying to her commander like that.

And now I’m going to spend the next few months in Northgait. Northgait! He wanted to growl as he thought about it. Right into the winter, too. He turned his head to the side, taking a quick look at the rest of the Guard that filled the passenger car. A few of them looked excited, but they were all young, new to the experience. Most of the car’s passengers looked resigned to their fate, and even a few looked as morose as he did. They were the ones who knew what this new duty meant.

Northgait … He scowled again, shifting his wings as he watched the white landscape flash by beneath grey skies. The furthest, most northern habitation in all of Equestria, if indeed the small fortification could be called a habitation. Nestled in the narrow Diamond Ridge Pass, the lone gap through the Western Crystal Mountains and the last stop on the North-West Line, Northgait was little more than a large wall that spanned the gap, an official marker of the line that was Equestria’s northern border. Past the great gate of the fort, well … anything past that was lawless territory. An untamed, ice-encrusted wilderness known, fittingly enough, as the Ocean of Endless Ice.

Untamed, but not unoccupied. There were whole villages up there, though Nimbus couldn’t imagine who would want live up there. The place was unclaimed by any nation, a lawless wild zone where criminal and adventurer alike was welcomed. Ponies, griffons, minotaurs … anyone was welcome as long as you could take care of yourself and eke out a living on the ice, which for most meant harvesting the strange ethereal crystals that gave the Ocean its unique properties and trading them for most of the basic necessities of life.

That was what was in the rail car behind him. In addition to standing guard over the border for the next few months, his job at Northgait was going to involve overseeing the slow, steady amounts of trade from the periodic caravans that were sent from the various towns.

It wasn’t worth it, in his opinion. The Ocean never thawed, never saw spring, summer, or any kind of wealth. It did see dangerous storms, mortal peril, and groups of marauding pirates though. Nimbus shook his head. No paycheck was worth dealing with pirates.

Then again, just because it was other sapients working for that paycheck didn’t mean he couldn’t cut himself into a bit of it. He glanced around the compartment, eyeing the various other ponies who looked less than happy to be there, and made a mental note of each of them.

This job might be as cold as a night without the moon, he thought as the forward door to the carriage opened, a griffon with black-and-tan feathers passing through on her way to the restroom in the last car. But if I can make the right “friends,” I still might be able to make this a little more bearable. After all, one of his new duties would be customs inspections. Surely if he could get a few other like minded individuals—ones that like him were just here as a scapegoat for somepony else’s failings—then it wouldn’t be hard to introduce a few new “steps” to the current procedure. His scowl slipped away for a moment as he considered the possibilities. Surely there had to be something that those crazy sapients in the Ocean wanted to slide past Equestria’s borders.

But maybe that was thinking too far ahead, he chided himself as the rear door opened, the griffon stretching her wings and letting out a yawn as she walked through the car again. Smuggling .. that was a little risky. Just saying that the import tax had taken a little hike though … He watched the griffon as she moved past him and then out the forward door, bobbing her head to some unknown tune that was coming from a pair of headphones she was wearing.

I wonder why she’d be going to Northgait? he thought as the door slid shut behind the dark-colored griffon. Maybe she works up there? She’d certainly looked muscular enough, although her posture had been poor. Yeah, probably going to cross the border. Ruffian. I wonder how much she’d be willing to pay to make the crossing a bit … smoother?

Ah well, he thought as he turned his attention back to the cold, white landscape outside the window. The Crystal Mountains were visible now, gargantuan peaks that stretched into the sky, their jagged, snow-covered peaks so high that even pegasi didn’t dare fly to their tips. Border crossings can take a day or two if you’ve not done it regularly, thanks to the security checks. If I’m in luck, I might be able to make her my first bonus paycheck. How much should I charge, I wonder? Ten bits? Twenty? Or should I offer a special package? Five bits for me to “miss” your bag.

He was still puzzling over the rudimentary numbers of what an operation like that could make and how many extra ponies he would need to sway to his line of thinking when a private stepped up next to his bench and flashed him a nervous salute.

“What?” he barked, not exactly keen on having to start his math all over. It was one of the younger privates, and at his question, the nervous-looking pegasus gave a slight jump.

“Uh, sorry sir,” the pegasus stammered, glancing back at a second Guard pegasus that was standing near the front door of the car. Another private. “Private Storm Glass, sir. I noticed something funny about a feather that fell off of that griffon that passed through—”

“And?” Nimbus asked, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. Maybe the two young recruits wanted to return it. "What?”

