> Brutal Black - Scorched Earth
>  by The Crazy Canuck
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter Zero - Prelude to War
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recommended musical accompaniment, Heavy Metal Thunder or Brotherhood of Man

Do not be like the fools who think they will be heard and revered for their many words. Rather, act in secret, and your father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
Wholesale Slaughter. It was emblazoned in three languages across the front of every uniform and every black landing wagon. The emblem was a Cornara Proven trident inside the mouth of The Griffin Steel Fang snake head being impaled on the dagger of the Zebra Silent Blades. The center was ringed by the gear of the Saddle Arabian Heavy Weights, the oak leave wreath of the White Tail, the bat wings of the Black wings, the spear head of the Griff Kingdom Professional Army, and the horns of the Minotaur’s with a silver coin between them for the Karkayans. Beneath the emblem was the more ambiguous crossed alicorn and lightning bolt. While the horn could be for any nation with a focus on strong single horned entities, the lightning bolt was a direct shot at the Wonderbolts.
This complicated emblem served but a single purpose, it was a direct challenge to the elite fighting forces of every noteworthy nation that held its emblem sacred, Wholesale was taking all challengers. Three medallions worn on necks, three fresh tails tied to armour, and three dead black wings bobbing in the ocean thirty miles back could attest to that. 
The four landers themselves were of note, they were Griffin light armored sky wagons sold at auction for cash and since then stripped of their armoured canopy to make them light. Each was pulled by two pegasus in quick release harnesses and carried six occupants.
The weapons carried by the occupants could be had at any flee market for a hoof full of bits and a smile or pulled off a corpse in any warzone. The black armour worn by the occupants was home made but used lightweight steel Zebra recon plates stacked two thick. The helmets they all wore could trace their origins back to a robbery in Cornara and contained mild manipulation talismans as well as radios.
Every pony in the group had his mane trimmed and tail wrapped and clipped to resemble a zebra’s. Even the real zebras were dressed up like ponies pretending to be zebras. They then all pained themselves black. The exceptions to this were the two griffins flying with the group.
The wagons that now raced across the glistening sea at break neck speed were heading directly for the port city of Ambrosia. The team could be black ops, pirates, a burn team, mercenaries, or even soldiers from any country pretending to be any of the above. One thing was for sure though, this would not end well for Ambrosia as Wholesale Slaughter certainly intended to live up to their name.
A single thought ran through the minds of every member of Wholesale Slaughter, there was a case of gems onboard the Winter Thunder. A single collection of high grade gems unlike anything seen since the Celestia blockade was put into effect, and it had been allowed to get into harbour.
They had been waiting on intel to figure exactly what ship it was on. Out on the open sea it would have been as easy as losing a sword fight. Now it might be impossible.
The four wagons raced over the water focused on the growing red hull of the ship. As they neared only a handful of crew members even looked up, those that did had little time to process what was happening. As the four wagons flew low overhead they breathed a sigh of relief. A relief that died the second the wagons circled back and began heading straight for them again.
The fear of pirates is lifted from a sailor’s heart when he is within shouting distance of friendly land and under the watchful eye of the harbour guns. It is completely forgotten as the cargo is being unloaded from the ship itself. However, the sight of a determined enemy, too close for the big guns and too fast to raise the defences will still plunge the icy fangs of terror deep into a brave man’s soul.
These griffin sky tank conversions have a couple neat tricks to them, one of which is the oversized breaks and lift motor on the now light craft meant it could land on and take off of almost anything. Flying low the pegusie detached, dropping the wagon onto the deck before circling around to provide cover. The lander slammed onto the deck and almost bounced enough to flip over while the wheels screeched trying to find purchase on the slippery deck. As soon as the carts wheels first touched down they tilted the motor forward and slammed on the breaks throwing everypony against their straps. As the cart skidded across the deck it slowed enough for five of the six ponies onboard to jump clear to provide cover for the one still on the lander.
Stunned sailors barely jumped out of the way as the speeding craft fell from the sky and skidded along the ship’s deck. Impossible as it seemed their ship had been boarded by pirates in broad daylight and in full view of other ships, the harbour guards, and a navy speedboat. They probably realized as much as the pirates did the incredible time pressure. They did not realize exactly what would happen next.
“Who are you?” Demanded one black clad pony, a unicorn, as he pointed toward a nearby sailor.
“Me? I just work for the harbour unloading ships!” Rushed a terrified brown earth pony. 
A knife flew out of seemingly nowhere and stabbed into the ponies gut slashing down his bowels at the same time the unicorn spun and sent a double buck into the stallions face. As the stallion hit the deck the unicorn slipped the razor sharp dagger under his ribs and into one lung before twisting the handle driving the blade into his other lung. A second later and before the stallion could grasp what had happened he was being hauled across the deck and flipped over the railing of the ship on the water side.
He realized he was in serious trouble as he tumbled through the air letting out a hideous tortured and drowned scream. There was a splash as he slammed into the cold water. Upon hitting the water he went under like anypony would do. To his complete shock he kept sinking. In horror the stallion realized all the gas in his body was escaping from his wounds and being replaced with stinging salt water. The last thing he saw as he sank was one of the 50 foot harbour eels passing between him and the sun.
“Okay,” Said the unicorn throwing the bloodied knife from hoof to hoof. “Who knows what is on this boat?”
Some of the boarders sprinted into open hatches on the ship while others began smashing boxes open and scattering their contents across the deck. Fruits and vegetables were smashed underhoof along with jars of exquisite smelling oils and wines. Two unicorns busily began tearing open bags of spices and spilling their contents. Before long two zebras (or earth ponies it was hard to tell) dragged the captain onto the deck.
…
“It’s no good!” said the unicorn into the microphone built into his helmet. The captain says the package was unloaded from the ship already.”
“Well get off the boat and find me something!” Came a harsh, raspy voice over the radio. “The rest of you get hooves on the ground now!”
“You get how many boxes are down there right?” Asked Blaze, the pegasus leader of fire team.
“Get down there and find something! I don’t much care what the something is if it gives us a cover story!” The raspy voice demanded.
The sky wagon carrying Fire team flew in low enough for two unicorns to leap out onto the ground before the whole wagon came in for landing.
Serpent landed fine while Phoenix opted to land on the back of a fleeing mare and pin her to the ground. 
“I wish I had the time to have fun with you.” Phoenix grunted out syllable by syllable accentuating each word by stabbing a knife somewhere at complete random into the mare’s body. He stood up then paused for a second, listening to the shrieking mare. He almost looked surprised by the mare’s shrieks. “Smoke, she’s not dead?”
“Well who do I look like? The solutions guy? Cut off one of her legs or something and see if that works.” Smoke replied.
The mare stopped shrieking and shifted to look up at her attacker.
“N-no please! I can die on my own please!”
Phoenix turned to look at Smoke cocking his head and shrugging his shoulders.
“Is that not the most fucked up thing you’ve ever heard said?”
“It’s got to be up at the top somewhere. Let her to it then we have work to do.”
Fires were already burning, started by incendiaries thrown off of the sky wagons or from fire dripping magically off of pegasus wings. Everywhere ponies were running and screaming. 
-Pirate Busters Were Onboard - Locate Them- The words flashed across every screen and everyone that had landed started running, if even just to put on a show at this point.
-They Will Have The Package-  came more intel over the screens in the helmets. The captain must be spilling his guts.

Scorch and Blaze (the two pegasus who had been pulling the cart Fire team had touched down in) circled around looking for the inevitable resistance. There were a few pegasus appearing in the distance but with all the commotion and the fact they didn’t dare come close by themselves it was impossible to tell if they were civilian or part of the port guard.
“I can’t believe there weren’t war ships in the harbour.” Yelled Blaze.
The two spotted a pegasus nearby trying to fly for it. The two slammed into him from opposite sides and snapped one of his wings sending him screaming back to earth. He hit a vegetable stand.
On the ground merchants were having their goods smashed and strewn about by fleeing civilians as teams desperately searching for hidden gems. One merchant screamed so loud and incessantly in a foreign tounge that a black clad zebra shot him in the head just to shut him up. Of course this causing a unicorn to burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“He was saying don’t shoot me!” the unicorn resumed laughing.
Smoke and Phoenix kicked down the door to a house and burst in on six surprised looking earth ponies. Two Mares, two stallions, and two young stallions were all sitting around a table. All eyes locked for a split second. All eight sets of eyes looked at the table and the two griffin sky gun conversion rifles sitting on it. All eight looked up in synchronization when the silenced rifles hanging around Snake and Phoenix’s necks flew into action.
Each started on the pony on their edge with a full auto burst. The bullets tore into the offered flesh like dogs into a gut pile. The fragmenting bullets for the most part did not exit but instead blew great meaty chunks out of their white and brown hides where they entered. Blood and liquidated flesh flew through the air to settle wetly on any surface like red snow. The mare hit the ground with five holes in her and a confused look on her face and the stallion on the table unable to get a shell chambered.
The tirade of bullets only slightly paused as the carnage advanced onto the next pony closer to the middle. Bullets continued to beat the dead horses as the fields of fire crossed. The pitch of the rifles starting at a low kwump and rising in pitch until it was almost as loud as an unsilenced gunshot.
Smoke, plaster, and the smell of blood hung thick in the air that suddenly seemed impossibly quiet. The ordeal had lasted little over three seconds from first shot to last. In less than a minute the room had gone from a normal family having tea to an abattoir. 
The pair rocked fresh clips into their guns and continued through the house. Smoke paused briefly to dip his silencer in a bucket of water and was rewarded with a hiss of cooling steel for his effort while Phoenix opened the front door. Phoenix, never one for a lot of words in a stressful situation did not deviate from character. 
“Harbour guards here!” he screamed jumping away from the door and opening fire on the street. 
Walking past them were 30 lightly armoured stallions armed with rifles and shotguns headed toward the docks. When they came under fire they scattered diving behind vegetable and silk stands or whatever else they could use for cover and began shooting at the house where the fire was coming from.
Smoke stripped off his silencer, jumped onto the floor and opened fire through the doorway blind firing into the street.
“Scorch! Blaze! We need some fire on the street!” Smoke screamed into his microphone as he jockeyed another clip into the gun. The return fire was filling the air with dust and reducing what had remained of the home to scrap.
Phoenix rolled over screaming when a tumbling rifle bullet slammed into his armour. Shaking his head he got back on task he began hosing down a fruit cart with bullets. The fruit exploded with visceral splatters of multi coloured juice and a dead guard slumped over behind it. Phoenix’s silencer was glowing red hot.
Up in the air the two pegasus got the message loud and clear and guessed easily that the gunfight breaking out in the street was where they needed to be.
“Alright let’s cook ‘em!” Scorch yelled over his com to Blaze. 
The two flew apart and approached the street from opposite sides and passed each other directly over the group of soldiers.  They continued down the street for another hundred meters or so before sharply turning up in a big loop. They met at the top of the loop and just hung there for a second before rocketing back down toward the ground on the others contrail. 
They sped toward the ground only flaring their wings just above the rooftops. The wind on their wings sounded like hurricanes. As the two raced toward each other something truly magical started to come out of these aerial acrobatics, liquid fire was beading off their flared feathers like water off a duck turning the street below into an inferno which clung to anything that could burn. This was the beauty of the Buccaneer Blaze.
Just before the two collided they tipped onto their sides to let the other pass and bonked each other’s outstretched hooves in a double high five.
Smoke was alerted to the change by the sound of ground shaking winds and the heat of the blaze that something had changed before he registered that the shooting had stopped. Getting off the floor and shaking off the dust he moved to the doorway to look out. He saw thirty or so screaming ponies running around in the street trying in doomed panic to tear off their flaming cloths and even their own fur. 
“Nothing quite as sweet as the sound of a bunch of enemies who didn’t expect to burn suddenly being on fire eh?” he asked Phoenix who was still on the floor rubbing his shoulder.
“I think I fucked this silencer.” He said as a response.
Snake stood and watched the burning men a while longer while he loaded another clip into his rifle. The one mercy of fire is that those engulfed by it die really fast. Already the whole group was still.
“Come on, we have pirate busters to find.” Said Smoke, as he began running through the blackened streets. Fire still burning where it had found purchase. 
A black clad pegasus looking quite like an alicorn in his unicorn helmet on was doing his best to keep all the pegasus on the ground with the help of a converted griffin air gun and its hundred round plastic drums. He was hoofing another magazine into the hot gun when something cracked past him. He had just enough time to register he was being shot at when a second 50 cal slammed into his belly. His armour, some of the finest steel plate ever stolen, stopped the projectile. However, the shell sent the plate up like a pile driver, shattering his ribs and sent them stabbing into his lungs. His mask filled with his own blood long before he smashed into the ground and smashed like a bucket of eggs. 
Blaze noticed the flush of pegasus that were suddenly getting away rather than being kept down by an absent wholesaler.
“Boss one of our rides just got swatted!” he yelled into his mike.

On the other side of the ship yard Turtle and Bear frantically ran through the terrified crowd nearly causing a crowd crush everywhere they went. Through the flashes of fabrics, hair, and goods Bear caught a glimpse of what he was looking for. A stallion in a green cloak carrying a massive magazine fed scoped rifle. Then he was gone. 
Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He didn’t have much time to think about it as a voice came over his head set almost as he spotted the apparition.
“Everyone form up! There is nothing hear for us and we are leaving!” roared the voice on the radio.
“Request a stay. Pirate Breaker spotted.”
“Granted, animal team engage the breakers, everyone else assemble on the docks and make ready.”
Bear and Turtle looked at the panicked mass of bodies then at each other. Spotting the breaker once might have been a fluke but to see him again would take real luck.
“Are we on the menu right now? What kind of rifle did he have?” asked Turtle.
“Ya, looked like something Zebra. Big mag and a harmonica on the pipe.” Replied Bear as he franticly scanned the rooftops. “I think he ran between those two houses.” He continued pointing to where the apparition had disappeared and sprinted towards it.”
The pegasus EZ was flying overhead and spotted the two black clad ponies sprinting down the ally and straight into the set up of a green cloaked sniper. Acting fast he dive bombed the sniper from above. 
‘No time to warn them,’ he thought. ‘luckily those bastards never think to look up!’ he thought with a smirk as he held out his hooves to slam into the target.
No sooner had the thought entered his mind than the earth pony sniper rolled onto his back pointing the rifle straight up and fired. The muzzle break kicked up dust on every side of him and knocked years of sand off the walls next to him. The big full metal jacketed bullet smashed through EZ’s hoof and tore out of his leg. The ceramic plates on his chest exploded when the big bullet slammed into them before tumbling through his body and exiting out through the plates on his rump. The carcass slammed crunchily into the ground beside the sniper who shielded his eyes from the light shower of blood, sand, and ceramic shards. Doing so he was caught completely off guard by the hoof in the side of his head.
“You just pissed off the wrong psychopath!” Bear screamed as he pointed his 5mm skirmisher at the snipers still dazed head. “I’m going to ask once. Where is the case of weapons grade gems?”
The look of shock on the snipers face shifted to one of surprise then mild amusement. 
“There was a case of weapons grade gems here? Wish I was being paid to watch that damn thing! No, I just wanted to kill a Wholesaler.” to the rage of Bear he actually started laughing before a burst from the belt fed shut him up.
Back on the docks Pheonix and Smoke were helping to hitch up the surviving pegasus to the wagons when the bomb went off. 
At the far end of the dock where a ship had just been was a giant crater in the land as if god himself had reached down and scooped it out, a huge hole in the water, and an impossibly white light. Ships rocked and capsized in its wake while whole blocks of homes and buildings were flattened. The winds knocked the fliers from the skies and threw anything lighter than a truck flipping through the air. Every window exploded. The ocean boiled. House fires were blown out by the impossible winds while new ones were lite by the intense heat. The smoke and dust blacked out the sun casting the earth a gloomy orange. Carts rolled unimpeded over the ground while the wind tore siding off of buildings. However, the most impressive display of the bombs power was its sound. 
