The hoofbeat got closer and closer, slow enough to be agonizing but fast enough to leave no time.

Colin had to act fast.

His mind raced, trying to gauge his chances of being seen if he slipped out the other side of the train and hid behind the wheel to his left. For all he knew, there were guards far enough towards the front out of his field of view that would notice a human silhouette emerging from the undercarriage and alert them to his presence. Colin wondered if he could just get out and run, try to escape before they could catch him, but his thoughts immediately shifted to James.

Colin didn't know James. Not really. He had neglected to ask James if he knew how to get back home, but for some reason Colin didn't think he did all of a sudden. And then there was the ordeal with the Timberwolf; James had acted coldly, neigh bereft of mercy. Yet, despite having no reason to stay behind and keep close to him, Colin wanted to be around him. Perhaps it was because he felt a bond, perhaps it was simply because James was the only other human he could interact with. But all the same, Colin wanted to know him.

The hoofs were getting closer.

There was only about a second to think it over, and Colin wasn't good at making fast decisions. He felt his body begin to lock up. It was time for him to make the choice, before the panic setting in made it for him.

Colin, quickly and quietly, crawled out from under the train just as the horses stopped to bend down. He crouched next to the wheel, fighting to make his body as small as possible, and held his breath as the soldiers checked the undercarriage.

"Nothing," the soldier stated.

"You're absolutely certain of that?" came Razorplume's voice in response.

"I can't see anything down here, sir."

Razorplume snorted. "Go around the other side and check there. I'll stay here and keep an eye on this end."

'Oh,' Colin thought exasperatedly, 'come on!'

Looking around, Colin noticed that, thankfully, there weren't any other guards on this side. Not yet, at least; the one soldier was getting closer with every heartbeat. Colin once more had to act fast, only this time his choice came with greater risk, and inspiration.

As it turned out, a rabbit had just happened to come out from the bushes not two feet from Colin to sate its curiosity with the halted train. It was white as the snow, and likely should have been hibernating, and yet there it was, like a ghost in the winter. It looked up at Colin, and he felt a strong urge to go with it somewhere. A distant memory stirred in his mind; this reminded him of something, but he wasn't sure exactly what. Colin got an idea into his head; it was risking it all, but there was no other choice; once more, the guard was getting closer.

The moment came. Colin dove after the startled, fleeing rabbit as it ran to his left and then turned to bolt into the forest. Colin made no pause, even after he heard the sharp cry of alarm and Razorplume's demand to know what had happened. Colin bolted, almost on all fours, into the forest fringe, ducked behind a tree and waited to see if his diversion worked.

"What!?" Razorplume shouted, skittering in the snow as she ran up to the guard's side. "What did you see!?"

Colin risked a glance at the train, and realized to his joy that they weren't even looking at him. Instead, the guard was sullenly looking over where the rabbit had disappeared into the foliage, with Razorplume craning to try and get a glimpse of it as well. Even the passengers had been piqued by the commotion, and all were staring out the window into the darkness of the forest beyond.

"Rabbit," was the only word the soldier had to offer.

Razorplume slumped. She turned with a cruel grimace, as though to scream at the poor sod for making her jump at shadows, but then noticed all of the civilian eyes on them. Instead, she simply lowered her voice and growled, "I'll deal with you later."

Colin had to put a hand over his mouth and duck back behind the tree to keep from laughing.

With the search unsatisfyingly yet conclusively ended, the excitement was over. The Equestrian soldiers rounded themselves up, thanked the conductor for his patience and apologized for the delay, and finally took to the sky and disappeared. The citizens immediately ceased to care about the issue after they had left, turning their attention back to whatever they had been doing before the unexpected inspection. With a lurch, the train began to move again, and Colin made a quick dash for the caboose and clambered on, much more easily this time.

Before long, the train was moving again, chugging through the night like nothing had happened. Colin didn't see any sign of James; he figured he'd had the same idea and would come sprinting up to the car like before any minute now. Nothing.

And then, with a terrifying realization, Colin turned towards a noise and saw the barrel lid pop open and slide off.

James, dripping water, with a gasp and chattering teeth, crawled out of the water and dumped himself on the porch. Immediately, Colin was next to him.

"What did you do!?" he exclaimed. "Why? Why did you…?"

"He-hey Colin," James stuttered. "D-d-don't mind m-me, just ta-taking a b-b-bath."