“Well, we just wanted to go check it out,” the private said, his voice gaining a little bit of assurance as he spoke. “You see, the color—”

Check it out? What, are they into griffons? “Sure, whatever,” he said, shaking his head and looking back out the window. What a sorry excuse for Guard, checking out some wing on a griffon. “Knock yourself out, colt.”

“But the coloration isn’t—”

“Do you want to check it out, or do you want me to tell you to stay here?” Nimbus asked, feeling a little bit of his ire leak out as he gave the private the same glower he’d been giving the landscape a few minutes ago.

“No, sir, thank you sir,” the private said, his wings twitching as he stepped back. “Sorry to bother you, sir.”

You’d better be sorry, colt, Nimbus thought, not even bothering to return the private’s salute as the pegasus turned and left, trotting out the front door of the car with his friend. And you’d better pray I don’t end up in charge of your shift at Northgait. He turned his attention back to the window, lazily tracing his eyes over the passing scenery. Stupid colt wanted to check out the coloration? he thought as he watched a small group of trees pass by in a blur. What was so special about her coloration. That black was dingy anyway. It looked horrid. Not like a good, solid—

The window of the passenger car ahead of them burst outward, a white and gold figure tumbling through it. Nimbus gaped, his thoughts coming to a complete stop as shock seemed to slow the sequence of events. He saw the pegasus Guard tumble through the air, bits and pieces of glass and frame scattering around his body. He saw him flare his wings, reacting just like any well-trained pegasus would when finding themselves thrown free of a moving object. He saw the colt—Private Storm Glass, a small part of his mind informed him—right himself in the air, wings beating to keep pace with the train even as fragments of glass crashed into the snow below him, scattering small pillows of powder as they hit.

And then he saw the tree just as the poor colt slammed into it head first, coming to a complete and total stop. An eyeblink, maybe, and the colt was gone, pulled off into the distance by the receding landscape.

Sergeant Nimbus’s brain was still struggling to catch up with what in the name of Equestria he had just seen, when he heard another crash, followed by yells of surprise and shock from the ponies around him as a second Guard, this one also a pegasus, crashed into a snowdrift on the other side of the train.

Then the training took over, and the entire group was surging for the door, pulling him along with it towards the screams of shock and alarm coming from the forward passenger car. There was a strange, keening cry, a cry that set his teeth on edge as the first of the Guard leapt into the compartment and saw the strange, oddly-colored griffon standing in the aisle, her wings flared in something he vaguely recognized as a professional fighting stance and wide grin on her face. She gave another cry as the first of the Guard jumped towards her, and he flood of worry hit his stomach like a brick of salt. This griffon was facing down two dozen or more Royal Guard.

And she was cheering.

* * *

Blade let out a cheer as the first Guard jumped, completely ignoring the horn poking out of his head in favor of the more direct approach. Not that she was sure it would have done any good. Magic and her hadn’t gotten along lately. She’d had to settle for a natural dye to conceal her color, one that had left her looking like some sort of depressed teen griffon with a bit of mange. But whatever the Guard could’ve done with his horn, it definitely would have been more useful than just jumping at her.

She snapped her wings back, throwing herself forward and bringing up one set of talons to grab the unicorn’s foreleg and pull. She had a brief moment where she could see the stunned look of surprise in his eyes, and then she was yanking him back, adding her own momentum to what he already had and throwing her other forelimb across his back for added measure. Then he was past her, his head impacting the bench she’d been sitting on with a satisfying clunk that left the tip of his horn poking out the other side. He’d have a sore horn when he woke up.

If her casual defeat of the first three ponies had scared some sense into the rest of the group, they didn’t show it. They surged towards her, rushing past the scattering passengers and staggering their approaches as to not bunch up and get in each other’s way.

You just had to buy a ticket on the train that had a car full of Guard on it, didn’t you? she asked herself as she began defending herself in earnest. You couldn’t wait until tomorrow, could you? No, you had to look at them, tell yourself you could handle it, and buy the ticket anyway. She met an incoming Guard’s blow, catching it in her talons and then ramming her head into his throat. He fell away gasping, his hooves pawing at his throat.