278 decibels of ear crushing, eye melting, organ rupturing sound raped the air deafening anyone it couldn’t kill. 
“Get up. We are leaving!” came the voice over the radio that no one could hear over the deafening rigging of the silence. It came as text on the inside of everyone’s mask along with a readout of the dead.
Phoenix struggled to his shaking legs just in time to see a black clad pegasus sailing through the air on the blast wave slam into the ground and start rolling like a child rolling down a hill sped up a million times. Gear, armour, weapons, and limbs flew everywhere to join the debris. The body skidded to a stop near him and he limped over to it. Finding a mangled foreleg he checked the blue band worn around it like a watch.
Phoenix- It’s okay, it wasn’t a black knight.
The chat was soon clogged with the cries of the dying and wounded and orders to both evacuate and to grab any wounded that might survive.
The survivors started struggling to right the assault wagons that still looked functional and free the unfortunate pegasus who were haled along by their harnesses. With what power they had the wagons lifted off from the decimated port and out to sea.
Phoenix-hagghaggckokespri
Smoke, confused by some strange text next to Phoenix’s name looked at his friend.
Smoke-You okay?
Phoenix-Laughing then started coughing
Smoke- What could you possibly be laughing about?
Phoenix- We just started a war.	

> Introduction - To Know A Dog
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Introduction
To Know a Dog


Rewrite in Progress

Welcome to Equestria! Land of infinite wealth, peace, and prosperity. Not a war to be had in around a thousand years and steadfastly holding against threats as they arise. A land where foals need not fear what night nor day will bring. A land overflowing with riches both financial and emotional. Adventure waits around every corner and almost every story will have a happy ending. A land ruled by a government with a scary amount of control over the flow of information and that is more or less deadlocked technologically regardless of outside development. 
Evidence of outside progression is obvious if you know where to look for it. Electric ovens, lights, appliances, speakers, and instruments. Multi shot cannons utilizing a smokeless propellant, (or perhaps compressed gas?) were used to fuel parties. Trains designed to burn coal but clearly no longer doing so. For entertainment more tec got let in than anywhere else while dangerous technology got kept out. Bakers had microwaves for crying out loud while most ponies wrote with quills. Royal guards carried spears and wore armour while we had guns.
You may be saying to yourself, “isn’t history filled with naive primitive people meeting advanced people and then the advanced people shooting the arms and legs off of the primitive people and taking all their stuff?” Why yes, yes it is. However, those rules don’t apply in Equestria, they find themselves in the unique position of being the naïve primitive society with the WMD. Let me tell you about the bitches. 
There are four magical bitches with enough power between them to dissuade any attack. We're talking nearly immortal, nearly invincible, and almost unfathomable power. Shield a city, imprison a god, turn the world, travel through time, cast any spell, raise the sun, raise the moon, raise an army, raise the dead. (Not sure about that last one.) No one can touch them, no one beat them, and to top it all off they are completely benevolent. Its enough to make you scream.
Just to get a handle on their power consider this. When Luna went to the moon or at least how they tell it she was just teleported there. The moon is the most desolate place you can imagine, it’s a vacuum, no water, no food, no shelter, no goddess damned air. There is however incredible radiation bombardment, extreme temperatures, and pretty much constant meteor strikes. She endured that for a thousand years, that’s ruffle 30 lifetimes. The time alone should have killed her. Even if she could magically make everything she needed from scratch she would need some sort of shield to hold it all together. Cadence was a wreck after only a week of holding a shield and Luna did it 52,000 times longer. After that she wasn’t tired or broken, she came back pissed off and ready for round two. If that couldn’t kill her than could anything kill her? Remember, this is the bitch who lost! I shudder to think what Celestia could do. Of course there is always the possibility that Nightmare Moon didn’t need any of the stuff we think of to stay alive. In which case again, can anything kill her? 
At least that’s how they told it to us back home, and why Nightmare Moon became a symbol of endurance, strength, perseverance, and power.  I’ve heard that that isn’t exactly what happened but I prefer that version even if it was more propaganda to keep us out. Myself I had her image carved into my right molar so that I can always keep her symbol with me. Hurt like a bitch getting it but I’m told it doesn’t hurt as much as brand art.
My buddy Woods was born with a white cross on his back like the ones you see on donkeys. Of course there was no donkey in his lineage but no one believed that. He eventually got tired of being called a mule so he had some artists tie him down and they branded an eagle with Nightmare Moons wings to incorporate and cover up that cross. If anypony still thinks there is ass in him they know better than to say it to the guy with a mural cold branded into his back.
If it was as easy for ponies and griffins to get tattoos as it is for Minotaurs than everypony in the Kingdom would have a Luna or rather a Nightmare Moon tattoo. Whatever made her so strong is still out there somewhere and a lot of ponies follow that as a god, the thing that came closest to ever taking the goddesses. Personally I take it as a good luck symbol. In a way we were quietly worshiping the goddesses while officially being their enemy.
Back to Equestria. So for the first time in history the peaceful tribals have a super weapon we can’t touch and wealth they cannot even fathom. Celestia took the best chunk of the planet from us so she could play her little game with her pets in her perfect peaceful kingdom and she has been relatively successful. Successful in casting the illusion of peace and prosperity anyway. 20 years ago they had multi shot cannons running smokeless propellants that fired god damned parties and no one batted an eye, but if you slapped a pistol down on the table in front of them they wouldn’t have a clue what it did or why somepony would need it. Similar mechanical process and the same lineage but no one would ask what the cannon was originally used for.
Really I don’t see how anyone could watch this and think it’s peaceful and happy. Maybe it was a really peaceful place that somehow couldn’t maintain peace for two months. I’ve been reading up on some history and it turns out that even with those four living breathing super weapons they still got attacked what? Five times in a two year period and almost lost the whole kingdom? Ha, I guess that is the problem with super weapons, they don’t work very well up close. Shit, one of those times, no wait two of those times, was the black and white bitches fighting with each other! Or am I getting those confused? Ah, no bother. I refuse to think that these crises were an all at once thing, I think this was more or less business as usual or Celestia wouldn’t have always sent her pets to straighten them out. She would have done them herself if it was anything to be alarmed over.
The biggest wad of shit you would ever swallow is believing that the world was as peaceful as Equestria pretended it was. It really was sick, they were sitting on such wealth and they didn’t even know it. They actually had to invent things to go throw their money away on because they had so much bucking more of it than they needed! While pretty ponies paid up for mud baths at the spa zebras soaked their hooves in blood killing each other over the last well full of dirty water. How gifted we were to live in such a tightly controlled society where we didn’t have to know about such things.
When the changelings attacked they attacked Canterlot first. What does that tell you? That tells you than Equestria was the best source of love on the planet. Two, it tells you it was worth tangling with the sun goddess to get it. Hell, it was worth tangling with three of the bitches for it, or was it all four? And all the Royal guards too, biggest military force in Equestria, can’t forget them! That willingness to take on such a force leaves you three possibilities about this planet. One, there isn’t a lot of love to go around on the planet. Two, the rest of the planet is too brutal to successfully enslave for love. Three, a nation guarded by two goddess’s and two incredibly powerful magic users is the weakest and easiest to crush nation on the planet.
Indeed if they had tried for the Griffin Kingdom they would have gotten even more holes in them, hell, maybe they did try the Griffin Kingdom first! Maybe that’s why they showed up full of holes! If the Changelings had taken some place like the Kingdom with relative success there would have been a lot more blood. People cutting each other and dueling just to draw blood and compare colour. Anything that bled green would be dead. If they disguised themselves and it came to open combat it wouldn’t be much different than fighting any other army of ponies. 
Wow, I seem like a real cynical son of a gelding now don’t I? I haven’t even introduced myself yet and I’m off about Equestrian propaganda and whatnot. Ah hem, my name is Carbon, Carbon Black. Black is a family name. I would introduce myself further but it would be a waste of time. As before you can understand a dog you must first know its master, so must you know about the Griffin Kingdom before you know me.
Griffins are half lion and half eagle, they are predatory and that is probably what started them off fighting the earliest wars. Not that I haven’t heard of huge wars over grazing lands when things got tight, like the war between the Arabians and Camels from Saddle Arabia and the Clydesdales from way up north in Dragonstan. The Griffins have been fighting with the Hippogriffs probably since the beginning of time. Hippogriffs are half eagle and half horse. Griffins had larger clutches of eggs and were smaller and more agile but the Hippogriffs were twice the size and had territory into Dragonstan. Can you imagine how tough you have to be to rule Dragons? 
The fighting between the Griffin Kingdom and Hippogriff Kingdom finally stopped when a fight in Equestria cooked half the planet and froze the other half. Just about half of everyone was dead in a week. In one week! There have been plagues that kill one third of the population over a number of years and change the world, this was half in a week! The year of Equestria’s power struggle is actually the year we use for a reference year now. Equestian Peace Time, as it is somewhat sarcastically known. Also as Nightmare Moon Banishment year (NMB) and Cataclysm Day. After that the two kingdoms put aside their differences and worked together to brutalize the shit out of the rest of the world. Never tried for Equestria though, Celestia may have just finished the job. We got along a lot better though, I think there was even a Griffin Hippogriff hybrid at the Equestria games, had one hoof and one paw.
The thousand year old Griffin/Hippogriff Kingdom is one of the largest nations in the world stretching from the northern provinces of Dragonstan to the Forests of Zeumbia and Zambodia to the deserts of Saddle Arabia and the Zebra Deserts. While not directly linked by land we have fought for the Plains of the Zerengeti. Equestria is pretty much a peninsula that uses the nation of Caledonia as a buffer zone. Caledonia boarders on Zebra territory. If there is one admirable quality about Zebras it is that those tenacious bastards get around. They handle the cold, desert, forest, you name it. When they couldn’t beat the horses in combat they poisoned the shit out of them. I don’t think anyone has ever taken Zebrica from them. No worldly nation has ever tried to take over Equestria.
However, the Kingdom has been trading with Equestria for some time. Mostly we trade our manufactured goods for raw materials, gems, and of course bits. Say what you want about Equestria but those pacifists make for one stable dollar. Trading between nations is usually done with bits and the black market runs on bits. They used to trade us gems too, then Celestia must have figured out what we needed them for and put an end to that. Which actually begins this adventure come to think of it.
Development on an industrial scale needed gems and lots of them. It wasn’t long before some smart ponies figured out how to kill a lot of ponies with them though. Celestia must have heard the blasts or felt their heat because as soon as they started going off we were cut off from Equestrian gems. I don’t know if she ever knew what we needed to make them exactly thus the total ban on trading gems with outside nations.
Here I have to talk about gem weapons don’t I? The eggheads back home had come up with some unfathomably powerful shit. The biggest ever used took out an entire city, reduced the whole thing to matchwood. Those that survived died days later. Never even knew what those damn things were called but even bigger ones were built than the ones that went off. We just called them dragon snares because of this big ass cloud they made, looks like an enormous snare. Lucky for us just about everyone who knew how to make them died putting one together. Lost their secret weapon to secrecy and the research notes were on paper at the facility, ha. 
Black knight were one of the nastiest things ever made. Fairly large explosion could crush a couple blocks but the real danger came from the fallout. Those who were anywhere near that bomb when it went off, like for instance, inside a half hour jog, died three days later shitting blood and turning to mush. They were even relatively easy to make but pretty much everyone agreed never to use them again.
White Knights were the most dangerous weapon of them all of one reason, they are small. They only take out a block or a big bunker or I don’t know, the side of a mountain? Column of tanks? Shoot a couple and they are toast. Squadron of high flying Pegasi? Shoot a couple up and watch it rain carnage. They didn’t even have the fallout or any after effects really. They were the biggest damn thing you could actually get away with using and that’s what made them more dangerous than even the Dragon Snares, ponies actually used them. They were the tactical Dragon Snare if you will, you could shoot them to take high value targets or fire a cluster of them in one missile to take out multiple targets. You could even have a squadron carry them as easily as they would rocket launchers. 
They were little more than two perfectly aligned, perfectly cut diamonds that were near pure of flaws which focused magical energy and smaller gems to produce energy, reflect it, and amplify it. The focusing diamonds were far apart until the bomb needed to go off when they would slide nearer together. When they were slid into position they would focus magical energy directly into each other which would be reflected off other gems and reflectors in the mechanism and shot back into the first stronger than before, repeat until meltdown. Upon meltdown both diamonds get so hot they crack or melt leaving you with a blob of pure focused magic, sort of like losing your grip on a hoofful of the suns core in atmosphere. A regular one has a guaranteed kill on flat ground radius of about 500 yards. Small ones are down to 200/300 while the biggest ones are up to a thousand. Alignment and cut was critical or they would only get hot. The better the quality and cut the bigger the boom. If you did everything right on the focusing diamonds then a lot could go wrong in the mechanism and they would still go off. Fake diamonds wouldn’t work as they weren’t magic, so the hardest part of the whole weapon was getting the diamonds.
Okay, now back to me. In the year 1010 EPT I was born and raised on a farm just outside of Ponyville, I am from the Griffin Kingdom. The farm grew wheat between the rocks making it a truly modern rock farm, such a quaint place could never have produced a monster like me; that could only come from the Kingdom. Never confuse where I grew up with where I am from. My name is Carbon. My parents named me that because I am black. Carbon is black. Carbon was the blackest thing they could think of without working the word night into my name somewhere and they were not creative enough for that. My parents and family were a bunch of insignificant rock farmers and mine workers without a creative bone between the lot of them. 
Black. Have you ever seen a black pony before? Even the bucking Lunar Guard is beautiful shades of shimmering grey most of the time. The other kids were are neon colours spanning all the crevices of the rainbow and I was black. Beautiful greens and oranges, shimmering grays and whites, purples and pinks that would make you think of candy but I was black. Pastels that would make an artist drool, stripes and dots that would be hard to paint, eyes that would make you want to squeeze a kitty. I’m not gay, I just spent a lot of time looking at the colours I could have been. No colt or filly wants to be seen with a plain black colt with a blank flank. Oh right, I forgot I was a blank flank longer than anypony I knew. I don’t mean last in the class or a couple months behind everypony else. Try a couple years as the only black blank flank. We even started wondering if I got my mark but it was black so we couldn’t see it. There was an old black Pegasus around named Cloud Chaser, he had a white mane and I was blacker. I heard Luna was black, I was blacker.
Not to say that I mind my color now, I have actually found it quite useful. Not quite a midnight black but a softer black almost. I’m actually light enough that I don’t cut out a silhouette in the dark. I like my name a lot now and my cutie mark, will it just kicks ass. I should probably talk about my cutie mark a bit, as it does relate to this story.
Just like every foal I tried everything to get my cutie mark and found some things I was good at and did a lot of property damage with everything I was bad at. Funny enough I was better at some things than others who actually had their marks in that thing. Running for example, I was faster and had more stamina than some of the branded jocks. I was also gifted at high jump, long jump, javelin, archery, sewing (that one kind of came out of nowhere actually), and I was pretty excellent at fencing if I do say so myself. I never actually won any trophies fencing but I think I was pretty good.
So it wasn’t for my lack of talent that I was ostracized, it was because I was so different. We heard scary stories growing up of adults who never got their marks and had to go live in the forest and those used to keep me up all night. So ya, no one wanted to be friends with the way to old blank flank and I don’t really blame them. Despite my best efforts I was to be known as a failure for something I couldn’t control and I would fade away into the lonely life of a prospector or something. Turns out I was not alone actually. There were a lot of colts scattered around who were physically fit but never got their marks because they never had the right situation to find their skill.
Griffins along with other nations have been sneaking into Equestria for hundreds of years to catch animals and recruit soldiers from the unnaturally dangerous inhabitants of the forest. Without an army of Pegasi it would be next to impossible to stop them and that was the last thing Celestia wanted, she needed her peaceful experiment and admitting they needed a military response to that many ponies would be disastrous. So it was that the griffins continued recruiting in secret and Celestia let them, after all they were making the forests safer. It was actually when we got more mechanised and didn’t keep coming to take away the monsters that things really went to hell. 
