Wasted Honor

And when you write your name upon the pages of history, you will use blood. Yours, theirs, it doesn’t matter. Your name will never be forgotten…and I do not envy you. But I do envy your legacy. After all, your honor shall never be wasted.”

-Briar Blueblood, speaking to his brother, Thorn

Six Months Before… A city for the winged had no concerns for great heights. Thus it became a symbol of beauty and strength that Aveston was seated upon the edge of a mighty cliff. Further behind, jagged peaks reached for the sky, but even they yielded to the might which was the determination of the griffons. There, a mile above the ground on a spar of stone half again as wide and broad, an entire town had grown from a simple trading post. First built to see the beauty of the waterfall on the east side of the city, Aveston had become a mighty fortress and center of trade.

The sun rose in a chorus of light, streaming through the tower of water falling from the heavens to the earth. Rainbow at first, eventually the angle changed on the rise, bathing more and more of the mountainside in the yellows and oranges of the dawn. Gradually, the multicolored halo shifted to rest on the highest tower in the city. Part of the noble House Wintergleam, the battlements reached up to the elements like the talons of their creators. Slowly, the light focused until it rested upon just one window. A single pane of crystal, put in place to take in the rainbow hue of sunlight split by the water, holding a rare beauty amid the great emptiness around.

That window was going to be shards in a few seconds.

“That’s your target, now get there!” thundered Dive over the sound of a red marker appearing over the window in Shadow’s helmet.

“Sir, there is no way we can hide going supersonic right over a city.”

“Dammit, soldier! There won’t be a city if you don’t get there in time!” Argent was watching the whole thing unfold. Far away and helpless, but he’d still ordered Shadow out in front, able to get there just a little bit faster.

“You heard him! Shadow, you’re going through the window!”

“The window?”

“Yes, rotate through, and slam it with your hooves!”

Twenty miles and ninety seconds separated the rest of the team from the city’s airspace, but those were not the numbers which had Shadow worried. The window read as a little over a thousand lengths away on the optics, and it would take every hoof of that distance to slow down from boom by one point one.

“Shit!”

At supersonic, he couldn’t lose his posture, or the sudden change in air resistance could rip him in half. Changing wing position would head him off course--unacceptable when the target was a square length, and gliding alone wouldn’t cut it. The window would break, and so would he. That left one option.

“Ray, the suit!”

For once there was no sarcastic response, just a gasp as the tech realized what was being asked of him,

“Right! Turning the friction back up. Hang on, the remote access is slow…” The tower loomed closer, a stone pillar resolute and inexorable. “Got it! Hang onto your tail.”

The wind began to howl all around as it found purchase on Shadow’s body, pulling him back as the tower reached forward. For every dozen lengths dropped on the airspeed indicator, the window grew enough to demand turning down the optics. At two-hundred lengths, Shadow looked up into the sky, and rotated his wings back. His entire form was blown vertical by the wind, but couldn’t overcome the tremendous forward velocity. At the last possible second, he remembered to lock out his hindlegs.

Raw, unrelenting force pushed on his hooves, pain lancing through his bones as surely as if he’d impacted a wall of concrete. Lightning fast it raced up his legs, but the glass shattered even faster, leaving him falling uncontrollably through a hail of crystal shards. Sunlight glowed through the open hole where the window used to be, lighting up the razor rain all around in a sharp, sparkling halo. Just as soon as the wondrous sight began, Shadow slammed back-first into the cold stone floor and slid. All around, the glass fell, bouncing harmlessly off of his helmet, and stabbing into the fabric of his suit. That slide continued over several uneven stone tiles, shaking his back, and scraping his neck several times before he ran head-first into the wall.

Black took his vision for a split second, and it came back blurry. In that haze, one part stood clear: a large fragment of the window, hurtling right toward his neck. With a yell, Shadow heaved himself to the side and rolled over to lie with his back to face the impact. The fragment struck the stone floor, and shattered like the window it had come from. Slivers of glass shot out in every direction, causing Shadow to cry out as dozens embedded themselves in his back. Then the roar went away. No more scraping against the floor, no more glass breaking against stone, just the slow gasp of his own inhale and exhale.

“Shadow, get up!” And Dive on the radio. “Come on!”

It only would take rolling over to the left to get his hooves back on the ground, but even that motion wiggled the glass embedded in his skin, sending dozens of lances of pain up his spine. Growling through his teeth, he shifted onto all fours and slowly stood, keeping his back relaxed. Just to the side of his hooves lay the edge of an opening in the floor where a spiral staircase descended sharply to the lower reaches of the tower.

“Behind you, get to it!”

A pile of metallic, gray cylinders were stacked upright against the opposite side of the tower wall, four across and three deep. They were a quarter-length wide, and half as tall as Shadow. Each one could weigh more than Crash did, if they were solid to the core. One more cylinder lay on its side atop the rest, crudely duct-taped in place. Each pain-fueled, pissed-off step brought them closer, and closer, until Shadow was standing right in front of them.

“Ok, talk to me, Ray. How do I disarm this thing?”