Colin had his hands on his head in dismay, looking down at the idiot who claimed to be a survivor, who now, without a doubt, had hypothermia. "Are you kidding me right now? You hid in there!?"

"Consid-d-der it taking one f-fer the team-m-m, pal," James replied shakily. "'Sides, I've d-dealt with-h-h hypo-th-thermia before."

"Is there anything you haven't dealt with?"

James sat up against the meagre warmth of the train car and grinned in spite of his ailment. "Taxes, for one," he joked. "Th-then ag-g-gain, I'm ho-homeless, so I've g-g-got a r-reason…"

"That's not funny!" Colin cried, almost loud enough to be heard over the engine.

"Shhh!" James hissed. "Y-you make that m-m-much noise n-now, and hypotherm-m-mia is g-g-going to b-be the least of m-my worries."

"Oh, no." Colin frantically tried to think of something he could do, anything. "Oh, no."

"Re-relax, kid," James tried to reassure him. "I didn't c-c-come all this w-way just to d-die now from this."

Colin removed his poncho from his shoulders, bent down and pulled off James's boots and socks.

"H-he-hey!" he protested. "What 'r y-you doing? P-put that back on!"

"No," Colin said flatly as he wrapped the garment tightly around James's bare feet. It couldn't have been too much of a solution, but it was all he had. "You need it far more than I do."

Despite James's protests, Colin took off his brown tunic as well, laying it across James's lap and tying it tightly around his legs. Then, he undid James's jacket and curled up with him, pulling the jacket around them as best he could. Luckily, the leather was waterproof, and underneath was dry.

"Y-y'know," James said, "th-that you don't n-n-need to do this, yeah?"

"I don't see how I shouldn't," Colin replied. "Your chances of dying from that stupid move would only increase if I did nothing."

James was quiet for a moment. "…You're right," he admitted finally. "I sh-shouldn't have d-done what I d-d-did. I'm s-sorry, Colin."

"Don't apologize," Colin replied. "Instead, thank me when I save your life."

James nodded. "T-th-thank you."

Then the two laid there for a few minutes in total silence.

"…Colin?"

"Yeah?"

"…Th-this is really awkward."

"…Yup."

When the pair arrived at where James wanted them to go, Colin had to half-carry the staggering James towards his halfway house. Of course, 'house' was a perhaps inappropriate term; it was really a wood and corrugated tin shack that had to be about three, four metres squared, set inside a six-foot pit. A tarp had been laid over the entire hole, giving a ceiling to the small, round dirt trench that surrounded the ramshackle hut, and from above it looked like just more empty ground, with tree bark covering what Colin could only assume to be a chimney-pipe. Colin lifted the tarp and slid down, and helped James in. Ducking to avoid the low ceiling of the hut, Colin realized it was so low to the ground that he couldn't stand at his full height. As Colin had guessed, a pipe came down from the ceiling and the only furniture was a metal lockbox set against the wall.

"Th-there's only one s-s-sleeping bag in the b-box," James said. "I d-don't know if the one in m-m-my pack is still dry."

"It should be," Colin said. "If not, I can go without it."

"C-colin…"

"Trust me."

James looked unsure, but he complied. As fortune would have it, the sleeping bag, alongside everything else in his pack, was dry. James got the other bag out of the case, laid it out and began to shove everything in his pack into it.

"I n-need you to go out and g-g-get as m-many twigs as you can fuh-find," he said. "Can y-you do that?"

"Yes," was all Colin said before he left.

It wasn't long before James was curled up in the sleeping bag, surrounded by the contents of his pack as well as twigs and podzol, and had abruptly gone silent.

Colin could only lie in his own sleeping bag and watch him. Within the next half hour, James had begun to shiver, which was a good sign; it meant that his body temperature was trying to right itself. But Colin didn't feel reassured. He sat there, wide awake and troubled, looking over at the one and only other human in this strange world, far away from any other help, wondering if he was going to die…

…And then, suddenly, he wasn't awake anymore.

Darkness enveloped Colin as he sank further into unconsciousness. The numb feeling overcame his body, as though he was drifting through tar. What little warmth he felt was siphoned away, only to be replaced not with cold, but with a null non-feeling that was neither. Despite being asleep, and knowing he was asleep, the void before him made Colin feel dizzy and sick.