I don’t know how those griffins ever convinced some higher ups to go along with it but they hatched this crazy plan. They would go into Equestria pretending to be sport recruiters or whatever and find really old blank flanks. They looked for blank flanks that were fit, strong, and athletic then offer them a chance on some machine guns in secret. Old blank flanks will try anything on any terms and it turns out cutie marks started to appear. That’s how I got mine.
Now, a normal pony in Ponyville couldn’t recognize a machine gun belt. However, anypony can recognise the dagger stabbing through said machinegun belt. I had finally got my mark but anypony I showed it too wouldn’t get it or would be horrified by it. I just couldn’t win. Wait just a minute, I didn’t have the dagger yet did I? I’ll get to that later but I have the only two part cutie mark I have ever heard of and at that point it was still just a belt of ammo. I guess I just decided there wasn’t anything left for me at home and left with the rest of the recruits. I bet they had a thousand new recruited colts and fillies on the boat to the Kingdom before anypony back home caught on.
Back to being cynical now? Okay! Equestria had wealth beyond its wildest dreams and didn’t even know it. One house burns down in Equestria and its sad, a tragedy even, a city burns in Saddle Arabia and no one gives a shit. While ponies were paying up for a mud bath at the spa zebras were bathing their hooves in blood fighting over the last well full of muddy water. Refugees came to Equestria but none of them ever told their story, Celestia would have sent them back.
Gems have to be the most obvious overlooked wealth. You could barely kick over a rock in Equestria without finding big, high quality gems (or a monster). Big pure gems are quite rare. If you want an enchantment then a gem is the perfect vessel. If you want to power a light almost any shiny rock will do. If you want your sword to crackle lightning or you want to run machines or turn belts then you need some big and pure ones. The new industrial age demanded gems at any price and we were cut off from the best source. I’ve seen kids playing with buckets of gems that a respectable griffin back home would kill the whole family for any one of. Do you know what they used them for? Shiny studs on dresses, table ornaments, bartering items, toys, even dragon food! Cutting us off drove the price through the roof at home and made us desperate while the price in Equestria plummeted.
So to recap. Celestia grabbed the best chunk of the planet for her pets to live in and dared us to come after her. She actually did a good job of keeping the world out but times were changing faster than ever before. You could go to prison five years before I was born and come out ten years later to find that automobiles that were once a novelty were now everywhere. Gems were crucial to development and Equestria had them. Griffins had been coming into Equestria since forever catching animals for food and soldiers but that was ignored as it actually helped and stopping it would threaten the society she had built. Now griffins were trading in gems, drugs, and weapons and were getting harder and harder to ignore. The monsters they had once controlled were getting more and more numerous as well and more and more ponies were going missing. The darkness was coming with the money.
History is full of strong ponies meeting weak ponies and then the strong ponies kill all of the weak and take their stuff. But that didn’t happen this time, do you know why? Celestia. That immortal bitch wanted to play princess in her perfect pacifist society but she had something that makes every army on earth shit themselves. She had the sun. She could scorch half the world on a whim but she need not do something so dramatic. Darkness, cold, a famine all would surely grind a proud nation into the dust just as surely as being cooked alive by the sun. 
And so there you are. The most powerful magic user on the whole planet gets to play with the sun, and have her little kingdom, and flaunt the riches of her land like a steak in front of a hungry manticore and they had to sit and take it because they couldn't touch the power of the sun. 
You might not get how scary that is, having someone else look after the sun, probably because of your electric lights. If you ever wanted to freak out a bunch of tribals tell them you’re taking the sun away, they get it. Ponies way out East killed each other by the thousands trying to fuel the sun, they got it. No matter what happened we had to live knowing that if we stepped out of line then Equestria would bunker down for a brutal three day winter while our half of the planet burned.
Oh, in case you are a griffin with your fancy long lives with 80 only being the average age for how much fighting you do bringing the average down, you’re not going to get pony scale very well. Just multiply every year I say by three and it should be close. Ponies live 30 years if we are lucky, 40 if we are real lucky. One of the reasons we make good soldiers, young adults at age 5.
Off topic again. So Equestria had rocks but wouldn’t export them so it came down to us as Equestrian born ponies living in the Kingdom to go in and buy them without raising suspicion. Then we could send them back home and everypony wins. Well that about catches you up. 
Oh god not again. Blllaaarrrgggg!
> Chapter One - Trial by Devils Fire
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter One
Trial by Devils Fire


About Alacorns.- there is no proper name for a winged unicorn but Alicorn or Alacorn sounds the best. Alicorn is the word for a unicorn’s horn while Alacorn is the Latin wing (alae) and horn (cornu). Therefore I will say Alacorn despite the more popular alicorn of MLP lore.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-- Omar Khayyam

Blarg! I was now throwing up dry hay. I should not have been able to throw up dry hay. I, along with everyone else on this damn ship who couldn’t handle the ocean were midship on the lowest deck trying to hold our guts down. Before we had been on a higher deck in a room with port holes so we could vomit right overboard. However, after we had thrown up almost everything we could (until now) we decided not having to throw up in the first place would work just as well. We were having limited success. Now some ponies, zebras, the greenest looking griffins you will ever see, and myself were in the calmest part of the boat trying to find some relief.
We had been at sea for over a week but when this three day storm kicked up some of us got sea sick and the others were put to work. These griffins, Thrash, Ganker, Mastiff, Mastic, and Cherry, were never going to set talon on a boat again after this poorly made decision to take the boat rather than fly in. I couldn’t remember any of the zebra’s names because, well, zebra names are hard to remember. The only other pony in here was a pegasus mare named Ithica. She hadn’t said much these whole three days and right now sat curled up in the corner looking half dead.
Turns out being sea sick was boring and boring for days on end leads to weird ways to pass time. Yesterday we had held the ill-fated vomiting contest. It wasn’t a question of who won really, more a question of who lost the least. Thrash had us all beat on both distance and spread but in the end we all lost when cleaning it up. We all died a little on the inside after that contest. 
I was so dehydrated it wasn’t even funny anymore. My partners were on the upper decks working and I was down here trying and failing to not feel like shit. No fare. At least we get off this boat today I thought to myself as the boat continued to sway. We were supposed to land in Northern Equestria and it would take everything I had to not go straight to a hotel and lay there for a week living off room service and drinking water out of an ice cream pail. 
The boat rocked and everyone groaned softly. The fourteen of us were all piled into a section that was reserved for storage but we had commandeered because it was the least sickening room on the craft. Now it smelled of cleaning supplies, vomit, booze (don’t ask), and of course seven sweaty and unwashed zebras, five griffins, a putrid pegasus, and a unicorn. Maybe if you combined the scent of me and Ithica you would get an acrid alacorn? I looked back into the pail and took some deep breaths.
“Holy shit, you really can’t hold anything down can you?” asked Ganker in a mocking tone. “Maybe we should fry up a big mess of scrambled eggs? With extra grease so they slide right down?”
I gagged at the suggestion almost summoning up more vomit while Ganker laughed, but I did take some satisfaction when he gagged at his own suggestion a couple seconds later. I don’t remember being quite this miserable since I had the flue as a colt on school ice cream day. Turning away from the bucket I put my head back on my saddle bags on the floor. I would get up and empty that bucket later but right now I wasn’t moving anywhere.
From far down the hall we could hear hoof steps getting slowly closer. Oh please don’t stop outside this door, don’t make me move. They got louder and louder as they approached then almost in unison stopped right outside the door. Well maybe they were here for someone else. The knob turned and standing there was a pegasus and an earth pony. 
The pegasus had a light blue coat and a red mane with yellow stripes in it. He had lightning shooting out of cracks in a bottle for a cutie mark. The earth pony was a deep blue with a shimmering white mane and tale with thin pink stripes running through it and a lobster trap for a cutie mark. Not that I could see either of their marks through their barding, I knew them as Volt Storm and Crabwalk respectively. They were here for me, damn.
Cool air rushed in and I was reminded how sickly hot it was in here. Just as the cool air rushed in the hot pungent air rushed out and made the two ponies standing in the door way recoil at the stench. They looked like they had walked into a wall. However the two of them recovered so fast that you could miss their slip in disposition.
“Which one of you bastards is Carbon?” asked Crabwalk in a menacing voice that made three zebras and a griffin point to me in fear.
Volt sniffed the air and after gagging a little he scowled at us.
“You guys are real jerks you know that? We’ve been working in this storm and you’ve been down here drinking this whole time?” his suggestion was met with a chorus of groans. “Well why does it smell like the bathroom of a high school dance down here then?” he asked skeptically.
“Vomiting contest mishap.” Answered Cherry shuddering a bit.
“Is every Zebra on the ship down here?” Crabwalk, he noticed things like this.
“Ya they’re all down here, every griffin too.” I answered with some difficulty.
“Well we’re leaving in a minute so come on.” Volt turned and addressed the others. “And you lot, on deck in five.” He left no room for protest.
They turned to leave so I got shakily to my hooves and hobbled after them, the world was still spinning and my head was still pounding. Lifting my saddle bags to my back and grabbing my hat I just about lost my concentration and dropped them. For a second I panicked when from the lack of a jingle I realized my dog tags and shell weren’t on the chain around my neck. Then I remembered I had left them in my Raat pack back home. 
“Just another body here that nobody knows.” I said under my breath. Wait, where had I heard that? Not a problem right now. I took my hat in my magic and screwed it onto my horn while feeding my ears through the holes. The meagre concentration needed to do something so strenuous as putting my hat on was sending my head spinning. I continued to stagger after them adjusting my hat as I made it through the door.
Hats are one of the only down sides to being a unicorn. You can’t try on a hat before you buy it because you need a custom hole cut. However, we also don’t lose near as many hats as the other races. Earth ponies need only put them on and Pegasi need strings to hold their hats on but for a unicorn once your hat is screwed on your horn it is pretty much locked in. It just took some practice to get your ears lined up with the holes as you twisted it on the last spiral. This particular hat I had purchased just before this trip thinking I made me look more, well, adventury. It was a nice brown flat brimmed cowpony hat that had rifle shells in loops in the hatband. Those were only for display turns out but I would have had to take them out anyway for this trip. I just have to find something else to fill the loops now.
Hobbling after them I fished a small rectangular aluminum box about the size of a 40 match box out of my pocket. It was a wonderful device that held dozens of paper thin sheets of metal covered in a pain killer that evaporated and you inhaled it. This particular one was army issue and so volatile it would start evaporating as soon as the seals were off, other mixes needed to be heated up like the kind in the laced cigars in a humidor in my saddle bag. Good thing Equestrians knew what tobacco was. The pain killer wasn’t addictive itself but you could still develop a dependence on it if you took it too often, that’s why I had chosen to be sick until now when sweet relief was within hoofs reach. You didn’t need to heat this kind but I still did whenever I could. I pulled out my lighter and held the flame underneath it.
“This is bull shit. What squad got to bring their zebras while Kopis and Shashka had to stay home?” Asked Crabwalk angrily. 
“They aren’t soldiers, they are resource management and tradesmen. They are checking the gems, processing some of them and making sure the bits get in the right hooves.” I answered as I pealed the seals off both sides of the inhaler. I held the flame to the intake side and sucked in a deep breath and held it. In about six seconds my stomach settled and by head began to clear. Oh ya.
“So why couldn’t our zebras come with us?” Volt asked.
I was holding my second puff and so couldn’t answer immediately which conveniently gave time to think of a response. I thought back to last week.
I had been walking across the field to the commander’s office. A nice little building with a wraparound porch, it didn’t seem like a command building at all. There were a group of mares with their done up target rifles standing around on it while one was shooting. She fired and I looked for a target. Spotting a cloud of dust I found the targets, bean cans full of dirt. They were shooting at 200 yards from standing.
“Nice shooting ladies! I called as I passed earning a couple of chuckles for my effort. 
I recognized one of the mares that was pretending to be embarrassed by the flattery, she was a Hell Mare, the first Hell Mare I had met in fact. We locked eyes for a second before she broke contact and went back to the match.
I noticed two things upon entering the building. One, a radio was playing Make the Choice nearby.
Those with the power set the pace,
Now you can die or you can race.
The choice is yours, I’m not one to tell, 
But I’ll see you in Hell.
The second was a prisoner standing smugly in the cell with four guards staring at him. The prisoner was a horse with feathers and three silver medals tied into his mane. His mouth was locked shut with an iron halter. On each leg there was a large weight shackled to slow down his movements but he was lifting them like weights at a gym as if not inconvenienced at all by his predicament. Did I mention he was a horse? Fucking things were huge! I recognized him almost immediately as a Karkayan mercenary.
“What the bucks a Karkayan doing here?” I asked before I remembered to act in control around prisoners.
“Black Wings found him asleep and brought him in.” answered one of the guards ignoring my breach of protocol. “Don’t ask me how.”
“What are you trying to get out of him?” I quietly asked the closest guard in a voice the Karkayan couldn’t hear. 
“Where his buddies are and who hired him. The last guy who tried to beat it out of him is still in surgery so we have to wait for a unicorn with a memory spell to get here,” He turned to the cage, “and it is going to hurt a lot!”
The Karkayan only smiled showing off his sharpened teeth.

I know that look upon your face,
It’s your life you chose to race.
The choice you was yours and I wasn’t gunna tell,
But I’m calling from hell,
Our commander was an interesting old buck.  He set up a range off his porch because he liked the sound of gunshots and thought they added gravity to what he said. Somehow every conversation with him had exactly the same format and was far more abusive than it had any right to be. If he sold sandwiches the standard interaction with him would go something like this. 
“I want a sandwich.”
“What kind of god damned sandwich do you want?”
“Thistles on white, you prick!”
“Here’s your sandwich.”
“Fuck you!”
“Ten buck you gelding!”
“Here’s a 20!”
“Here’s your bucking change!” Clatch clatch “Now get the fuck out before I put a bullet in your ass! Come again!”
Whenever I try to imagine how he got into power all I can picture is a long series of hoof fights until they gave him an army. The curious thing about him was he had the rarest of all the kingdom medals. He had a set of steel fangs. Typically taking the form of a striking cobra head no two medals were the same as they were all custom and hand made. The thing that made them so rare was the fact it was awarded upon making your five hundredth kill. If for some reason you were found faking a Steel Fang medal you would be branded with the mark of shame and put on a sweeper team or made an executioner until you had made 500 kills. It may seem ironic the killing itself was enough punishment to dissuade almost anyone from trying to take what glory the real Steel Fangs have in having done that. They wanted a taste of it then they could damn well kill 500 ponies.
I don’t remember much about the talk with the commander except that he said we were from Equestria, we had Equestrian accents, and we were going to Equestria. When I stomped my hoof and asked why the zebras weren’t coming he asked me how many zebras I remembered from back home. Nothing had changed and ponies were just as xenophobic as they always were so the zebras would blow our cover. You still have the right accent so you’re going in with other Equestrian recruits. Ring in your swearing too, curse like you would to a foal. Also they don’t really wear barding there so get those urges under control fast. You get 5% of the final price of everything you bring in. I remember yelling kingdom to the core and our horse shoes clanged together before I was outside his office looking at the Karkayan again.
“Ponies are scared of them, we need them to not be suspicious of us if we don’t want to bring the whole god damn Lunar guard down on us.” 
“Reel in the swearing Carbon.” Said Volt
“Don’t want to bring the,” I paused searching for an appropriate word and came up empty, “Lunar Guard down on us?”
“Better.” Said Crabwalk
While the royal guard always had to stand as a shining symbol of Equestrian royal power and excellence, the Lunar Guard that once served Luna, the princess of darkness, was free to operate in the shadows of the night. Whenever somepony had to be eliminated, arrested, or any of the other unsavoury actions of maintaining power had to be performed the duty fell to the clandestine Lunar Guard. Many Equestrian ghost and monster stories had their roots traceable to scarcely witnessed Lunar Guard operations. They were so good at their jobs that only a select few ponies were even aware that the Lunar Guard continued operating during Nightmare Moon's exile.