“That’s a cluster-charge Sunfire Bomb. Judging by the setup, the upright cases hold the spell charge, and the case on top holds the spell-trigger. Gotta open it up to disrupt the mechanism and spellwork--and no explosives. A sudden energy discharge nearby could set it all off. Try your knife first; let’s hope that they didn’t case it in steel.”

“Can’t I just cut the tape off and carry the trigger case off, and fly it out of here?”

“No! The trigger is harmonically linked to the charges, and if you move it too far away, the whole thing will blow. It’s going off in two minutes, so get that can open!”

“Right!” Spurred on my Ray’s cry, Shadow ripped his knife from his saddlebags, gripped it deftly with his left foreleg, and brought it down hard. Steel rang against steel, and the knife slipped from his grasp. There was not so much as a nick on the casing. Sundammit! Four more times Shadow tried to force his blade through different point on the cylinder, to no avail.

“Ray, this isn’t working!”

“Well, shoot it open!” yelled Dive.

“No! The gunpowder combustion would almost certainly trigger the explosion.” Ray coughed, and Shadow sat, staring at the bomb as he waited. Two beads of sweat ran under his coat down his forehead. “Agh! Try to buck it in. You might be able to crush it.”

“Got it!” Shadow dropped his knife and spun around, wincing as his back screamed blood and fury at the sudden motion. Looking over his shoulder to aim the kick, all the weight went onto his forelegs. Pushing with every bit of strength into the stone of the floor, he slammed both hindhooves into the case. Like bucking a brick wall, there was no give at all, and Shadow landed on his face. The ring of horseshoes meeting steel sounded, and blood dripped down his back. For the second time that morning, he pushed himself back up, and turned a wary eye to back to the bomb. There, indented in the metal were two deformations where his hooves had landed, and a slight bowing inbetween.

It’s working! Elation ran through his tired wings and burning back, calling him to buck the case again and again, the clanging ringing throughout the tower. With each kick, Shadow made sure to keep his balance, and land every strike on the exact same spot. The pain of holding himself up with two legs, and of trying to break through fought to the surface, and was pushed right back down. Half a million souls were unknowingly counting on him to break that case, and he was not about to let them down. Something was bound to bend and break, to tear and shatter if could just keep kicking. Somewhere, underneath the pain his his legs and back, the noise from the bucking and the cries of his team on the radio, it felt as if the metal was giving way.

A voice cut above the rest. Ray was yelling at the top of his lungs. “Hunter! It’s at thirty seconds! You need to get clear now!”

One more buck and Shadow turned, only to see the case heavily dented, but still intact. “Is it broken on the inside, Ray?”

“It’s still live! I’m still getting a countdown reading off of it! If you don’t leave now you won’t clear the blast radius.”

Shadow seized his saddlebags, leaving his knife on the floor, but still kept his gaze on the bomb. Ray had said the trigger just needed to be smashed, and it was so close to breaking. As if he sensed Shadow’s hesitation, Dive jarred Shadow back to reality.

“Get out of there, Shadow! That’s a fucking order!”

No further acknowledgment was needed on Shadow’s part than to turn and run toward the window he came in through. Each step thundered on the stone floor, pushing him along faster, while his wings were already beating to gain every last bit of momentum they could. Up ahead, the window was mostly empty, with just a few jagged shards clinging to the outside of the frame. Those too were ripped from their precarious hold as Shadow tore past. Out again in the open air, there was nothing else in his mind than the most furious sprint he could push through his wings. Even as his breath ran short he continued to race faster, streaking toward where his team was waiting.

Light flared from behind, and stayed bright, somehow rendering everything in front of him brighter, and casting a shadow visible in the air in front of him. A howl tore through the skies to reach his ears. It was the sound of a city boiling into vapor. Inhabitants, homes, and the very stone of the mountain all incinerated and gone. As soon as the sound started, a malevolent heat reached for his tail and hindlegs, throwing Shadow through the air to fall helplessly to the ground below. Eyes closed, he let it take him. There was no fighting back, nothing more he could do against this failure.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Something tangible wrapped around Shadow’s back, and he was no longer falling. It took a few moments longer to realize it was Chaff who had caught him, and had spoken those words. The roar died out as they settled to the ground miles away from the remains of the city. Shadow opened his eyes to find himself lying in an open field at the base of the cliff, looking up at where Aveston used to be. A giant plume of smoke, already miles high was still rapidly rising to the skies above a section of the cliff that had gone from light brown to tar-black.

There had been a city there. And now it was gone. He’d stood there as its last moments ticked away, fighting for a brighter future. That future had turned out as black as the carbonized remains of those souls who had lived there. The view of the cliff grew blurry, and Shadow realized he was crying. He took off his helmet, and cried into the dirt. Ray took off his helmet too, and put a hoof on Shadow’s back. That leg scraped across the newly burned flesh and glass, causing Shadow to choke on the sobs. He wouldn’t get back up again for a long time, not until the blackened stone and ash had fallen from the cliff and all had once again become still.