The darkness lifted, only just enough to get fragments of images floating through Colin's mind. At first, he saw an endless expanse of storm-grey earth, which wavered and moved as though distorted by heat. Only, it wasn't earth at all, Colin realized; it was water. An ocean, stretching out to the horizon in almost every direction.

Colin could look around, but he couldn't look down, couldn't see what he was standing on. The sea only gave way in one direction, showing sand that led upwards to cracked, parched earth, barren but for scrubs and dead bushes. Colin could see a column of smoke rising from the horizon, and small figures wandering around where it might be…

Colin felt eyes on him. He tried to turn but found it like moving through tar. Suddenly the blind darkness from before set in, and the weightless, vertigo-inducing feeling overwhelmed him. He couldn't tell up from down anymore, left from right or forward from back.

But he could tell he was being watched. And it unsettled him.

The world bled into view again, and suddenly Colin was back in the shanty with James asleep next to him. Light filtered through the chimney-pipe, the dust giving the illusion of a solid beam, so it was clear he had slept through the night.

Colin looked over at James's body. He was lying still, which deeply concerned Colin until he examined him closer and found his sleeping bag to be gently rising and falling. He'd survived. Colin wanted to wake him up, to talk to him about his dream and ask him if he'd had any similar, but instead, for some reason, kept still for a while, not moving or making any sound, just lying there and listening to the quiet ambience of the forest. Five minutes passed… ten minutes…

"James?"

James made no indication that he had heard, so Colin asked again, louder this time.

"James."

James finally stirred, grunted, and with effort, rolled over. He looked rough, but then again that had to be expected of a man who almost died the night before. He blinked lazily.

"Wha… yeah?" he said.

"I know I should let you get your rest, but I wanted to ask you a question."

"No," James reassured him, "no, that's fine. We should probably be back on the road anyway." He began to sit up.

"What?" Colin said. "No! You haven't recovered your strength yet, you need to rest!"

"What are you, my mother?"

"Lie back down!"

Before James could react, Colin pressed his hands against his shoulders and shoved him back onto the ground before recoiling back to his side of the shack. James grunted again. His body felt sore all over and his movements sluggish. Maybe Colin had a point.

"Alright, alright!" he conceded. "We'll stick around a while longer. Let's say…"

"Two days," Colin said.

"One."

"Two. Days."

"One and a half."

"Not negotiable, James!" Colin shouted. "God, are you always this stubborn?"

"Ugh. You remind me of… someone I met on the road," he said vaguely.

"You mean a kind Samaritan who actually cared about your wellbeing?"

James chuckled. "They are a rare occurrence. Never really had someone to force me to lie down and get all healed before."

"Well," Colin muttered, "you do now."

James looked at him. From a purely tactical standpoint, Colin was dead weight; untrained, inexperienced and unable to hold his own in a fight or survival. But he was a fast learner, and it was admittedly nice to have another human to bounce thoughts off of and match wits with.

"Well," James sighed, putting his arms behind his head with only the slightest smart, "I guess while we're stuck here, you can ask me that question."

"Right," Colin said. "Well, last night I had a dream."

James tensed, and his muscles burned. There was another huge risk Colin brought to the table, and James had completely forgotten about it. Whatever expression he made must have been noticeable, because Colin had stopped dead in his tracks.

"What, what's wrong?" he asked.

"In your dream, what did you see?" James responded. He didn't really care what Colin had to say; whatever it was, it meant bad news. But his purpose in asking was to find out where the dream had come from.

"Well," Colin explained, "I was standing out at sea, near a coastline on what looked like a desert. Everything looked, I don't know how to put it..."

"Polluted?"

"…Corrupted. Barren and dead, as though it were once alive. Like something killed all the grass and plantlife."

James shut his eyes. It was worse than he'd imagined.

"And then everything went dark, like I was floating through space," Colin continued.

"And you felt a presence," James guessed. "Like being watched."

"So you've had them too," Colin said.

"Yeah," James told him. "The last time around."

"Last time?"

James straightened again, and Colin didn't stop him. "Colin, when I ended up here in the first place, I had dreams like you did. I was standing on a shore, looking down at a smoking rock in a crater."

"A meteor," Colin guessed.

"Probably, yeah," James agreed. "I had guessed it was my memories of home resurfacing. But they always came with visions, terrible visions, and besides, dreaming here is different than dreaming somewhere else. Here, your dreams are watched, monitored by more than one being. So I've learned to block them out."

