Two Birds on a Wire

Chapters

Side Material: On Ponies and Virtues, or, Friendship is Not, In Fact, Magic
Chapter 2: "Go on—the stars are watching."
Side Material: The Parable of Merchant and Goddess
Chapter 1: "I came out of the darkness, holding one thing."

Side Material: On Ponies and Virtues, or, Friendship is Not, In Fact, Magic

Excerpted from the text of A Study in Memory of Past Events, RY 763 to AE 1, published several hundred years after the beginning of the Third Age of Mankind.

... and while for some time it was thought that there must have been some aspect of that place affecting how ascendant the aspect of the Laurel was within the hearts of its natives, the efforts of Second Shining Bough and the other luminaries who assisted her in examination of its construction definitively confirmed that it was not a trait forced on the inhabitants either magic or inherited biology. The staunchest opponent to this conclusion remained the Fire-aspected unicorn scholar Juala Sparkle, who until late in her life fervently argued the existence of a theretofore un-rediscovered alteration of local reality of similar scope, though not scale, to the Salinan Working.

With the presumption discarded of a fundamentally magical quality to the ascendancy of the Laurel, the heart of peace, within the humors of those people and indeed to the general friendliness of those cultures before resumed contact with the greater population of Creation, academic attention turned to the role played by the guardian-spirit Celestia. It was only some time after the reintegration of those peoples with Creation that the true details of her past became known. Even today, arguments are not uncommon in the coursework of scriptorium halls that would give an ultimately self-sacrificing status to her original position as a secret akuma of She Who Lives In Her Name.

After the death of Many-Hued Astrafel in the days leading up to the First Usurpation, the Pyrian Flame could no longer hold her, but her ghost's continuing attitudes in the years that followed provides a strong argument that her internalization of the Pyrian Flame's principles lasted long after her death, and may well have formed the very basis for the society she shepherded in her thousand-year reign. (Celestia existed as a spirit for somewhat longer than a thousand years, of course, though the generally accepted figures for her actual time of rulership are very close to that number.)

Certainly, the emphasis on peaceful cooperation and harmonious existence among the peoples of her lands, and the ways in which those qualities were subtly but constantly promulgated by the methods of socioeconomic manipulation that Many-Hued Astrafel had innovated in the First Age, provides remarkable insight into what a society guided by the hand of She Who Lives In Her Name but created for the benefit of mortals could be like. Notable is the emphasis of the Laurel over the Horn or Shield—while the Pyrian's Flame greater designs forcibly mold those within them to match the needs of the greater whole, Celestia's era of rulership provides a clear example of an intricately complex society that surpassed even the usual ambitions of She Who Lives In Her Name, designed to channel the needs of the Spear into peaceable pursuits while using the greater brotherhood of the Laurel to balance the Horn and Shield against each other ...

Chapter 2: "Go on—the stars are watching."

"The Scripture of the Holistic Maiden"

Once, there was a maiden ...

... who stared at her closet in fear in the middle of the night.

But there was nothing there to be afraid of, and the closet was empty.

Her lover comforted her and never asked her why she was afraid.

But a storm leveled their home, and they had to rebuild all of it.

Now she had no fear for the closet, and she wept.

Her lover asked her why she wept, now the fear was gone.

"You can't fear a thing without loving it," said she.

She has a green star at her heart, and a thousand eyes carved of crystal and brass circle her in the darkness. All of them are watching me. "You don't belong," she says, leaning down from her obsidian throne. She is a thing like an ape, almost, spindly and tall and with long claw-like fingers. "Do you, dear?" she asks, and those fingers touch my cheek, trailing through the soft feathers there. She's wearing strange black leather from head to toe, but her fingers are bare.

I can't talk—I can't breathe—because there is something gripping me, compressing like a fist, even though I can't see anything but her. She doesn't really want answers. She just wants to talk. "All dressed up on feathers and fur. I thought you didn't like that kind of thing?" There's something in the back of my head, pressing into me like creeping tendrils. It burns like frost where it touches, and parts of me are starting to go numb.