While I might laugh at the Royal Guards pretence of being an army the Lunar Guard scares me shitless. I mean the Black Wings, Karkayans, White Tails, and any secret police you care to name might be just as effective as the Lunar Guard but ponies know about them or at least hear rumors. Nopony knew about the Lunar Guard until Nightmare Moon came back. I don’t think even Celestia fully knew what they got up to. They were for the most part unchecked, self-sufficient, fiercely devoted to protecting Equestria, and invisible. If they took orders it was most likely from interpreting Celestia rather than anything she actually said. White Tails may call themselves stealth incarnate but the Lunar Guard didn’t even cast a shadow.
I took another big puff on the inhaler before I started breathing through it like I would breathe normally. I don’t know if there was still medicine in it or not but I felt great. I closed the lighter but still floated it beside me. It was taking forever to get up these stairs. We eventually got to the top and Volt opened the door. I spat the inhaler over the side of the ship and turned my ears to hear the faint yet satisfying splash. That inhaler was clearly not from Equestria so it wasn’t coming with us. It was night and raining, perfect for a stealthy landing. Still, I cringed at the thought of getting wet, I hated rain.
As we trotted to the landing boats I put my lighter back in my pocket. Well, it really wasn’t my lighter, my lighter was in my Raat pack back in the armory. This was actually a Manehatten made lighter that was much bigger than mine and used lamp gas as fuel. Everything had to be Equestrian or appear to be so down to and including the nails in our horse shoes. Our hooves actually needed a trim quite badly but that was all part of the plan.
I just realized you don’t know what a RAAT pack is. Stands for rapid access assault trunk. As the most important parts of soldiers are their weapons we always kept our armour, gear, and guns in military issue steel trunks in our homes. Everything we needed was in there locked up and accessible at a moment’s notice. If we were away from home when they needed us the army knew where our trunks were in our houses and could get our gear to us. If we were planning to go away we could check in our trunks and they would be able to deliver our personalised gear to us wherever we were if we were needed. Quite a slick system really. My machine gun and armour were in there along with other things that I was already missing.
Of course we weren’t going in unarmed. Crabwalk had a target rifle wrapped up on his back and we all had our swords. I also had my trusty bowie knife on my foreleg and my custom coin blades in my saddle bags. Last but not least I had a pair of griffin made Jackal pistols chambered in 50 SS concealed in hidden holsters under my saddle bags. I had brought them despite great protest from the ponies organizing our gear. They were really the only thing I had that couldn’t be passed off as Equestrian. The holsters held them upside down and they were covered with a layer of fabric so you couldn’t even see them when the bags were off me. I chose Griffin pistols because I wanted there to only be a one in three chance that an enemy could even use my own guns against me. 
The pistols were chambered in 50ss. The original 50 Straight was a close quarter’s carbine made for slamming ponies really hard up really close. They made a revolver to fire the same cartridge and set the power in the somewhat novel way of making the pistol first then shortening the case until they could hold onto it with two hands. That became the carbine load. Then they downloaded that until they could hold onto it with one hand. that was the pistol loading and the ammo was theoretically interchangable.   Not surprisingly the recoil of the pistol proved too much for the average person, (and a tooth loosening mouth cutting bastard at that,) and soon made the 50s for short. The 50s cartridges were better behaved in the pistols but could still be fired from the carbine. Somepony shortened the case farther into the 50ss to make it work in semi automatic handguns. The 50sss was an attempt at a cartridge better aimed at concealability and really just gunning for the 50’s reputation as a pony stopper. Any one of the variants was usable in the carbine. Jackals held 10 rounds, had a hammer, double action trigger, and no safeties. Their moto was pull it out, pull the trigger, pull a body. They weren’t standard issue but they were popular among the Kingdoms soldiers because anyone who ever pulled a trigger with the safety on when they really needed a bang does not want that happening with their combat handgun. Of course in training they taught us to pull your pistol when someone needs to be hurt really bad. If someone needs to be killed use it to signal someone with a rifle. While the pistols weren’t the biggest or the easiest to hide, the Jackals had killed their fair share of wolves.
Yes I am a bit of a gun nut thanks for asking. My shack back home is where I keep my bed and my guns, and pretty much nothing else. Buck I wish I had hands sometimes so that I could feel an automatic dance in my grasp or the solid lock of an action slamming shut… but I suppose a horn is good enough. Ponies ask me sometimes why I need so many guns but really the truth is, in terms you would get, I think of them like candy. The sweetest and loudest of all candy that still won’t make you fat.
I also had 100 loose rounds of ammo and four spare mags. We had been told time and time again not to be violent, not to hurt anypony but I knew it was going to get bloody. We were going into peaceful pacifistic Equestria and expecting to play by Griffin Kingdom rules, ponies were going to die, it was inevitable. Griffins were violent by nature. Even nodding your head at someone the wrong way could get you stabbed if they thought you were mimicking the recoil on a mouth weapon.
We made our way to the boats that would take us to shore. Our boat was already on the ropes to be lowered down into the turbulent waters. As I walked closer I could see they were pulling more landing boats loaded with supplies up from the lower decks and fitting a wire to them so they could pull the empty boats back from the shore. The boats were coming up coated in a thin white powder that was quickly washed away by the rain. 
We were all unofficial passengers on a sugar ship. There was a curious race diametrically of what most drug dealers do going on between the major sugar providers. They were seeing who could dope up the sugar the most. Equestrians didn’t know why but they all knew that right now the best sugar came from the Kingdom. Well not exactly, the best comes from Ziembia but that’s the designer sugar as they don’t grow a lot. The Kingdom has close trade with Ziembia so right now we made the best general purpose sugar. Overenthusiastic bakers were often subject to erratic behaviour but that was usually passed off as their personality. Guess no one had caught on judging from the average pupil size and the fact they can’t lay off the sweets.
Walking up to the launch boat we met up with the other member of the group. A grey unicorn with a green hue to his coat, he was named Woodsong. 
I guess this is what they had been working on while I was sick, loading the landing boats. We piled in and swung out over the side. Okay, now to lower into the water. Why weren’t we lowering? I looked to the crew members for an explanation but instead saw the captain standing there. 
No one told him exactly what we were doing. I’ve heard stories of curious captains holding up missions right in the last leg of the operation until they got answers. He looked at me before holding out his hooves.
“Kingdom to the core.” He said slowly, as if he knew the words were meaningful but didn’t have cause to say them often.
“To the core!” I replied as I smashed my shoes into his. 
“Hell Ya!” he shouted and we started our decent as the crew members worked the ropes. The Captain had just given his blessing. 
We were lowered slowly toward the water before we splashed in and disconnected from the ropes. Now for the tricky part, we had to hit the shore in the dark. Luckily I knew a night vision spell, that’s why our team was going in first. There was a small torch on the back of our boat with a shield on it so the boats behind us could see the guiding flame but anypony on shore could only see a slight illumination on the water. The four of us grabbed hold of the oars and started for land me occasionally correcting our course. The waves were actually pushing us toward land but the rocking was far from gentle. Half the time the crests of the waves were so tall I couldn’t see the shore even with my spell. We were getting close to the shore so Volt put out the light. The other boats would wait until we had cleared the beach.
Washing up on shore shouldn’t have been a surprise but our first hint that we had landed was the sand scraping on the bottom of the boat. Without hesitation me and Woods grabbed the supplies in our telekinesis and jumped overboard. Cold! Shit cold, and wet. Damn didn’t think about that somehow. Without thinking I ran for the shore closing the distance as I splashed through the frigid water. It was a relief when the sand started clinging to my hooves rather than sinking in the mud.
I turned around looking for the rest of the team. Where were they? They were on the same boat I was. Oh, there they were, walking slowly and quietly up on the beach. Oops. 
“The hay Carbon? Anypony hear that?” Scolded Volt in a voice much too quiet for his tone.
I hadn’t checked. The four of us put down what we were carrying and split up looking for anyone nearby the beach. I poked my head over the embankment and to my surprise there was a cloaked figure carrying a lantern walking down a nearby path muttering to himself.
“Soaking wet and so thirsty I could drink out of a puddle. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when you make a weatherpony angry.” He muttered to himself as he made his way slowly along the path. “And I own a store that sells canteens, and umbrellas, and like nothing else!” he yelled to no one.
“Well I guess that’s why we are here. To make sure the coast is clear.” I said as soon as the buck was out of sight. “Woods, relight the torch.”
Woods took out his lighter and relight the torch. It cast its faint light over the water and before long other ponies began walking up on shore. Stealthy. The only thing you could see was the faint glow of telekinesis around what the unicorns were carrying, our horns were covered with hoods so that glow was blocked. The boats were already being pulled back on their wires as the ship continued on its journey. 
In silence we began the process of assembling wagons and loading supplies. Unicorns were putting things together while everypony else stuck the pins and bolts in. We had spent untold nights practicing putting wagons together fast in the dark and it showed. 
Guards watched for travelers in apprehension as the faint glow of the unicorns threatened to give us away. Some chewed the handles of their knives as they watched. That was actually training, if you think you need a weapon have it in your mouth/hand not caressing it in your holster. The fastest draw showed up with the gun in his hand. Still, it was a clear example of playing by griffin rules. We hadn’t been here for two minutes and they were already prepped to kill any witnesses when we probably could have told them we were just fishing or something and they would have bought it. Ponies were going to get hurt, only a matter of time.
Okay, step one is over, now to get to shelter.
Shelter was an old mansion that a rich prince had commissioned as a summer home by the sea. Somehow it had come into the possession of the current owner’s father as inheritance through a complex chain of relations and no one higher up in the chain wanting it. He turned it into a hotel and made a hefty profit. The current owner was not his father though and this was the down season. At first overjoyed to have a solid booking out of the blue the current owner had been watching this day approach with a growing sense of dread.
The white stallion woke up from a nearby thunder strike and quickly checked his watch. Oh good, he hadn’t slept too long. After all these sleepless nights worrying about this night he dosed off within the hour of their arrival? With a deep sigh he reminded himself not to think too hard about it, they were probably just famous adventures who didn’t want to be interrupted by fans. Oh, there was the familiar clenching in his stomach that showed up whenever he lied to himself. 
Donning a white nightgown he crept down the hall to check on his sleeping daughter. She was still sleeping but she stirred at every bolt of thunder. As he watched her his heart rate quickened and he got a foul taste in his mouth. Oh gosh he had a bad feeling about these guests but business was business and Celestia knew he need business.
If it was just the down season or just the illness he could have managed. However, the big attraction now was Beach Wood Lake not the ocean as it had been for so long. In the on season he hadn’t gotten nearly the number of guests he had expected and now in the off season they hadn’t had a guest in nearly a month. That was until a lone mare had shown up two weeks ago with saddle bags heavy with bits and a contract to rent every room in the building at a premium rate in exchange for secrecy. 
He hated the secrecy and how he always felt like he was doing something wrong when he thought about this deal. However, his daughter was sick and medicine was not cheap. The combination could lose him the mansion if he didn’t get some money. He already furloughed all the staff and was working two jobs. His wife had also taken up a job selling expensive imported cloth to designers. He hated how this deal felt but it was good money and for his daughter he could put up with it, he would put up with anything for her.
He pulled himself away from his daughter’s door and closed it softly behind him before making his way nearly silently down the stairs. He went to the window to watch for his guests arrival and to his surprise they were already heading up the driveway. He took a second to compose himself and waited. This was actually happening. He was about to find out who his guests were.
He waited until they were close then opened the door, despite being a little out of practice he had timed it perfectly. A black clad pony was standing there with their hoof raised to knock but instead found the door open. After a shocked second they put in down and asked,
“Is this the,” 
“You are at the right place.” The white stallion interrupted stepping aside. He was going to pour every ounce of power he had into this, give it right back to them. Not let them know how nervous he was.
A stream of ponies began coming in through the door carrying heavy loads on their backs. 
“Let me show you where to put those.”
The inn keep tried to show everyone to their rooms and where to set up large and strange looking machines but gave up and started acting more like a traffic pony telling carts which way to go. He watched as the crowd moved large boxes with military precision yelling hushed orders and running into and out of rooms. 
Much like my love of colours resulting from my not having one, I had a particular fondness for floors. I had seen some nice floors before. Griffins of old in particular had made some beautiful floors. Unfortunately when those floors of old had met the steel horseshoes of late the result had been a lot of ruined or covered up floors. Polished concrete, ruff planks, or even painted asphalt were common modern choices.
If I wasn’t so weird I probably would have commented on the art on the walls or the chandeliers or the banister but it was the polished stone floors that caught my eye. The floor in the entrance was magnificent. Made from some sort of marble with green veins running through it. It reminded me of one in a griffin mansion, however I was forbidden to step hoof on it and had to stay on the wooden planks reserved for us hooved folk. Looking closer I realized it was also covered with a half inch layer or something hard, clear, and shiny. The stairs were of the same luxurious marble. However, the floors upstairs, in the halls, and every other room I saw were boards.
I think the inn keeper and I both saw the mud on the floor at the same time and cringed thinking of the potential damage. Two black clad unicorns apparently shared our concerns and trotted up to him.
“Where do you keep your mops?” One asked
“Down that hall in the broom closet.” He said turning to point but stopped when he spotted his daughter at the bottom of the stairs rubbing her eyes. He really didn’t want her down here with these strange guests running around. The two unicorns trotted off in the direction he pointed and he took a step toward his daughter. Before he had taken two steps he froze in his tracks as a blue pony with a white and pink mane walked up to his daughter. 
“Isn’t it passed your bed time?” He asked in a friendly voice.
“Well, yes but.”
“No buts, little fillies need their sleep if they want to grow up big and strong. Besides, your daddy is a little busy right now but I’m sure he’ll be right up.”
“But I can’t sleep with the thunder.”
“Okay, do you think you could sleep with a bed time story?”
“Yes.” She squeaked happily.
The stallion scooped her up with his head and deposited her on his back as he headed up the stairs.
“Okay then, which is your room? And will this story be from a book or would you like to hear one of mine?”
“You have stories? Like what?”
“I could tell you about the time I worked making food for griffins.”
“What do griffins eat?”
“Big scary monsters! Rawr!”
The filly laughed on his back as they rounded the corner.
Lashing fever, reaper of the poor, she had it pretty bad. Normally only contagious for a brief time after the death of the carrier but it sure was virulent during that time. The name sake symptom was big bleeding and extremely painful soars appearing on your skin and a resulting more or less constant smell of blood. Recovery depended solely on getting enough of the red medicine for a long enough time to purge it from your system. However, it was expensive, rare, and in high demand.
A 5ml shot could set you back easily more than 200 bits and you would need a half ounce or 15ml every day for about two weeks to purge the sickness. One full week of that you would feel fine but it would come back if you stopped. Even if the average family had 9000 bits on hoof to pay for the two week treatment there usually wasn’t any place to buy that much at a time. A real good pharmacy in Equestria could probably get their hoofs on 16 ounces or 500ml a month. The medicine therefore came in small bottles, one half ml, 1ml, 2.5ml, 5ml, 10ml, half ounce and the biggest being the ounce. A doctor might have a three ounce or 80ml bottle. The saving grace and also curse of the red medicine was you only needed about 30ml a month to stay alive. The result was the sickness dragging on with ponies usually only able to get enough to stay alive, bottles being washed out to get every drop. The fever usually bankrupted those unfortunate enough to get it, and far too many did.
I walked up to the innkeeper as he looked back at where his daughter had disappeared from view with worried eyes.
“Don’t worry about Crabwalk, he’s about the nicest stallion you will ever meet. Great with kids and if the monster in the closet was real he could handle it.” I said in my most friendly voice.
“She is sick.” He said flatly “and the monster is in the hallway.” He added cracking a smile.