"You… keep yourself from dreaming?"

James's eyes got a faraway look. "I've had bad history with people running around in my mind," he muttered darkly.

Colin didn't know what to make of that, but what James implied made him shudder just thinking about it.

"What you're experiencing isn't a good sign," James warned. "It means he's now well and truly making a comeback. It means that Ophidian is regaining his power."

Colin didn't know who Ophidian was, either. But just like what James said about dreams, the name made his skin crawl all the same. "Who's Ophidian?" Colin asked.

James glanced over at Colin, and figured that this was it. The moment of truth. Colin needed to know what was going on, what he was up against.

So James told him.

The story took up the better part of the day, but in his defence, James had a lot to cover. He told Colin everything he needed to know, but not a word more. He told him about his arrival and the ordeals that followed. He told him about his actions and what granted him outlaw status. He told him about Ophidian, at the time a nameless monstrosity from beyond time and space that threatened Equestria until he, with the help of an Equestrian Guard-captain named Night Iron and the beast's own treasonous general, Liam Holt, destroyed its anchor in this universe and killed its twin before sending it back to whence it came.

James even told Colin about the Spellbane shards, and his mission to find and scatter them to the four winds, so that they could never be brought together again, keeping the monster from returning and severing the bond between home and Equestria once and for all, even at the cost of never being able to return himself. But he didn't tell Colin everything; he omitted Lyra and his experience with Twilight and later Ophidian's mind games.

"…So that's it," James concluded. "I've seen what home is like. I compared it to Equestria many times, and from what I've gathered, it's a paradise compared to where we came from. If it means saving this world from the ravages of that thing… I'm more than glad to trap myself here, criminal or not."

Colin had listened in intent silence for the whole time, and only when James had finished decided to speak. "James, if what you're saying is true, that means that by saving this world, we'd be condemning ours."

"Nice sentiment, Colin, but where we come from looks to me like its already in the grave."

"That doesn't matter!" Colin protested. "James, if we came from there, then that means there are others, too. We can't just let them all suffer to save Equestria. We need to find a way to save both."

"Colin, there is no way. In order to save both, we'd either need to lure Ophidian here or take the fight back to his home field, and we're not winning that fight."

"There's gotta be a way," Colin insisted. "Maybe… maybe we could get Twilight to—"

"No," James denied. "I will never go looking for their help. Besides, it's too dangerous."

Colin sat back dejectedly. He knew then and there that he wasn't going to convince James to seek help. "Well, then… then we need to figure out his plan," he said.

"Plan?" James shook his head. "Ophidian's more chaotic than that lunatic franken-dragon Fluttershy helped turn around. His 'plans' are pretty ramshackle."

"He invaded Equestria with an army," Colin said. "Put you and Twilight and Celestia at each other's throats. That doesn't strike me as chaotic."

James sat, slouched and puzzled, before finally sitting up straight. "Alright. You're right, we need to figure out Ophidian's play. But for that, you'll need to be trained, first. I can't be expected to do all the work for your idea."

"Oh, so this is my idea?"

"You suggested it." James rolled his shoulders. "Alright, you'll need a pack and supplies of your own, and a journal, too, for notes. Plus, it'll help keep you sane to write down your thoughts someplace private."

"Got it."

James turned and looked Colin in the eyes. "If we do this," he told him finally, "if we are really, truly going to do this, Colin, then I figure you need to know what you're getting into."

Colin straightened alongside him. "Lay it on me."

"Rolling with me has a lot of dangers," James explained. "Believe me when I say, you'll need every skill I teach you. We'll be pursued, and not just by wooden wolves and monstrous beings. The kingdom of Equestria, its sovereign troops, will be hunting us at every turn, and there's no doubt that Twilight and Celestia will be on our trail too. You come with me, Colin, and you're diving into a perilous, uncomfortable and taxing life, and I cannot stress that fact enough. You come with me, Colin, and you're a wanted man. So I need you to tell me, with full certainty and honesty, right now while you still have a chance to go back to Twilight where you'd be safer, because if you accept, there's no turning back."

James extended his hand, and noticed the pain in his muscles had subsided.

"Are you with me, Colin?"

Colin looked down at the hand for a long time, contemplating his choice. Then he extended his hand in turn, and clasped it into James's with a firm shake.

"Yes."