I pray, softly, inside myself, and imagine desert roads and scorching days, when the sun drives everything out and makes the tongue dry enough to feel like it's cracking. Anything to drive out the cold. There's something in her face that gives me hope, because she's not completely sure, not by the way that the edge of her eyes crinkle, that I am what she wants me to be. She can't crush me, even though she could in a moment, until she knows.

But the moon is rising behind her, even though there's no horizon. The light of it shines through her, like stained glass, and she scowls. "Another time," she says, and flings me away.

There is pain.

I wake.

The moon is shining through the windows of the hollowed-out tree, and its light comforts me in a way that the light of the moon hasn't before. I run my claws through my fur and push the blanket aside. I can move softly, even on a hard floor, and I pad from my makeshift bed on the library floor up to the stairs and into the building's little kitchen. It's still dark, but for the moon, but I can see well enough.

"You can't sleep either, huh?" the purple pony asks, because she's already there, staring at the counter. It takes me a moment to remember her name. Twilight—Sparkle. Strange name. Too bright and gentle. I'd shrieked at them when they'd wanted to go into the forest immediately, and now one of them treating me so nicely... it doesn't feel right. "It died down after you conked out," she says. Finally she moves towards one of the cabinets. "The Princess wants us to go in after sunup, with a wing of the Wonderbolts if we have to run. Tea?"

"Green, if you've got it," I say, and I lean against the counter. "The way that thing moved had part of a Southeastern mantis stance in it," I add. Twilight turns to look at me, staring. "Fast steps, strong close-range strikes, grappling. Good balance, you never make large kicks. It's not a streetfighting style, but it's close." I let my eyes drift shut, thinking about what I saw.

"But how can you even tell that?" she asks. "It was only there for about five seconds." The tea is forgotten, and I have to point at the kettle silently until I hear the click of her hooves on the floor as she moves. They've got some clever thing to the stoves here, where the fire is kept going at all hours and some trick of the construction keeps them held in abeyance whenever not reawakened; I can hear the flames pick up in a soft crackle as she adjusts the controls and sets the kettle.

"The way it moved," I say. It's interesting, to know people where so few can fight. "The arms were close in. It kept its leg motions precise, just by reflex, even though there wasn't anything to defend against. The way it kept its weight down the center line, where it could have anchored its weight and thrown any attackers sideways. The hands—that kind of shape to the fingers, that comes from a mantis style, ready to grab or punch at the same time." I open my eyes. She's watching me, hanging off my words.

"But it doesn't really matter," I say, and her expression droops. "Not in the important ways. A warrior like that won't have any secret weakness." I tilt my head back and forth and then rear up, settling into a simple parody of a unarmed striker's pose. "I have discov'red the secret weakness of your style, Master Glacier," I declare, in a stilted, operatic tone... though still at a normal volume, with the other one sleeping in the house in mind. "You are defenseless against me." I slide back down to all fours. "Yeah. It doesn't work like that."

Twilight eyes the teapot. She's let the fire wake up completely, and the light from it leaks around the edges of portholes and grilles, casting long, warm shadows against the cold moonlight we'd been navigating the room by. "You know a lot about this kind of thing," she says. She's curious, not suspicious, I can tell, by the way her tone stays pressing around the edges but gentle at the core.

"I'm—I was a performer. Exhibitions, juggling, that kind've thing. You've got to know it up, down, backwards and sideways to get that stuff to sit up and dance." I scratch my claws through my feathers. "I mean, it's... the differences are there, but they go away quick in a real fight. If you want it seen, seen by anybody who's not a real fighter themselves, you've got to play it up."

"But, you could tell," Twilight says, "with that... thing." Her eyes tighten. She doesn't like hearing me contradict myself, not for something so important.