“He knows she’s sick, even I can tell that. If anypony can recognize Lashing Fever he can, his little sister was sick with it. Trying to make enough money for her recovery was the whole reason he started in this game. Before you ask, yes, she did get better.” I brought my hoof to my chin in thought for a second, had he actually told me that last part or did I just make it up? No matter. “She’s in good hooves for now. Names Carbon by the way, yours?” 
“Silver Sheets, my wife is Silk Sheets.”
“Nice to meet you.” We bonked hooves lightly “I love your floor. What’s this stuff on top of it if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Floor polish?”
“Floor polish?” I repeated incredulous “This isn’t over.”
There was an awkward pause that I broke 
“Did you say there was a monster in the hallway? Doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a strange place?”
“Old building, has so many creaks and cracks that it can sound like hooves walking. The sickness makes it all the worse, she sees things too.”
“She ever describe it?” I asked as I felt a cold niggling on the back of my neck.
“Yes but you were a colt, we imagined monsters everywhere. She hallucinates from the fever and just gets so scared.”
“Ya, except it turned out that my monsters were actually coyotes living under the house. What does she say she sees?”
“Come on, don’t tell me you’re serious?”
“Indulge me.”
“Okay,” he said as he pointed the zebras to a room. “Looks like a red skinned pony, big teeth like a lion, long tail, glowing red eyes, and big black bat wings. That would be one scary hallucination wouldn’t it be?” he said stressing the word hallucination, he didn’t like discussing this with strangers, come to think of it, why was he? 
By now many ponies had stopped what they were doing and a few had even put down their loads to listen to the description. Silver Sheets looked around at them confused and a little angry, he didn’t want everybody knowing about his family problems, he wasn’t sure why he had even told me.
“That would be really scary. Now are you absolutely sure that’s what she said?”
“Yes!”
“What about horns?”
“Actually ya, there are horns.” Silvers expression shifted from annoyance to one of a colt who just remembered something he didn’t really want to. “Wait a minute.”
“Red skin, no hair, big teeth, red eyes, bat wings, horns? That is exactly what she describes?”
“Yes.”
“Hear that boys, she’s seeing monsters. Wow that must be scary.” I paused as the ponies around nodded in agreement. “And that’s what she sees every time?”
“Every time.” Silver said, impatience raising in his voice. 
“Positive that is what she described?”
“Yes!” he was past the point of courtesy now. 
I tapped my hoof lightly on the floor.
“Absolutely positively,”
“Yes! It’s exactly the same thing every time!” He cut me off. “The smell of its breath, it walks around her room, claws inside her walls, watches her, same gosh darned monster every time.” He yelled with a stomp of his hoof. “You satisfied? Am I certain enough for you?” He turned to the men, “and you keep my business out of this and I won’t ask yours!” His outburst didn’t achieve the desired result as the ponies shuffled a bit but stayed fixed where they were.
“Okay, okay, if you are certain that’s what she said then I have something very important to tell you and I want you to hear it. Lashing Fever as you know makes you smell like blood. The only problem I have is it doesn’t cause hallucinations.” I dragged out the last sentence putting emphasis on every word.
“What?” Silver Sheets deadpanned. 
“The thing you are describing is a thing.” Said a rather sick looking griffin as he put down a large box he was carrying.
“What?” he said again this time alarm clear in his voice.
“I really hope she has an imagination to rival that designer Rarity.”
As if on cue we heard screaming, smashing, and grunting coming from upstairs and shuffling hooves on the hard wood floor. Muffled growling and hissing joined in with thuds and grunts wafting to us through the halls. Everypony stared as Crabwalk appeared around the corner wrestling a skinned looking pony with a long tail, glowing eyes, black bat wings, blood leaking from its fanged mouth and a large knife shoved in its back. Crabs wrestled it down the hall toward the stairs. He smashed the monsters face into the polished marble banister with audible crunch, pulled his knife out of the creatures back with his teeth, and flung the monstrosity down the stairs. It held out its front hooves to stop itself but its broken right front leg folded and sent it tumbling and banging painfully down the marble stairs leaving a trail of bloody prints on every impact like a grotesque stamp. The creature landed in a writhing, screaming, bloody ball at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jerseys!” Crabwalk screamed from the top of the stairs as the filly ran crying into her parent’s bedroom where her mother must be.
I ripped my own sword out of the sheath and charged over the broken body of the Jersey Devil pausing only long enough to slam a steel shod hoof down brutally hard on its head and receiving a light sprinkling of blood up my legs for the effort.
In seconds I was at the top of the stairs and running the direction Crabs had come from. Somehow I still noted the change in sound between the polished stone and the wood. Let’s see, every door was closed except for the one on the left, that’s probably where they came from. Dashing inside I was struck by the smell of blood, like I had just opened the door to a butcher shop, or some hunter pony’s garage where game was hanging. Lashing fever, and they had it bad for a long time.
I shifted gears to sneaking listening mode. The second thing I noticed was that there was dust on everything. A few toys sat here and there, the farther from the bed they were the more dust was around them. The ones close to the bed had been moved around of late, at least she was she was still able to get up and have some fun, she still had time. The tiny 5ml bottles of the red medicine sat empty and lined up on the dresser against the wall like row upon row of glass soldiers. There was a small bed in the right corner of the room with some stuffed toys and books on it. 
Something caught my eyes about the bottles and I looked a little closer at them. Who keeps empty medicine bottles? How long had she been sick? Darn it brain not now, here for a reason. I half expected there to be a jersey right in front of me when I looked up but this wasn’t a cheap horror film and the room was still empty. Had the monster been standing here when Crabwalk walked in with the filly or was he already on his story?
“Behind you the monster is back!” the filly would have said only half believing her eyes.
“What do you mean there is a mons----” Crabs would have said as he turned to see the devil sneaking up on him.
I scanned the room but couldn’t see anything out of place in the dim room.
“Crabs,” I yelled as he came back into view with a procession of hoofs behind him. I could hear more going to the parent’s room. “How many were there?”
“Two that I saw.”
Where was the second one? Something hit me about the wall. “Clawing in her walls.” The stallion had said that hadn’t he? I walked over to the wall slowly and flattened myself against it. Slowly I put my ear against it and listened. Nothing, I closed my eyes and knocked on the wall as I walked along it. Knock, silence, knock, silence, knock, silence, knock, grisssssss.
My eyes shot open in alarm as I heard the hissy growl not an inch from my ear through the wall. Jumping away and screaming I slammed my sword through the wall and left a cut about two feet long. I heard a snap.
“Carbon what did you just do?” asked Crabs
“It was right beside my head!” I said trying to keep the absolute panic out of my voice. “Right beside it!”
“Did you kill it?” Volt asked
I gathered myself and telekinetically pulled the sword out of the wall. Oh buck, the blade came back covered in blood, but a good nine inches was snapped off.
“Nice Carbon I’m amazed your cutie mark wasn’t a broken sword!” said one of the zebras in anger at me breaking yet another good sword.
There was flapping against the inside of the wall.
“Its either dead or hurt really bad. Let’s crack open the wall and check.” I said felling more than a little self satisfaction creep in between the it was right there panic.
“Not doing that Carbon. It had to get in there somehow already so let’s find that hole before we start knocking down the nice ponies walls.” Said one of the zebras, Xyphis I think his name was.
“What? You saying killing his jerseys isn’t enough to clear us to knock down his wall?”
“No, now find the hole and let’s get it out before it rots in there. The rest of you still have a job to do so get to it.” Said Xyphis.
I climbed off the floor and sheathed the remains of my sword. Now what was I looking at before? Oh right the bottles! Looking back to the bottles I quickly counted them and ran some numbers. The filly looked like she was about two and a half so divide that by the number of bottles that were there and how sick she was. With that number of bottles and a minimum dosage she could have been kept alive for four years. That couldn’t be right. I then did the easy thing and read the label on the oldest looking bottle. A year and half she had been sick, what a miserable foalhood.
“Carbon you coming?” Asked Volt snapping me out of my reverie.
I straightened up and trotted out of the room after him. We went into the adjacent room and to my surprise the end of the sword was sticking out of the wall. We walked around the room pushing on panels, looked in the closet, and moving furniture. 
“What are those?” I heard Silver Sheets ask at the bottom of the stairs.
“You mean to tell me that ya never heard of Jersey Devils before? They always come for the blood but never eat the sick people. Usually starve for a while then eat everpony else in the house. This whole place is one big death trap.” I heard Woods explain in disbelief. “The doctor really never warned you about that?”
“He told me they were hallucinations.” Silver Sheets responded in shock. That’s all I heard before I went into another room.
“You know the hole that leads into that wall is probably in the attic and around a corner. We’re gunna have to knock down that wall.” I said matter of factly.
“Carbon we have to at least make an effort to find it before you knock down the wall in a mansion. And besides, they have to have a hole that lets them get between the attic and this floor.”
“Fine.”
And so we went checking from room to room, closet to closet looking anywhere there could be a devil hole. Those slippery sons of geldings can squeeze through a badger hole if they are keen to. They have a real reputation back home for coming down chimneys and eating foals. You might not realize it but there are a lot of places where you can hide a badger sized hole in a building where it can go unnoticed for a really long time.
“You find anything yet?”
“Yes Carbon, I found a whole nest of the darn things and figured I wouldn’t say anything and just let you keep looking.” Volt replied sardonically.
“Fine.” I said as I got up and walked across the hall into another room. After a second I saw Volt follow me into the room. Well if he wanted to work in silence I would let him. I trotted over to the closet and looked at the ceiling. Nope, no hole in here either. Volt walked up behind me staying annoyingly in my blind spot. “You think it takes two of us to not see a hole in the ceiling?” Wait a minute, I thought as I turned to look at the fire place, there were fire places in every one of these rooms. “Volt, I figured it out!” I yelled just as a nearby bolt of lightning cut the power. “Volt, you got a flashlight?” I sighed.
“Yep.” Came a response from across the hall. Wait, who was in the room with me?
I turned and found myself face to fang with a third devil. I ripped my cut off sword out of my sheath and slashed at the monster which deftly dodged out of the way. The gained floor space gave me room to take up a fighting stance. I swung the snapped off sword like a mad pony while the devil deftly dodged every attack. It lunged in with its gapping mouth open and I threw one of my steel shod hooves at it. This too he effortlessly dodged before moving out of range of my next slice. 
The two of us stood there for a second staring, neither one knew what exactly to do. This devil was definitely bigger than the one Crabs had thrown down the stairs. How had Crabs pulled this off? Its face was pale white like bone. Muscle bulged under its leathery hide. Darn thing was built like a gray hound! With a snort it flared its wings and stomped one of its cloven hooves in annoyance. What were my options? No one was running to help, typical. It clearly had great night vision and dodging my glowing weapons was no problem for it. Why couldn’t my magic be black? Or blue? Yellow was such a bad colour for this! Its hairless skin would cut fairly easily unlike hair which was more or less like cutting sand paper, you know, if I could get a blade to it.
Ha ha! I had a trick for just this situation. I could straight throw my knife along a path about a foot and a half from my sword and keep my magical grip on the sword. When the monster dodged the sword it would jump straight into the knife with no glow field to give it away! Then I could grab hold of the knife already in it and finish the job!
I tore my knife out of the sheath and threw it as per my plan. It worked perfectly and the creature dodged out of the path of the sword. On the wrong side. Did not think of that. The knife stuck into the far wall with a thud. Opps, back to square one. The devil eyed me and crouched ready to jump on my next move. Or maybe it was getting ready to pounce! Without a point to catch it on that could go really bad for me. This would be so much easier with a gun!
A gun? I had two guns. Oh boy was I ever going to catch flack for this. Dropping the sword to the ground I drew the Jackal off my right hip and lined up the sights. Sooooo glad I sprung for the glowing red sights. I folded my ears. Jakump! I put a round between the devils front legs half way up. I did not expect it to uncoil like a spring and start spinning like that. I was pretty good at this, it was only like six feet from me and I’m a pretty good shot. I put the bead on the red blur and pulled the trigger again. Jakump! 
In the light of my night vision I could tell I had gut shot the monster. It stopped dead spin and swung its head around to the other side of its body and grabbed a mouthful of its own guts. Yup, didn’t know what bit it but never seen those things before. Coyotes do it all the time. Luckily after thrashing its mouthful of guts for a second it paused and I put the sights on its head. Jakump! Devil dropped like a sack of wet horse apples.
Somepony ran into the room with a lamp in his mouth. Volt, it was Volt.
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeewhateeetheeeeeehayeeeeeCarbon?eeeeeeee” He asked in what I assumed was a critical tone. I had brought two pistols, six magazines, one hundred rounds, and forgot silencers. 
“They will think it’s the thunder!” I yelled. Ok, it was only three shots from a pistol indoors, and I had folded my ears so my hearing should be fine.
Volt held up his hoof to say something but apparently he was without criticism for once. He put his hoof back down.
“Nice shooting Carbon.” He said. See? My hearing was okay. Plus my hearing restoration spell probably played a hand. Wait a second, I know a silencing spell! Flippin griffins were so bad at training you to use spells in fast shooting scenarios! 
Of course the stripes who were apparently in charge weren’t so easily appeased. After getting wrung out for shooting on day one, and how could we be expected to handle things out there if we couldn’t handle a couple lousy devils without gunfire, we were given some final instructions.
“Put them out back, see what comes to eat them.”
After we dragged the bodies out into a pile in the back yard two poor bucks were given the exhilarating task of hiding all night to see if anything would come out of the house to eat the bodies. I suspected it was only a breeding pair and a challenging male but better safe than sorry with flesh eating monsters. If we didn’t wake up to gun shots I was probably right. 
Oh, and we did have to knock down that wall. I did the honors.
Just out of curiosity we cut open the devil Crabs threw down the stairs. It was pregnant with a litter of devils, that’s probably why Crabs could catch it.
I then had to ask the same zebra who had wrung me out for a new sword which he begrudgingly handed over. 
“Didn’t they say they would issue an enchanted sword of not breaking or something last time you broke a sword?”
“Well they said that, but I really hate how enchantments glow, I mean my glow is enough by itself. Plus those swords cost as much as three swords.”
“Do they cost as much as six swords?”
“No.”
“Well Carbon, unicorns break swords. You however happen to be so particularly good at it that word of your having brock five swords got around. That’s number six. You have to start paying for these if you keep breaking them.”
“What? That’s not fare! It’s not my fault those were all made from trash can steel!” 
“Get out of here Carbon! I have real stuff to do!” With that I was pushed back into the hall. This sword was more of a saber type and had a thicker blade than the last one. With a satisfied sigh I started off for bed.   

I was awoken by a very impatient Volt Storm very early in the morning. 
“Darn it Carbon get up! The zebras want to talk to us and then were getting out.” 
“What?” I asked trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes. “Aren’t we supposed to go last?” 
“Ya, but whoever goes first gets their pick of the locations first. Figured you would be all over that.”
I was up, and strapping my knife to my leg, getting my barding on, sheathing my sword, and out the door in ten seconds flat. As I ran down the stairs I remembered that I should get somepony to look into exactly what this coating was. Also, what was that?
On the floor was something white and shiny. Picking it up in my magic I realised it was a tooth, a fang in fact. There was still a bit of dried flesh on it and some bone around the base. Crabs really had slammed that devils mouth into the banister pretty hard hadn’t he? Nanny my liters those things had solid teeth if they were still intact after being slammed out of a jaw! I looked around quickly then slipped the fang into one of the loops on my hat band. After a moment I stuck a small vile of impossibly white fluid into the band beside it. 
Pony bones don’t really heal like those of a griffin or any one of most animals. We need potions just to heal broken bones. Luckily we have gotten really good at making those potions. Call them bone shots now, they are small and heal you in a day or less.
We continued into the zebras office.
“Okay, so my name as Xyphis and I am the zebra who is going to be telling you what you brought back and how much money you get for it.” The Zebra walked over to a desk and returned with a large jingling bag. “There are 200 bits each in here for expenses and five grand in hundred bit bank notes. Any questions?”
“Yes, asked Volt Shower “what’s a bit note?”