You’ll live, she thought as she snapped a wing into another Guard’s head, her bone meeting the pegasus’s helmet with a ring that left her wing hurting but him shaking his head in stunned shock. Contractual part of the job, that—don’t kill anypony unless you have too. Annoying, but workable. And there was that “unless you have to” clause.

Her elbow took another Guard in the nose, blood blossoming out of the mare’s nostrils as the bone parted with a wet pop. Tough luck, Blade thought as she snapped her wings down, lifting into the air above the benches. Should've paid attenti—

Someone crashed into her back and she let out a startled screech as she slammed back into the floor. Someone—one of the pegasi, actually—had gotten around behind her. She was up again almost instantly, her rear legs connecting a grazing blow on the pegasus’s chest that sent him spinning to one side, and then she had to deal with three Guard who were coming at her from the front in classic three-pronged attack.

Well, almost, she noted as the forward-most two charged at her in a synchronized motion. The third, a pegasus sergeant, seemed to be hanging back a little.

Coward. Her pulse spiked as she met the assault, and she let out a whoop as she threw herself into the fight, her wings and limbs beating as she slammed into the left Guard. He went down hard, the combined weight of her larger-than-average bulk crushing him to the ground before he could react. His partner dove in, horn lighting up even as he charged, and Blade spun, whipping her claws across the Guard’s chest. Sparks flew as her namesake talons scraped across the golden metal, throwing the unicorn’s body to one side, but the blow was weak, the trimmed tips of her shortened claws failing to snag.

I am never cutting my talons to go undercover again, Blade thought as the unicorn crashed into her chest with a grunt, forcing some of the wind from her lungs. They were barely half their former size, their easily identifiable length and sharpness gone. It’s going to be weeks before they’re back at their full usefulness again.

She snapped her wing up even as the unicorn jammed his horn into the side of her head. There was a brief, lavender flash that filled her vision, and she could feel the muscles in her face and side starting to lock up as the stunning spell took effect … and then it was gone, fading even as she felt a surge of energy rush across her. Her wing had done the trick, apparently, hitting the unicorn right on the side of the horn and breaking his concentration, and the spell hadn’t been strong enough to stick.

She was getting really lucky with magic lately.

A closed fist to the base of his jaw was enough to finish the job, but she could see more Guard through the windows and at the other end of the car. They were wising up now, boxing her in. She’d have to move fast. This was a Plan B scenario.

But first … The unicorn she was nearly standing on drove a hoof into her right hip, and she felt a spasm of pain as the muscle convulsed. The coward, apparently spotting the opening, darted in, raising a hoof with a triumphant yell.

She let out a loud screech, so loud it made the icy wind rushing through the two destroyed windows look quiet, and felt a twinge of triumph as the sergeant’s ears snapped down, his eyes narrowing reflexively. When she’d tried this trick on Steel Song, it hadn’t worked.

But then, Steel had been a bıçakların ustası, a blademaster. Not some cowardly Guard.

She went for both targets at once, dropping all her weight forward onto one leg—which just happened to shove the downed unicorn’s face into the carpet with a meaty thump that his helmet didn’t quite give the impression of negating—while snapping her back leg out and catching the coward with a stunning blow to the muzzle that ended his forward rush with a scream of pain.

She let out another whoop as she did a quick turn, scanning the compartment. The pegasus who had hit her in the back was lining up for another run, and there were two more pegasi guarding the forward door, each with what looked like a small, hastily thrown together thundercloud. There were more pegasi in the air outside, and several unicorns were coming from the rear door. The passengers—what few had been on the train in the first place—had ducked to the floor and were doing their best to stay out of sight.

It was time to go. Definitely. There was a chance she could win—she was a close-quarter-combat expert, after all—but there wasn’t even a reason to stick around. Not when now she had no choice but to go with Plan B. That was alright. Plan B was her favorite option anyway, and would save her a day or so of travel.

But first … She whirled around and grabbed the moaning sergeant as the pegasus Guard came around for another attack, his hooves downward in a classic dive. Her eyes searched the windows outside the train, looking for—yes, there they were. Perfect.

She yanked the sergeant to his hooves, batting away a hoof as he struggled. The unicorns that had been slowly approaching her let out yells. They thought she was taking a hostage.

“Sorry to disappoint, guys,” she called, wrapping her talons beneath the sergeant’s chest plate and pulling him to his hooves. “We’re not doing the classic hostage standoff today. Not my style.”