"That doesn't mean I could use it to do anything," I say, and I shake my head. "At the top ranks, every fighter picks up multiple styles. They find ways to cover up their weaknesses. Even the ones who say they don't do—they just so it without realizing it. It's a—"

I hold up a talon, claws splayed in a 'stop' gesture. Twilight looks at me strangely.

Then a little purple reptile walks in between us, pulls open one of the cabinets, grabs a gem from within, and walks out. He's still asleep, as far as I can tell.

One-two-three-four, he'll be around the hallway and...

"—way to tell," I continue, "where's someone's come from, who they've learned from, but it's not going to tell you any secrets in the middle of combat."

"How did you—?" she asks, almost whispering, glancing between me and the doorway.

"You've got the big ears," I say. Her head twists, like she's trying to look at said ears. I smile a little. "Watch," I say, and I walk into the other room, letting my claws click softly against the floor as I move. And then, out of sight, I change my stance, and glide to the niche around the side of the hallway.

Time passes. I can hear the kettle bubbling, and then whistling, and then it's taken off the stove. "...Telka?" Twilight finally asks. She steps out of the kitchen. I wait until there's just enough room and pad in behind her, following the shadows of the room, because the moonlight draws the eye to the other side of the hall. "The tea's almost readurrk," she says as she turns around and sees me sitting in the doorway.

"Boo," I say, and I step back into the kitchen to watch the tea steeping. "You took that well." She follows, with her head a little bowed in embarrassment. I click my claws against the floor. "You can hear everything in here, if you're paying attention... if it's somebody who doesn't know how to hide from that."

"I guess I never thought about it like that," Twilight says, and she finishes preparing the tea. "My friends don't really sneak around much. Except Pinkie, I guess, but she's... Pinkie. She always shows up in weird places. Where'd you learn that?"

I yawn and cover my beak with a claw politely. "Villain work," I say. My voice is a little thin and reedy. I'm a good liar, but I don't want to lie. "Tiptoeing all around the stage like a ghost until the final act. You learn to walk quiet on hardwood damn quick. Then it's all very—dramatic fight scene," I say, in the stage voice, waving a claw, "the hero is almost defeated, sudden reveal, the villain dies, the end. I was always picked for that crap. They liked my death scenes too much." My voice is smoother, now that it's the truth.

She pours the cups. They've got strange fluted edges around the rim—to be grasped with the teeth, I realize, for those ponies not lucky enough to have horns. My claws do well enough when I pick up mine, with the pressure put at the sides and the sharper tips drifting so that I don't leave scratch-marks on the ceramic. It would have to be one of the horned ponies who made them, I think. How would they even do work that fine, with hooves? If there's not something more I'm not seeing, the plainer folk must predetermined for grunt work from birth by their lack of fine manipulators.

The tea's good, fresh enough to be new stock, with a strange spicy-sweet overtone that makes me think of Southern candies. I let it roll around my mouth after a few sips and try to pick out the ingredients by the feel-taste-smell of it. It's harder than I'd thought to drink neatly with the pony's cup, with the way it's not properly made for a beak. Twilight's got a funny look, and I realize late that my eyes are half-closed, and the moonlight's caught the side of my face, making the fringe of my feathers shimmer.

"My family's... was... big in the tea trade," I say, for something to break the silence. It's true enough. "Fingers in a lot of pies," and something about the expression makes my neck almost itch, "but, a whole lot of tea." I pause and watch the window and sip again. "Gramps got us a whole chest one time. Six stone of tea, me and mother, it was coming out our ears. Oh, honey," I squeak, in a pitch-wobbling old lady's voice, "have a tea sandwich 'fore you go, mmmm?"

Twilight has a face caught somewhere halfway between laughter and incredulity. "Good times," I say, and I sip at the tea again, and then I catch an edge of the cup against my beak and it pivots around the axis of force to present the blunt end into my eye. As my grip goes loose it flicks past, splashing my feathers with the tea before crashing into a few pieces on the floor. She lets out a single laugh and then stoppers herself, her face bent up in guilt, while I rub my eye with my wrist. It's cold, even with the stove, and there's something almost nice about the hot tea in my feathers, at least with the way I have enough that it's dripping down them instead of burning me.