“Are you serious?” Xyphis asked as the other six zebras rolled their eyes. “How did you think ponies paid for big orders of stuff?”
“In bits?” Volts asked hesitantly.
“Ya, thanks for the ship full of steel bars and sugar. Let me just count out two and a quarter mil of these bits. One, two, three. You’re a bucking idiot. These banknotes have a number on them you can redeem at a bank. You give it to them and they wire it in then issue the bits.”
“Wire? As in?” asked Woods.
“Telegraph. That or a dragon scribe. They still haven’t figured out caned balefire.” Zyphis said as he hit a button on a large grey can on his deck which emitted a jet of green flame. “So where do you want to go?”
“Where do we want to go? You mean there aren’t any places already scoped out?”
“Nope, you’re the ponies figuring that part out.” He waited for a second as he met our blank expressions then sighed. “I assume you want the closest town?”
“Sounds good.” We said in unison.
“I have a map for you here too. Also, stay out of this town, no one operates here and brings the suspicion of the lunar guard.”
The zebra brought a map over to us and handed it to me.
“Hey Xyphis, what do you know about floor polish?” I asked in a hushed voice as he handed me the map. I mean really, if I was going to put my brilliant plan into action I would need someone who knew the basics of getting a box onto a ship and picking it up on the other end. Plus I sure wasn’t going to ask the quartermaster.
“Way ahead of you. Already waiting on a letter to a friend back home and I’m going to ship him a bunch. I’d cut you in but you don’t have any money.”
Darn, he found the one kink in my plan to get rich quick on an untapped market. We turned and started heading out the door when I noticed some boxes piled by the door.  
“What’s in the boxes? I remember carrying those in and they felt way too light.” Asked Woods.
“The new Dragon Express.” He replied showing us a picture of a winged machine with two rotors on the front. It was little more than a frame, wings, and a small cargo compartment. It looked like it had way too much horsepower for that tiny frame.
I had seen flying machines back home. They were single engine contraptions that used repelling enchantments to spin rotors that cut the wind and levitation spells in addition to science and wing design. The repulsion enchantment wasn’t that much different than a magnet if it only had one pole and was much stronger. Precision, uniformity, and strength were crucial. There wasn’t an airshow that was complete nowadays without the flying machines. There were the sprinters and the acrobats and the payload contestants. For the most part they had one single engine that was regulated by moving the control rod closer or farther from the repulsion gems. The piolets were usually young griffins or pegasi so they could fly away if things went downhill.
“Why do we have this?” I asked.
“This is faster than a dragon or pegasus on the sprint and better in the long hauls plus you don’t have to feed it.”
“Faster than a Pegasus? Is that even possible?”
“Ya, but they don’t even come close on maneuverability. If you tried to fight with these they would fall out of the sky.”
“So why is it here?” Volts repeated.
The zebra sighed. “We’re going to have a lot of high value gems that we are going to have to get back home fast so we bought this thing.”
“Which griffin is flying it?” I asked.
“Griffin? That’s the best part! Any pony can fly it. Were even thinking of calling it the Pony Express.” Xyphis explained excitedly. 
“I don’t think it will catch on.” I said while trying to wrap my head around how precise the two engines would have to be to work in tandem.
“Anyway, this baby is built for speed and endurance. Most sprinters are made out of stupidly light stuff, you have to replace parts after every flight. This is made like a sprinter crossed with some better gliding and heavier parts. Fly as long as you can.” He walked over to his desk. “Anyway, I got work to do, get out of here.”
We left out the door and started down the hall toward the entrance.
“Hey, why do they call it balefire anyway?” Asked Crabwalk receiving a knock on the back of the head from Woods.
“Don’t ever ask Carbon a question!” He shouted.
“Why not?” Crabs asked rubbing his head.
“He will answer it!” Woods tried desperately to explain.
“So?” Asked Crabs still rubbing his head.
“He won’t stop answering it!” Woods shouted.
“Stop one of my wonderful history lessons? That would be blasphemy!” I smiled and settled in for the explanation as Woods cringed. “Well back when cities were just starting to get big they ran into the problem of how to get bodies out of town. They were often rotting, they had to be moved by cart, and disease was a constant fear. To top it off the streets were crowded with ponies making moving them even harder and grave yards were filling up. Burning them was the obvious answer. The first idea was to get dragons to teleport the bodies out of town and burn them there then bring the ashes back. That lasted for probably about a week before they decided to just burn them in town with the dragon.
The old way of cremating someone was on a bale of straw. However, that smoked a lot and was inefficient. The city demanded the cheapest, cleanest, hottest fire around and that fire was dragon fire so dragons were employed once again in the body business. Of course keeping dragons is hard given the cost in meat, room, and their constant laziness. On top of that there was a growing suspicion that dragons were eating the bodies and just giving any ashes back. Seeing a chance to make money some smart ponies synthesised dragons fire and put it in cans. They called it balefire once again in honour of its predecessor. After that they found ways to synthesis all manner of magical dragon’s fire.” I paused for questions. None came. “Of course with all cool things comes a weaponized side. The first use of balefire as a weapon was by the Black Wings. They stole a bunch from a crematorium and killed some guys with them. Burned the guys to ashes but only knocked the dust out of the tapestries they were looking at. Ever since that Black Wings and balefire have been together like Karkayans and machineguns. They even put more enchantments on it. Any questions?”
“See?  Warned you.” Said Woods. Smugly.
“Balefire is an old word for pyre.” I harrumphed “But isn’t it better my way?”
“Got to side with Carbon on this one.” Crabwalk said resigned. “He tells it better.”
“Thanks Crabs.”
We walked through the front door and into the early morning sunlight. For a minute we all stood there phased by the beauty of the land. Oh ya, this was really happening.

> Chapter Two - Forsaken Ops 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Brutal Black
Chapter 2
Forsaken Ops

‘We do not operate in Equestria. No one operates in Equestria. That makes Celestia angry, and that makes the sun angry. No one goes to Equestria.”

Cliff Springer’s Wish. I can’t say whether the towns name was appropriate or who or what Cliff Springer was but the town was alive. No boarded up buildings or anything that I could see so if the wish was for there to be a town I guess it was successful. Not really that much to the town actually. The main drag held various shops and the few streets on either side of the main drag held various brightly coloured houses with equally colourful ponies running around them. However, I was looking for one shop in particular, the farrier. The whole plan up until this point was to casually ask for some leads on places to get gems while getting a trim.
The farrier shop was located on the main street but was built with a greater space between it than the other buildings and businesses. If you have ever smelt the reek of burning hooves or heard the clamor of forging then it would come as no surprise that such an important job was still kept at a distance. It would also come as no surprise that the spa was located on the exact opposite side of town.
We trotted into the farrier’s shop and found a soot blackened yellow unicorn buck wearing a brown apron hard at work forging a set of fire irons. His cutie mark was a crossed hammer and horse shoe. While in the Kingdom a farrier may be the lowest of the iron workers here in Equestria it was regarded as a noble profession. Many blacksmiths here took the title of farrier even if they were a blacksmith who couldn’t trim hooves. For the most part the only ponies who wore shoes on a regular bases were the ones who did a lot of traveling or regularly carried heavy loads. However, almost everypony had shoes nailed on at some point.
On the wall hung an impressive array of horse shoes of every shape and size. There were platformed ones, egg bar, heart bar, and some I couldn’t even imagine a use for. There were some with spikes and some with detachable blades and one set that appeared to have a spiked up shoe that slid into place on the bottom of the shoe that was actually nailed onto the hoof. There was even a set that looked exactly like my shoe of choice back home with two big points at the front for traction on slopes and added tact in fights. I looked down at the plain U shaped metal shoes on my hooves. Why was I wearing these if ponies here wore shoes like this? We could have worn the shoes we had on and instead we had matched plain Equestrian shoes down to the nails?
Then I saw the jewel of the collection. In the middle of the wall was a pair of used shoes. They had spikes on the bottom, two small claw like blades on the front, and in the center slopping up then sweeping forward was a beautiful curved blade.
“See your admiring the stock. Bought those babies a while back from a traveling merchant, they’re mountain climbing shoes. Let you get traction at practically any angle, even climbing on ice, blades supposed to work like ice picks. Guy who made them was a real master.”
Climbing shoes? There were chinks in the blades made by other blades! I could see the Cornara rising sun arsenal stamp! Celestia would have these ponies believe the whole planet was called Equestria! Or maybe it was by now, I mean, she has been pushing to have it changed to Equestria for years. 
These shoes were made by real unicorns from the far west. Not pseudo pony unicorns, but real full sized majestic unicorn horses. Those unicorns whose architecture was the envy of the gods themselves. Those unicorns renowned world wide for their sophistication and the level of civilisation they had achieved. Those unicorns who had personal luxury unlike anywhere else in the world at any point in history. Those unicorns made all the best stuff. Those were the unicorns that had absolutely no reservations about sending their pony slaves to die in droves against better armed foes while they sat up in their castles like cowards. 
I had seen countless pairs like these when the Griffs went on a short campaign to eliminate a certain faction within the unicorn ranks that threatened to contest Kingdom interests. The quarter masters knew about three swords I had broken in that conquest, the three I had to request from the armory. Really I had been scavenging every sword off every corpse I could find. Those shoes must have been enchanted for breaking swords or something because the number of broken blades was getting ridiculous. 
Wait, I remember now, they weren’t enchanted for breaking swords, they were enchanted for cutting steel, like the armour most of us wore when ceramics couldn’t take the abuse. Not that they worked like cutting butter, more like cutting really, really stubborn veg tanned leather with way to light a knife, or a leather jacket with a steak knife, but it was something. 
The ponies we were fighting were equipped poorly. The unicorns had intended for us to fight ponies armed with top of the line armour, the best guns, enchanted melee weapons, and the best battle augments. Unfortunately due to their own perfectionism they only had a third of the arsenal complete when we attacked so they had to divvy what they had among themselves and get to war. Training was also only beginning. 
The result was a slaughter. Pegasi rained like hail from the sky but thankfully had their falls cushioned by piles of dead unicorns and ponies. They had it figured that we would run out of shells or something before they ran out of bodies but we didn’t. They could have surrendered but they didn’t. They could have looked out and felt sympathy for their slaves and called them back but they didn’t. They could have gone to the field and got themselves killed and ended it that way but they didn’t. They could have not crossed us but they did. And through it all the ponies charged toward our positions. Not one doubting that their masters would never send them into a fight that they knew full well they wouldn’t be able to handle, I can still hear their pleading voices carried on their dying breaths.
Most of us resorted to just shooting them but I figured if they had blades I would at least honor them enough to use my own blades. In a sense we were both slaves to a master sent to fight a war with no real personal stake in it after all. I had seen almost identical shoes to these now on the wall before me on a mare that day, three years ago.
I don’t remember the exact circumstance that brought us face to face. We had locked eyes amidst the gunfire. I wore my plated barding with most of the ballistic plates swapped out for lighter ones that were still suitable against blades. She wore a flowing white shawl streaked with crimson blood that beautifully complemented her white coat, golden mane, and blue, gem like eyes. The silky shawl flowed slightly in the breeze but I knew of its trickery. That fabric, light as it looked, could tangle up bullets let alone blades. Our eyes set and we charged each other, hoof steps sinking in the soft earth.
The distance slowly closed and when we neared she leapt into the air, those beautiful raking blades glistening in the sun as they flew toward me. Muck and water that had until now held on fell like rain from her belly. At the last second I stopped dead in my tracks. Instead of the blades plowing into me they sliced uselessly into the grass where I would have been.
Her hind legs were still up in the air when our eyes locked again. Time seamed to stand still when the anger and confidence in her eyes shifted to fear and dread. The sound of steel on bone, the crack of cartilage and ligaments letting go. My sword slashed threw both her front legs at the knee sending her tumbling head first into the wet ground and skidding along on the rain slickened grass. Her legs were still stuck into the mud where she had landed, red lines dripping down and staining the white fur. She lay on the ground looking at her bleeding stumps. Most ponies scream, she didn’t but instead started thrashing on the ground when I began walking slowly toward her. 
To stop her thrashing head I stepped a hoof onto her neck. The sword levitated over with the hilt skyward and I rested the point on her head. Our eyes met once more, her big blue eyes looking into my yellow ones. I couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, they seemed to quiver with fear and anger and, and something I couldn’t place. Sadness? Hope? Pity? Disappointment? Mercy? Maybe even pity for me somehow, but why? I can’t imagine my eyes reflected the emotion of those blue pools. At best they were empathy, sympathy, regret, sorrow, pity maybe, even rage. At worst my eyes were empty, flat. My heart quickened a little and I felt a pang in my gut. I looked into those sapphires she had for eyes for the last time before rearing up and slammed my hooves down on the hilt. I felt the blade crush through her skull and into the dirt and rocks beneath. Damn it, I had to stop looking at the eyes. I got this way every time I looked them in the eyes.
“Twenty five.” I had counted out loud as time returned to normal. I turned to face the rest of the charge.
Some people use strategy so they can achieve victory with little or no bloodshed on either side. Some people will realize they are beat or have the victory before the battle even starts and hold their honor enough to send more brave men home. Some people when they see their end coming they will draw their sword and die fighting with their men. Some unicorns just didn’t get the message until you’ve dragged them kicking and screaming out of their house and stoned them to death with the hooves and shoes cut off their own dead slaves. If you were going to send your slaves to throw down against the Kingdom’s send you’re A game, don’t send them half armed and half trained because you couldn’t make guns fast enough, just give up.
“So these aren’t normal shoes ponies wear is what you’re saying?” I said after what was only a slight pause.
“Nope, just for climbing, working, and jumping. They will catch on eventually though.” Too bad, I was really hoping for the change in horse shoes. “So you need those shoes pulled?” the smith asked as he pounded the metal he was working into submission.
“Yup.” I said trotting up to him.  
The smith finished up on his poker and set it aside to cool then fetched a nail puller, clinch cutter, and pull-offs and set to work removing our shoes. 
“So, where you guys coming from?” 
“Out East.” I replied as the shoe came free from my hoof.
“Where did you get the swords?” he asked casually. 
“You really need a sword out on the trail. You wouldn’t believe the stuff you run into out there.” Said Woods by way of response. I’m not sure if he didn’t hear the question or he was just that awkward at changing the topic.
“Can I see one of those?”  The smith asked apparently not noticing how awkward the response had been. Woods shrugged and handed him his blade, a nice long saber. The smith examined the blade and handle with a critical eye before raising an eyebrow. “Who made this?”
“A cutler from Manehatten. I don’t recall his name though.” I lied as casually as I could.
“No,” the smith snorted as he floated the sword back to Woods. “No cutler you can’t remember in Manehatten made that. I move in these circles and know of only ten ponies who could make a decent sword. Eight of them work in Canterlot nearly exclusively for the royal guard. One is an exclusive sword smith that does do work in Manehatten but makes fencing swords, not foils, actual fencing swords. You know, rapiers, light little things like that.” He gestured with the nail pullers toward Woods’ sheath. “That’s a cutting sword. There is only one smith I know who dabbles in such blades outside of Canterlot but you would remember his name, it’s Sword.” He paused and set back to work. “So where did you get them?”
Wow, really thought we could pass these off as Equestrian. Here we were and the first smith we talked too was already pulling our story apart. I held a breath, come on Crabs your good at this stuff.
“Well you got us there.” Crabs said and I almost face hoofed. “It was actually a knife maker in Manehatten who put us in contact with a steel importer. The importer put us in contact with a steel provider overseas who knew some smiths over there. From that point we were able to import foreign made swords.” Hey ya, I would buy that except for the part where I said we bought them in Manehatten. “Course after that everything got screwed up and the swords got shipped to the cutler with his usual shipment of steel. After we finally figured out what had happened I thought that jerk was going to make us buy those swords again.” Crabs paused and chuckled. “Good thing we had the receipts or we probably would have had to. Course, he had no idea what they were worth.”  