“But I really don’t like commanders who hide behind their squad and back out of a three-pronged attack because they’re cowards,” she said, spinning, yanking the sergeant from his hooves and throwing him into the air towards the approaching pegasus. “Back to your side!”

Her muscles burned under the exertion, but she grinned as the gambit worked. The pegasus came to a shocked halt as his fellow Guard crashed into him, training taking over and forcing him to react by grabbing his commander under the forelegs. Which meant he was completely unprepared for Blade’s attack a second later as she shot by, her hind legs kicking off of his side and sending both ponies crashing through yet another window, out into the open air and—tree.

Blade laughed as she snapped past the two pegasi guarding the door, her increased speed from the kick letting her sweep through the opening before either of them could react or bring their thunderclouds into play. There were startled yells from behind her as the Guard realized what she was doing, and several spells shot past her, one grazing a hind leg just lightly enough to make it tingle, and then she was in the crew car, slamming the heavy door shut behind her and hitting the lock. It wouldn’t hold them back for long, especially when any of the pegasus Guard could just fly to the other door, but she wasn’t planning on staying there anyway.

For Plan B she needed the engine.

There was only one pony sitting in the crew compartment, a blue earth pony with a clock for a cutie mark. The porter, from the look of him. And from the way he was trembling, he’d already figured out what was going on.

“You like music?” Blade asked. She pulled the headphones from her neck and disentangled the cord from her right limb. “The player’s back in the first carriage somewhere,” she said. “Sorry about the mess.” She tossed the headphones onto the table and then moved for the front door. There were already thumps coming from the back door by the time she moved to the next car.

She took the jump over the tender quickly, her eyes scanning the sky for any overwatch, and was rewarded with a yell as she dropped onto the back of the engine. This close, the heavy chuff of the engine made it hard to hear anything else, and she kicked the door to the cab open and jumped in, her talons at the ready.

A stunned unicorn looked up from the controls in surprise. “Hey!” she said, her eyes widening. “You can’t be in—”

“Where’s the throttle?” Blade asked, sliding the door shut behind her and running her eyes over the collection of valves and wheels.

“What?”

“The throttle!” Blade said, spinning around and looking at the pale-green unicorn. “Which one makes the train go faster?”

“This one,” the mare said, tapping a bar that was resting by her hoof. “But what—”

Blade grabbed it, shoving it all the way forward, and the chugging sound of the engine took on a new intensity.

“Wait, you can’t—”

“Sorry,” Blade said, giving the engineer a grin. “I’m jacking your ride. You might want to disconnect the rest of the cars and ride things out with them. This trip’s about to get a little … fast.”

For a moment the mare hesitated, her eyes darting between Blade’s and the talon she’d wrapped around the buried throttle. Blade could already feel the train building speed, and she risked a glance at the window. They’d entered the pass. Northgait was just minutes away.

“Last stop to get off,” Blade said, tilting her head to one side. “And unless you’ve got wings—”

The mare bolted, the back door slamming against the back housing of the cab as she scrambled over the tender and jumped to the crew car. Blade saw two pegasi Guard drop from the sky, landing on the front of the crew car, probably to see what was going on. Then there was a metal shriek, and the engine jumped forward, picking up more and more speed as it decoupled from the rest of the train.

A pegasus dropped to the metal deck behind the open door and Blade’s fist caught him in the muzzle, sending him stumbling back before he deployed his wings and took to the air again.

My ride, she thought as the remainder of the train began to drop away on the tracks behind her. And I’m taking it all the way to the end.

The falling snow looked as if it was in a hurricane now, sweeping past the sides of the rapidly moving engine and sucking into a spiraling vortex behind it. The train groaned as it hit a gentle bend in the tracks, and Blade shifted herself to one side, spreading her wings and getting ready to bolt if the engine lifted free. But it didn’t, and she got her first view of Northgait as the locomotive swept around the turn.

It wasn’t much, nothing more than a few wooden homes and public businesses that grew around a small train yard at the south end of the village, along with a few more built into the sides of the pass. The rail line continued on for a bit longer, a necessity for longer collections of cars, before terminating a few dozen feet away from the base of the wall itself.

The pass was narrow, so the wall didn’t have to be wide. It was perhaps fifty, maybe sixty feet across, and half that again high. It was also thick enough that the Guard that had been assigned to watch the border lived inside of it and patrolled the top. That wall marked Equestria’s northernmost border. Past that, the mountains dropped away sharply to icy, wind swept forests that made up the southern end of the territory known as the Ocean of Endless Ice.