"Well," she says, and the glow of her horn pulls the fragments of the cup—and the spilled tea itself, somehow—from the floor, dumping the mess into the metal can under the cabinet. She takes a little towel from the side of one cabinet and dabs it against me, soaking up the most actively-dripping tea.

"Let's never speak of that again," I reply, with my good eye squinted shut to keep any of the tea from getting into it. "...washroom?" I add, and I slink towards the hallway. The throbbing side of my face is no great distraction, not with my chest and shoulders, and I can see out of the corner of my eye the way Twilight hesitates when she understands how coolly I'm taking the pain.

"Down to the left," she says. "Second door." She lingers in the dim moonlight of the kitchen when I step out, and I let my claws click softly against the wood this time.

Washing the tea out of my feathers and fur calms the flicker-flare of temper I'd been suppressing on the way down the hallway. They've got marvelous plumbing, these ponies, with hot and cold water on demand, and I find myself playing with the knobs, back and forth. There could be pipes underneath all the houses, I think, with some slow-burning sorcery heating it all. It's marvelous work for a people who are two-thirds dead weight for anything that needs a fine touch. Finally I shut off the things and lean my head and shoulders into the bath as the clean water drips from fur and feathers.

Twilight's coming. I can hear her hooves, even out of sight, and there's an odd syncopation to them, as though she's noticed the noise herself for the first time. I suppose she might have, like discovering that your tongue exists and not being quite sure how to react to its presence. "Telka?" she calls softly from outside, even though I've still got the door open a little, and I don't answer. "Thank you," she adds.

"For what?" I ask. But I'm quiet, too, as I grab a thick towel from a rack and wrap it around myself so I don't trail across the floor. I stick my head out of the room into the hall. Twilight stares at my head veiled in white, just eyes and beak showing. "I can probably keep up the buffoon act," I say, "if you can get me some pies." She was expecting sarcasm, I think, not the gentleness of my tone, and the funny wide-eyed look she has shows it. I like her, though that might just be the tea getting to me. Just a little pain isn't enough to properly upset me.

"If it wasn't for you," she says, "we'd have gone into the Forest when... that... happened." That. She knows I know full well what she means. These ponies, it seems, don't know what to do with a thing that shines with false fire and moves like an avalanche. The thing fell out of the sky and they'd have gone after it. "Fluttershy said that all the animals were running from the Forest for hours, even the cockatrices and manticores. Celestia only knows what would have happened if... somebody could have gotten hurt." She doesn't want to meet my eyes.

She's lying—not completely. But she doesn't really understand. She thinks that the group of them, not soldiers, not even trained, could have handled it. Caution held her back, and a need to confer with their Princess, who I know now didn't answer her until well after my own strength had given out. Sleep, after screeching at the group of them like a madhen, had come easily enough.

"You shouldn't go," I say, and I retreat back into the washroom. I step past a moonbeam and vanish—to her eyes, at least. She doesn't have the night vision that I do. I squeeze the water out of my feathers and run my claws through the twisted alignments of a few of them. "But you'll be going anyway, because of your Princess." I lean over the tub again as I scrub at my fur. Does she know, the grand Celestia, what her chosen will be dealing with? She's a fool if she does and if she doesn't. "So I'll be going with you," I add.

With my feathers dry—dry enough, at least, that the dampness has subsided to a soft, dull itch at the roots—I stalk out of the washroom and glide past Twilight. "You can't," she says, and she shakes her head at me. "You're not in any shape for it." I can feel the thump around my right eye from the cup starting to turn into a bruise, though the light feathers hide it well enough. She's entirely right. Cracked ribs aren't the kind of thing to take into a fight.