The smith just looked at Crabwalk then to the rest of us. After what felt like a minute he started laughing. 
“That’s Manehatten for you. They’ll take your money and charge you for the privilege!” He chuckled to himself as he hung the shoes off Volt on a different hook than the ones mine were on. He worked fast.
Crabs, I’m going to buy you a case of beer when we find a place that sells it.
I noticed at that moment that despite the heat and the forge there was no fuel anywhere in sight. I looked into the forge and saw that it was actually fired by four enchanted glowing red fire ruby talismans with their magic gracefully dancing across a bed of glistening diamond dust. Like slow liquid tongues of flame wisping and twirling above an old fire. Instead of the ashes of burning coal there was a pool of lava with a soft blanket of fresh, clean snow settled peacefully and unmelting atop it. Snow which twinkling like frost crystals under the light of the moon at night promising cold, indifferent to the turbulent heat surrounding it. 
“Where did you get this forge?”
“Made it myself.” Said the smith proudly as he pulled off Volts shoes. 
“The rubies too?”
“Oh, those.” He rolled his eyes. “There’s some enchanter working south of Everfree that’s making those. Cost me a hoof and a horn but the darn thing has already half paid for itself on fuel and looks like it’s going to be doing so for a long time.” He paused as he hung Volt’s last shoe on a hook beside his other three. “Time was only the big city smiths could afford that stuff but the price has really come down in the last couple years.”
“Why is that?” Asked Crabwalk curiously.
“Well you know how every mine, mason, jeweller, and enchanter tooled up big a while back to feed the foreign market?” he paused and waited for us to nod in confirmation. “Well out of the blue they just quit buying! Don’t know why and I guess I don’t really care but that left everypony with a job in the gem trade up a creak with big depts. The guys who got in early took their fortunes and cashed out but all the small guys and latecomers who still had big loans had to find someone else to sell to. They had an inflated supple and vastly reduced demand. Thus they came around and sold enchanted gizmos to anypony who could use them.” He pointed to his forge with his nail pullers. “And I got an enchanted forge.”
I didn’t know what to say so I just whistled slowly. Right now, he was right now talking to ponies send into Equestria to get whatever enchantment grade gems they could by any means necessary and he thought that we ‘quit’ buying. A gem powered light that might have cost ten bucks back home was now selling for 200 and he thought we ‘quit’ buying. The Celestia blockade was keeping them from selling! Well, if it was going to be that easy to find real gems here than we just had to cover ground.
“I have to say fellows, it’s refreshing to see real nails in shoes these days.” Continued the smith oblivious to my silent fuming as he started pulling the shoes off Crabwalk.
“What do you mean proper nails?” I asked carefully.
“Oh you know how ponies are these days.” At that point he launched into a high pitched mimicking of what must be his impression of every customer he had. “Oh do I have to wear shoes for this trip? Do you have to nail them on? Can you glue them on? Can you use short nails that won’t go through the side of my hoof? I just had them painted. I’m so sick and tired of it!” he yelled with a stomp of his hoof as he returned to his own voice.
Well the smith sure was happy with the nails but if someone had screwed this up they were in so much trouble. If they had the brands on the nail head right but forgot to check the style then wow there would be some unhappy ponies.
“Okay, all done. Head on down to the spa and they’ll trim you right up.” The smith said as he pulled the last shoe off Crabs. 
“What do you mean? You don’t trim hooves?” I asked. Back in the Griff Kingdom one individual did all the jobs relating to hooves. That’s what a farrier was after all.
“Well seeing as I have a lot of work already, and that there is a spa in town, and that I don’t like doing it, and that they like doing it, and they are good at it, and that my wife owns the spa, Ya, I don’t trim hooves! I take them off and put um back on hot. Spa’s at the end of the block.” He said as he resumed work on his fire place set. “Go on, she won’t bite you. Often.” He added with a laugh.
Spa, okay, I could do this. I could do a spa. We left the farrier shop and headed up the dirt street toward the spa. 
“Hey uh, Carbon? Have you ever been to a spa before?” Asked Woods sheepishly. “Actually, have any of you ever been to a spa? What’s in there?”
Everyone exchanged the same nervous glances.
“I have never been in one, but I have read a book on the subject when I was reading up to come here.” It wasn’t a lie either. I had read a book, well a comic really, about spas before I came on this trip. While the piece wasn’t intended to be an informational manuscript on the workings of a spa, it did get across a couple of the broader details, as well as a couple of the smaller details with much more clarity. 
Two ponies with slicked back hair and stupidly happy grins greeted us at the door. One was a blue unicorn mare with a green mane and the other was a green earth pony mare with a blue mane. The two contrasted each other perfectly and their features were so similar they were probably sisters. The two launched into what sounded like a well rehearsed introduction.
“My name is Sea Shell!” said the unicorn in a hyperactive sing song voice.
“And my name is River Meadow!” said the earth pony in a slightly more subdued voice.
“And you must be here to get your hooves trimmed! Leave your things over there and come right this way!” said the unicorn motioning toward a closet with her manicured (hooficured?) hoof. 
It’s a good thing relaxation didn’t appear to be their immediate goal as their disposition did not lend itself toward calm in the least. I stripped down from my bags noting how the Jackals concealed perfectly behind their false seam and laid my sword across the bags. The plated armour barding faintly clanged on the floor through the cloth of the saddle bags. We had on only our light adventurer looking attire. Woodsong did the same dropping his bags but took his knife off his pack and shoved it up under his clothes. I smirked then followed suit and shoved my Bowie under the folds of my shirt. 
Volt just shrugged his bags off and dropped his knife on top. Was that knife the only weapon Volt had brought? I tried to remember, then slapped myself mentally. Volt didn’t need a weapon, Volt was a weapon.
Walking out I saw a door marked VIP and remembered my research. I turned to the cheerful green mare. 
“Is that where the sex happens?” I asked figuring my ‘research’ was paying off perfectly. Judging from the looks I got I either had it exactly right but had unknowingly broken some taboo in mentioning it or was so far off this was about to get us kicked out. Either way the rest of this visit would be awkward. I made a mental note to remove ‘The Usual’ from my list of reliable sources. 
To her credit the mare recovered quickly and explained.
“No, that’s where we give the extra important ponies extra special service.” Apparently she realized this explanation did absolutely nothing to help the mental images I had conjured and pranced off (from me in particular) letting her sister lead us to the hoof trimming station.
“Hey Carbon?” Woods chuckled into my ear as we walked. “That book you read was porn wasn’t it?”
“…Yes.” I said resigned under my breath.
“Can I borrow it when you’re done?” He asked after a short pause.
“It’s in my Ratt pack but yes.”
“Sweet.”
As we walked I watched the blue pony swish her oiled up tail in time with her steps. It was in the course of watching this slicked back tail that I happened to catch a quick glance under said tail. Oh shit, I thought to myself, they really don’t wear anything here. I mean I knew they didn’t wear anything but not this anything. I mean the smith had an apron on but, oh horseapples this is going to be harder than I thought. I tried to ignore the stirrings in my guts. It’s amazing how just 4 years away can change how you think about what’s decent.
Personally I try to follow a warrior code. Shut up I really am trying to! One tenant is that if you have anything to live for you will die before you get back to it eventually. If you have family it is not fare to them if you die. That for the most part rules out romantic exploits. Woods said it was an excuse people who couldn’t get marefriends used.
Woods apparently having no such reservations stared at her flank as if hypnotised and kept tapping my shoulder to make sure I saw it too.
“Dude, they don’t wear anything here!” he whispered to me completely and utterly joyful. I’m surprised he wasn’t prancing at this point.
“I noticed.” I replied, resigned to a long period of discomfort.
“Dude, if we’re wearing barding, you think that will stand out?” Until now I thought that even our plated barding looked enough like civilian dress to be ignored if we had to put it on. The only problem? Kingdom civilian dress! The light clothing we had on fit the wind swept adventurer look well enough.
“Na, they don’t know what bullet proof barding looks like.” I reasoned. “Plus, armour fits the whole adventurer thing.” I paused for a moment and then continued. “Actually, let’s change it to monster hunters. That sounds way more believable with these weapons and explains armour.”
“Okay, we’ll let the boys know when we stop.” He replied in a whisper. 
On the far end of the spa there was a mare getting treated for white line disease. Her hoof was cracked right up to the coronet. Most of the wall was missing and I’m pretty sure the only reason I wasn’t seeing meat was because there was a lot of plastic molded to cover it. Goddesses, there was something about a hoof rotting like that that always made me queasy. Looking for something to distract myself I looked into the large pool we were walking beside. To my complete surprise instead of the water I had expected it was filled with hot mud.
“Is this mud?” I asked in shock.
“Why yes it is!” I imagined she was relieved it wasn’t another sex question. Still, she had that look on her face like she was pointing out the obvious.
“Why would anypony want to soak in that?”
“Spoken like someone who has never had a mud bath before!” she laughed in response.

I had taken a mud bath before. When was it though? I closed my eyes and tried to remember. It had been before I got my mark, well the night I got my second mark really. Let’s see, after Karkaya, before Cornara, after Ziembia. It was just one of those little shit wars really. Southern Saddle Arabia, near the Zebra capital of Roam. (Not the city the province) It was one of those twisted alliance things that had us fighting alongside the Arabians half the time and outright fighting their battles for them at others.
I was crawling through thick mud. It was dark and I could only see when the machine gun thirty feet away let off a burst of fire. I had got my ear plugs in but all I could hear was my heart beating, the machine gun, and my breathing so loud I was sure it would give me away. Wump wump wump wump wump. Wump wump wump. I could make out the stripes on the gunner and the zebra feeding the gun, the white on their coats yellow in the muzzle flash. The large golden cases bouncing off of everything and glinting in the fire before embedding into the soft hillside. This was a heavy machine gun and it was dug in for a battle. My friends down below were being torn up and no one, not them and not the enemy, knew I was here.
I pulled my front leg out of the mud with a loud sucking sound and placed it as far as I could reach ahead only for it to again quickly sink half way up my foreleg. I repeated this with all four legs, the long slow pull from the mud and the sucking sound that I was sure they could hear. My legs were so heavy with muck that it was almost hard to tell when my leg had actually pulled free of the earth. Then it squished as I put the leg down again and slithered another foot closer. The rain water and sludge on the ground soaked through my barding and clung heavy to my fur. When I moved it compressed and pressed coldly against my skin. The rain and hail pelted down seeming to push me down into the muck even deeper. I was a creature of the dirt and the cold dark night. I was ice and water, my movement slow and fluid, silent save for what I alone could hear. Had they looked at me they would have seen a muddy serpent gliding toward them, but they did not look.
Something slapped wetly into the hillside beside me with a sound like a hoof slamming into twenty pounds of Jello. Finally I was aware of something other than myself and the machine gun. It was the slow rhythmic kachunk kachunk kachunk of a belt fed grenade launcher being fired down below. They were returning fire but probably didn’t know where their targets were, how many targets there were, and didn’t know where their shells were landing. The mud soaked them up and kept the impact detonators from activating. They were probably hosing down the hill side but to no effect. I could hear them landing far from me then passing over me and then moving off as the gunner swept the hill side but concentrated the most around the gunner. Small fires in our camp gave the zebra gunners all the edges. 
The bombardment of grenades stopped its rhythmic beat for a moment before continuing the barrage. This time the grenades were going off, they must have switched to timed detonators. The problem remained of the mud however and the buried grenades lost most of their power to the earth. Three detonated nearby me as the gunner did his sweep and my whole body lite up as if I had been lashed. I stuck my snout in the mud so that it would squelch my screams. Soupy water and dirt rushed into my open mouth and nostrils. Mud filled the cuts on my back, its arrival greeted with a strange mix of stinging and cooling sensations. I grit my teeth with dirt now between them and moved closer. 
I was five feet away, I could see their eyes and their breath but still I didn’t want the glow of my magic to give me away. That gun was deafening even with my ear plugs. I waited until they fired another burst and then the dagger on my foreleg enveloped in my fiery yellow telekinetic field and flew out of its muddy sheath and through the links on the belt. The blade kept the belt from feeding and jammed the gun. I did not have my gun so this would be done the old fashioned way.
“What the buck?” screamed the horrified zebra whose gun had jammed just as a sword and short blade shot out of the mud in front of him. 
The sword slammed into the gunner’s chest and I began slicing with my telekinesis in a manor resembling a pony trying to saw through a thick rope with a dull knife. He didn’t have a chance. I leapt on top of the zebra gunner as my fighting knife cut into his chest. I grabbed the leather handle with my teeth and pulled using it as a handle to get him on his back. He screamed as the blade tore his flesh the more he struggled. I slammed my metal horse shoe into his face while blood mixed with the mud on my own. His legs flailed as he tried pathetically to fight me off, I had already won.
I felt bones cracking and shifting as his long snout flattened. Teeth shattered and blood flew from the lacerations made by the splinters of skull as his bones failed to cope with my onslaught, my salvo of blows. I kept on slamming my hoof down after he stopped moving and blood stopped flowing. I kept slamming until his face was flat and his eyes popped, his whole head was pushed into the mud. 
“I’ve taken a mud bath before, I still don’t see what’s so great about it.” I said snapping back to the present.
“Well maybe it was a really lame one, you ever think about that?” Well I had to agree with her on that one, that sounded like a really bad time you wouldn’t pay anyone for. She paused a moment before continuing the walk over to the station. 
In actual fact I had three other things I could describe as mud baths. In training they threw a bunch of us in a big pit full of mud, piss, shit, and pig guts and made us not move for 8 hours. Then they came around with sharp sticks and stabbed us. If we moved they would pull us out and give us a wild beating then threw us back in. The second time was after a two day non-stop training exercise and we stayed in for 24 hours. However, this time we were permitted to sleep. It was made worse by the ponies and griffins at the camp not stopping dumping refuse into the pit while we were in it. The third time it happened for real and I had to pretend to be dead in a pile of dead bodies. There was a horse armed with only a spear tasked with making sure every body was actually dead. I am proud to say that when he stabbed me (not all the way mind you, just about four inches to test the waters) I didn’t fucking flinch. Actually surprised the blood didn’t give me away.
“Ya, I probably just had really shitty mud baths.” I agreed, earning a warning look from my companions. Oh shit, the swearing! I bit my tongue. Pretend they are foals Carbon. Pretend they are foals.
“What’s with the swords by the way? I take it your travelers by the shoes and the packs and whatnot?”
“Actually we are adventurers. Traveling the world saving ponies from monsters and evil doers for the good of all ponies! Working for fun, profit, adventure of course, but above all knowing you are alive!” Said Crabwalk stepping up to the explaining plate for all of us striking a heroic pose and making an arch in the air with his hoof as if painting the scene.
“Adventurers? Well I bet you have so many stories! Where are you coming from? What was it like? Were there monsters? Were they scary? Did they have any massage tricks there you can teach me?” 
She continued to ask questions as we walked and Crabwalk did his best to keep up with answers. Good thing he was too because I was too lost in thought to have answered well. We reached the station and as it turned out I was up first and being trimmed by River Meadow, the one who had trotted off before, great. 
She walked around be several times before instructing me to put my leg up on a stool and she went at my hoof with a knife, clippers, and a rasp. She wasn’t talking so it gave me time to think. It was too late, I had already started to remember.
I stood over the bodies of the broken zebras trying to catch my breath and trying to keep the adrenaline from making me throw up the meagre remains of my lunch. The grenade machine gun lulled its bombardment and somepony shot a flare in the air to make sure no one was charging. What light it cast was pathetic at this range however. Seeing the flare I remembered my smoke. We always used flares and coloured smoke to mark captured positions or positions we held during a battle in order to keep from getting shelled by our friends. Of course it let the enemy know where you were but it was a trade we were sometimes willing to make. I pulled a green canister and light it. Thick green smoke began to billow out and the light of the flair made the whole column of smoke light up. I threw it on the ground and lost my breath.