Past that wall, Equestria had no sovereignty.

She gave the bar another tap, but it was already buried. The engine sounded as if it was dying now, like it was fleeing from Tartarus itself. About the opposite, really, but she wasn’t about to quibble terms. A quick glance out the windows showed that some of the pegasi had already fallen back, abandoning the pursuit because they couldn’t keep up.

Up ahead, at the train station, colored lights began to flash. Some sort of warning, probably, most likely telling her to slow down.

She laughed. Not today. It wasn’t part of the plan.

The lights began to flash more urgently, and she grabbed a pair of binoculars that had been sitting by the controls. The track ahead was clear all the way to the end. There was nothing in her way.

The lights stopped flashing, and she could see ponies clearing away in a panic, galloping as fast as they could away from the tracks.

Here we go, she thought as the engine shot past the station. Guard were taking to the air above the wall now, alerted to the incoming iron elephant that was barreling towards them. Blade turned and jumped out the back door, holding her wings tightly to her sides as she climbed up the tender, turned herself forward and waited. Some of the Guard pointed at her, calling their fellows' attention to her. The end of the track, a meager barrier of metal and wood, rushed up to meet her.

Three, two, one … Now! She spread her wings and jumped, pushing off hard as the train plowed through the stop at the end of the track and continued onward, its heavy mass barely quivering. She rose into the air as if she’d been fired from a ballista, her wing muscles straining as she tried to hold them steady. She was past the first Guard before he’d even known what was coming, and she shoved her wings down, climbing even as the train below her began to slide to one side.

She shot over the wall with a whoop, past another too-slow Guard, just as the train crashed into the heavy wooden door that separated Equestria from its northern neighbor, smashing the old wood into toothpicks. The rear end of the locomotive was off the ground now, the front end digging in and whipping the back around. And then, like a kicked child’s toy that carried far too much weight and impact to actually be such, it began to roll, snow billowing around it as it crashed into rock and dirt, metal coming apart.

Then, with a crack that threatened to deafen her ears, the overstressed boiler exploded, a massive cloud of steam and metal fragments shooting out in all directions. She was too far up for the heat of the steam to bother her, but she let out a gasp of pain as a sharp metal edge sliced through her side. Something else sharp and hot punched through her wing, and she gritted her teeth together as she began to lose altitude.

She slammed into a snowbank at the base of a tree, landing a little harder than she’d intended and leaving twin bright red scratches across the snow from where her wing and side were bleeding. But …

She’d made it. She turned, raising one fist and shaking it at the distant wall of Northgait. “Sonra görüşürüz, suckers!” A couple of the Guard spotted her and pointed, but she could make out the shaking heads of their superiors from where she was. They carried no jurisdiction on the Ocean, nor did they have any authority to break the centuries long line that had been drawn between the two lands’ borders. She was the Ocean’s problem now. They couldn’t follow.

She let out a laugh that morphed into a wince of pain, and she sat back, one paw going to her side and coming away wet.

“Blasted boiler,” Blade muttered, glaring down at the wound. If I’m lucky, it’s not a deep wound. But my wing ... She paused, checking her wing and giving it a faint flex. I could have sworn I saw something punch through the flesh at the back. There was a red, oozing slice, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had felt earlier. Come to think of it, the wound on her side didn’t hurt that much either. The bleeding was already slowing, and as she licked at it, the sting of her saliva making her wince, it stopped bleeding altogether.

She glanced back over at her wing and jerked, her eyes widening as she thought she saw a small spark of pink jump across the wound. Must've been a trick of the light, she thought as she gave it a lick. It looked fine now.

But she was tired. She gave her head a shake, reminding herself that she hadn’t had time to grab her belongings before leaving. Still, she had her bit bag tied under one foreleg, though empty as it was it wasn’t going to do much good. There had to be a small outpost nearby, this close to the border. Something with some supplies for sale she could then use to help her get to Ruffian’s Wharf. She gave her wounded wing an experimental flex and then nodded. It would hurt, but she could fly. She grinned, gave the wall of Northgait one last look, watching as the various ponies scurried across it, and then spread her wings, pushing them down and lifting herself from the icy ground.

She had made it to the Ocean. Now the job could really start.

But first she had to get to Ruffian’s Wharf.

Count of Laws Broken: 37
Damage Value (In Bits): 32,134

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