I watched the canister roll before it stopped next to a massive split hoof, I felt my guts melt. Standing there in the flickering light of the flair was a muscle bound behemoth. It stood on two legs and carried an assault rifle and an axe on a strap around its gargantuan shoulders. It was a minotaur, probably the one who carried the gun here come to think of it. Shit that gun, the perfect weapon for this and it lay disabled and without me knowing exactly what I had buggered up inside not three feet away. 
I saw the malicious glint in the monsters eyes as it pointed its crude assault rifle at me. Thinking fast I concentrated my magic and tripped the magazine release as I popped the chamber open. The beast looked with distain at its now unloaded rifle and dropped in to the ground where it stuck in the mud with a wet slap. With one hand he grabbed the axe as he stepped on the signal flare I had just dropped driving it into the mud. He smiled wickedly as he did so and let out a short laugh. The light vanished in an instant and I heard a satisfied grunt in the dark.
Quick! What did I know about fighting minotaurs? They have excellent night vision unlike me, shit. I couldn’t strike one hard enough to impress it, a condition that did not exist with it striking me, shit. It’s so big and hard you had to cut it perfectly to get the organs, in the dark, shit. The perfect weapon for killing minotaurs was at my hooves, inoperational, shit. Do not fight minotaurs if it can be avoided, shit.
I grabbed my sword and in the light my telekinesis cast I swung it at the monster only to hear a clink as it connected with the axe and I lost sight of it. Grabbing a knife off the zebra I threw it at the minotaur’s head. In the glow of my magic he saw the blade and deflected it with his axe. 
The minotaur charged swinging his axe and I jumped for all I was worth. The edge of the axe sliced into my side just enough for me to know how lucky I was to not be dragging my guts. I might not get lucky again. He could see anything I had a grip on and could probably stop anything he saw. If I could just know where something behind him was I would have something. Thinking fast I threw my bowie past his head without my magic. The monster laughed at the pathetic attempt and prepared to charge again.
Little did he know I caught the knife in the air behind him with my magic, and brought it back catching him in the back of the neck as he charged. Somehow he had missed the glowing behind him. He hit the mud and slid like a ton of watermelons. I flipped him onto his back and jumped on top of him laughing like a crazed psycho and proceeded to slam both of my front hooves into his face as hard and fast as I could.
“I am Carbon, don’t be coy! I don’t fight I just destroy!” I laughed and sung into his annoyingly undamaged face.
I looked at him, oh god I hated that smug face. Too bad teeth will wreck an edge faster than cutting rocks. I retrieved the dropped axe from where it had fallen and checked the edge. Oh ya, that minotaur had kept it sharp. I trotted back to where the minotaur had fallen and propped his head up with his horns sticking into the mud. In one movement I lifted the axe and chopped his head from muzzle through brain. I left the axe where it suck and dug out the flair from where the minotaur had ground it into the mud and relight it. Okay fine, attempted to relight it, gave up, and light a new one and used that to light the first one as well.
After gathering my scattered weapons I walked over to the machine gun. First step was pulling the dagger out of the belt and cycling the gun. Hu, it fed the next shell and locked; I guess nothing was broken after all. The belt was freshly linked into a new box of shells and there were still a couple unopened cans. In my magic I lifted the gun and turned it around to face where the enemy should still be dug in. The boys back at the base shot up some more flairs probably in anticipation of a charge. 
Oh shit, they were already advancing. I fired a burst in my telekinesis that went wild but did make the slowly advancing force slow down and look with some trepidation toward my position. I grabbed the tripod and set up the gun properly before crouching behind it, looking down the sights, and putting my hooves on the butterfly trigger. 
The line of advancing zebras was expecting the flairs but were expecting covering fire from on top of the hill. Without it they were hesitant about going into a full charge across an open field and leaving the cover behind. I linked two belts together and pressed the trigger down. The 50 caliber bullets tore through bodies and resolve alike as the barrage swept through their battle line. In unison the line broke and they charged back toward cover as my bombardment was joined by the Kingdom positions own guns and artillery. Now the flairs meant to spot the charge conversely gave me an excellent view of the retreating force.
“Run you fuckers!” I screamed as I fired at the retreating shadows. The world became vibrations, flashes, noise, and laughing.
“Owe!” I said in surprise.
“Sorry.” Said the pony sheepishly. She had slipped with the knife and driven it into my frog.
“Don’t worry about it.” I grumbled as she almost deflated back to her work. She made it all of three movements before doing it again. “How are you a professional? Were you even trained?” I asked far more meanly than I had intended.
“It’s my first day.” She said apologetically. “but I did read a book.”
“What book? Can I borrow it?” Asked Woods
“Why would you want an informational manuscript on the workings of a spa?” She asked confused.
“You know you should really be using the half length nails. All these extra holes can only dry you out.” Interrupted Sea Shell as she worked on Volts hooves.
“Will they fall out easier?” Asked Volt. The question seeming to catch the mare off guard.
“I… I don’t know. Maybe? Why would that matter when you can get them put back in?”
“It would matter when you’re out in the bush miles from anywhere and you lose a shoe. Now your gate is messed up then the monsters single you out.” Volt said matter of factly, smiling at the blue mares horrified look. “Then they eat you.”
I had more remembering to do.
As soon as I could I signaled the camp at the top of the adjacent hill and started making my way over there. Oh what a hell of a night that was. See, the Kingdom really likes to give out medals, says they inspire people. They don’t care if it’s about heroes, recognising bravery, or just letting attention whores get attention. So long as some people are trying to get the medals, some of them will fight harder.
They had everyone line up then and there and the sergeant gave me a medal of bravery. Now, normally when you first get a medal they pin the thing right into your chest. It hurts and it’s a bit odd of a ceremony when you think of it but it symbolises that it’s not just a thirty cent chunk of metal and that it is actually a part of you, not just a decoration. However, with how much mud and blood was on me he must have decided infection was a danger and so just put it on my barding.
A bunch of us pulled out stowed away booze to celebrate. Many were just in it for how cool of a story it was and a chance to party. At some point the party moved to the showers after I kept getting mud everywhere and they started peeling off my barding plates. Not gay! It was actually Shashka who pulled off my rump plates. (Not gay!) I still remember how the look on his face hushed the whole room. The barding fell from his mouth and hit the floor with a clang.
“What the buck?” he asked in bafflement. I turned to see what he was looking at but only saw mud.
Shashka grabbed a bucket of water and threw it on my flank, the clean water instantly turning black as it washed away the dirt.
“Was that fucking there before?”
I looked and my jaw just about slammed through the floor. Where before there had been a machine gun belt there was now a dagger stuck through the links.
“No.” I replied lamely. 
The room got dead silent for a second before somepony let out a whoop of excitement that was echoed by the whole room. That night was the greatest party I have ever been to but my horn was burning all night from curiosity. Seems the feeling was shared cause come morning it seemed every doctor in the Kingdom wanted to see me. They thought it might me Cutie Pox or something but never did find anything wrong with me, well mark wise anyway. God who wants a doctor pointing out how ‘uneven’ everything about you is, never been so self-conscious. Anyway, after a week of examination, consulting, monitoring, records keeping, research, and every manor of test, the overarching opinion was ‘cutie marks are poorly understood and magical on their own, this is in our medical opinion the only recorded case of a two part cutie mark with both halves appearing at different times.’
I smiled at the memory. Before I had had a bad ass cutie mark. Now I had a badder ass cutie mark that meant something.
After the mares had finished rasping and filing our hooves down to what seemed to them a satisfactory degree but to me far passed excessive we were informed we would pay at the farrier shop. We left the spa and headed back up the road to the farrier. Damn, these equestrians may be stupid (not to mention ignorant, foalish, and conceited) but they sure knew their hoofcraft. I couldn’t remember the last time my steps felt this good. We trotted back into the blacksmith shop. When the farrier saw us coming he immediately put a set of shoes in the forge, so they were hot shoeing then? No wonder they didn’t want this part in the spa!
From there it was a simple matter enduring the smell of burning hoof as the hot shoes were burnt in and the nails pounded. The smith seemed to take extra pleasure in clipping off the excess length of the full sized nails. Before we knew it we were all refitted in our shoes and ready to hit the trail.
“How much do we owe you?”
“100 bits a head.”
This may or may not have been a lot, however this would become the basis for all future transaction.
We paid the stallion and headed out of the farrier shop with what was perhaps the best trim we have ever had.
“So guys, it sound like we just have to cover ground to where gems are going cheap and load up before we have to get out of Equestria.” Said Volt strangely optimistically.
“Ya Volt, but which way do we run?” I asked.
We all saw the store across the street at about the same time. The sign read in bold red letters, ‘We Probably Have It’. 
“Want to start there?” Asked Woods.
The bell hung above the door rang as we walked in and a very light brown pony with a straw colored mane and tail stopped putting cans on the shelf to trot up to us. 
“Can I help yall find anything?” Asked the aged stallion. 
“Yes actually. Do you carry gems?” asked Crabs in his typical friendly voice. 
“Right this way.” The stallion said as he started off down one of the rows of junk.
The store did its best to live up to its name. There were rows upon rows of stuff I didn’t even know what it was. Looked like stacks of wire lamp frames in some places and actual lamps in others. I saw shovels and gardening tools in one section and what looked like alchemy sets right beside it. There was practically everything I could think of in some capacity somewhere in the store. The whole building smelled like old wood, dust, and cabbage. Wow, there must be vegetables in here somewhere too!
“So what you boys looking for gems for?”
“Well, in some places ponies won’t take bits in a trade but they will usually take gems if they are good enough.”
“Oh, well here ya are.” Said the old stallion as he stopped in front of ten half barrels filled with sorted gems. 
We all exchanged glances before Volt and Crabwalk pulled their jewellers loops out and tore into the barrels of gems. Me and Woods stood and watched. Woods was the best at this but ironically hated doing it. We were planning to save him for when it really mattered.
Volt and Crabs dove into the baskets of gems searching from one shiny orb to the next. They must have continued at a constant pace for a good five minutes.
While we waited for the verdict I started looking around. Right beside us was a display of cameras and photos presumably taken to show off the capability of each camera. What struck me more than the large, clunky nature of the cameras and their stands was the pictures next to them. These cameras looked little better than the gunpowder flash cameras of old but the pictures were all in colour. I mean, it could be magically enhanced or something but we had way smaller cameras than this back home that also took colour photos.
I was snapped out of my curiosity by Volt announcing, “The grades not high enough. These won’t work.”
“Well if you need higher grade gems than those I have some behind the counter that I got paid with earlier.”
He led us over to the register and pulled out a box of gems for us to look at. Woods looked at me hopefully and I sighed as I took out my loop. There were flaws in the gems, but not that many and not that big. Heck if you didn’t know what to look for you wouldn’t see them.
“Woods, have a look at these.” I said handing it to Woods. He floated the gem in front of him for about ten seconds.  
“Who brought these in?” He asked. I swear he had a gem apprising spell he wasn’t letting on about.
“Some zebra alchemist, said they weren’t high enough quality for enchanting stones but they should be good enough for trading.”
“There are zebras around here?” Volt deadpanned.
“Ya, thems live off down in the forest. Never had cause to be down there myself but I here you just need to take the main road for a couple miles then there will be this here path that branches off west that takes you to a village.”
With this bit of information we made our excuses and left the shop. Just outside the door we heard a dog bark and I felt my hair bristle as I searched for the source of the sound. Just up the road a filly was playing with a dog. I found myself sizing the small fluffy dog up and trying to judge its treat level before I realized it was probably just a pet. In the kingdom nine out of ten dogs are weapons, very effective weapons if you knew how to use them. Yes even the playful ones. In fact most griffins think of ponies as dogs that just take a little longer to train then they can use guns. With the dog licking her face I relaxed and we headed out of town.
We made it twenty minutes out of town before we remembered we had to go to the bank. Coming back to town we exchanged 3000 bits worth of notes to a banker who looked like he had never seen one before. That taken care of we left town for real.
The road leading out of town stretched straight until at some point we found ourselves on a twisting path in the forest. Must have been a real subtle change because none of us could recall where any significant changes in scenery had occurred.
“How many miles are we supposed to go down this road before there is a trail leading west?” Asked Woods.
“A couple.” Replied Volt flatly. I couldn’t tell if he was ticked at the old stallion for being misleading, Woods for asking questions, or if he was just angry Woods interrupted his train of though.
A couple miles turned out to be about eight miles before we hit the trail heading West. Now once we hit that westward trial we must have followed it for upwards of an hour before our growling stomachs reminded us we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and that trip to the spa hadn’t been short. (Hooves still felt great by the way) we could only guess how much longer the trail was.
As soon as the trees got thick there came with it an eerie feeling of being watched. Now I’ve been in the woods before, I’ve been in the thick jungle before with actual ponies hiding and hunting me. This was different. This was everywhere yet we couldn’t see it. However, whatever it was was keeping its distance for now. 
“Do you guys feel that too?” Woods asked seconds before I did. The usual humour was gone from his voice replaced with apprehension but the confidence was still there.
“Yes.” I replied simply. Apparently too simple because the other two hadn’t felt anything and gave us funny looks. Maybe it was our unicorn magic giving us the edge, but Crabs usually picked up on stuff like this.
“Something’s watching us.” Said Woods seriously.
“Is this another one of your nothing is there but everything is watching us things again?” Asked Volt with a slight chuckle. At our looks he simply rolled his eyes and launched himself into the air. “Cover your ears.” He slammed his wings into his sides and there was a sound that came from him that you would swear was a gunshot if you didn’t know Volt. He did this several more times, it sounded like someone was doing mag dumps in the bush beside us. Some pegasi learn to manipulate the magic that lets them fly in ways even a unicorn can’t hope to achieve. He landed back on the ground. “Well is it gone now?”
Woods rubbed his ears and shrugged. “I guess so, maybe it was an animal.”
“Didn’t feel like a squirrel to me.” I said warily as I tried to stare holes in the trees.
“Oh, guys before I forget were monster hunters now.” Said Woods, apparently only remembering the new cover story now.
We continued down the trail for probably another hour without incident. The sun had passed the high point and was already starting on its way down like an incredibly fat stallion who was nervously backing out of a room he walked into by accident only to find it full of ponies he didn’t know. We hadn’t eaten since before we got to Cliff Springer’s Wish this morning and we were all really starting to feel the hunger now.
We stopped to make something to eat. Crabs began to set up the pot and measure out the portions for lunch. Battle chow, or trail chow as it is sometimes called is a Kingdom pony favourite on the go meal. It consists of two parts oats, one part beans, one part mixed grains, and one part peas. All dried of course and cooked together in the same pot. You could also mix in grease and sugar or mixed greens if you were feeling fancy. Right now we were ruffing it so we only had the beans, peas, and oats.
We let Woods go get the wood for the fire, he didn’t have crossed axes for a mark for nothing you know. As battle ready as it looked he had gotten it for wood processing. While that was going on I walked off the trail to go take a piss in the bush. 
I had barely gotten away from the group when I heard a rustling in the trees. Something about it caught my attention and I went over to see what it was. There was nothing there. I heard another rustling sound a little farther up and upon nearing it I found it too held nothing. Up ahead a little I thought I saw something. 
It was two scaly blue feet with enormous black talons emerging from them. The owner of the feet was obscured by a well placed branch. Moving as slowly as I could I drew my sword and sliced through the branch with my magic. The branch fell away letting me and the thing lock eyes for a second.
It walked on two legs and was covered with scaly blue skin that looked almost reptilian. Its back and tail were covered with red spines. It had large claws on its fingers. There were two black wings on its back. Its head is what I locked onto though. It had two red eyes, a long snout that resembled a slender reptilian horses’, and a mouth full of vicious looking fangs four of which were forward facing. Its big red eyes and long ears regarded me for a second before it spread its black wings revealing the reddish undersides and then it was gone.
Peeing no longer seeming a pressing concern I sprinted back to the group.
“Guys!” they all looked up from what they were doing, even Woods who was in the middle of looking for the right tree. “I think I just saw a chupacabra! Think this will be a problem?”