Go with them.

"I've been hurt worse and gotten up again," I say, and I turn down the hall, heading for the little stairs towards the main room. It's strange to be in a library with a live-in caretaker, though any books of magic would give some justification. Why do they have those outside of a proper specialized collection, though? "You said it yourself. There'll be the... Wonder-things... for extractions."

"Wonderbolts," she corrects. I have no idea what they are. I almost could see the name used for fast auxiliaries with big heads, but it still doesn't fit properly for a military unit. Not even in this place.

"Right," I say, and I pause at the stairs. She's followed, a few steps behind. "If I can't keep up they can pull me out. But not a minute before. I don't want to see all of you die because you tried to stop one of the Anathema the wrong way and it cut you in half." My tone is still calm.

She shivers. I can't quite tell if it's because of what I said, or because of the way I said it. "Anathema," she says, rolling the word over her tongue. "You used that word before, but you weren't making much sense." I guess I wasn't, not in the wake of the gold-plated giant's aura caressing me. "What... is it?" she asks. By the way her words lilt, she very much wants the answer. It's something beyond her, even in her little fortress of knowledge.

Each has stolen the face of a star.

"Demons," I say. The word doesn't shake her. "Very ancient. Each has stolen the face of a star, and wears its light like a cloak." Her eyes go cold. She's thinking of the dueling phantom-giants of the forest, I think, glowing like little suns. "They can't be commanded or bound. They... enter into a creature, and from that moment there's nothing but the demon, wearing that face. To touch one or let it speak to you is to invite it to consume you, as well."

She doesn't say anything, but the way the set of her shoulders tenses and her tail droops says enough. "That sounds almost like Night Mare Moon," she says. "And the Elements of Harmony were able to—"

"No," I interrupt. The word's got a cutting edge of authority, just enough to keep her quiet for a few more moments. "The Anthema cannot be... purified. Not without death. If that's not something that you can consider, then I'd as well just go alone into those woods." I turn and pad down the steps. She stays above. She's too kind, like all of them are.

There's a cabinet somewhere creaking, barely. "Your pet's in the pantry again," I say, and I head for my rough bedding.

"Spike's not my—oh, Spike, if you keep sleep-eating like this," Twilight mumbles to herself as she turns towards the little kitchen.

With Twilight distracted, I can slide back onto the blanket I was sleeping on and curl my head against the pillow. I stretch my wings forward, tucked around my head to block out the light. Sleep comes as easily as it did before.

There aren't any strange dreams, now. There are no dreams at all.

I wake with the dawn. There's none of the noise of others awake. I tidy away my bedroll and ready my harness for the day. I inventory everything, out of some vague paranoia of the ponies, and it's all in place properly, even the lump under the shoulders. By now all the muscles around my chest and shoulders and hips have gone stiff and knotty, and I can almost hear myself creak as I slide the straps into place and tie them off.

The way the familiar weight digs into my back helps distract me from the pain, but something still feels wrong about it. I sigh and trudge to the window to watch the rising sun. It's nice enough, but there's a certain lack of something about it. I can't figure out what it is. I turn away from the window, step over to the door, and step outside. They seem not to lock their doors here, and that just seems ridiculous, but I close the strange double-sectioned door behind me.

The streets are empty at this time of day. Those ponies from the farm might be awake, I think, but the rest of them won't rise for at least a little while.

Learn.

Good. I start walking. The river, now that I'm not being blind to the lay of the land, makes the lay of the town obvious, and I wander down the avenues around the periphery. The houses don't make any sense. They're built with a pushed-out upper story, but not crowded enough to need it. The builders, whoever they were, wasted a huge amount of effort in making the town that way.

I imagine the place on a stage, painted out in noughts and crosses for the entertainment of a group of clutchlings. The idea feels strange and dizzy and fitting, and I force it away and stare at a strange building done up in a style that flows like icing. From it hangs a sign painted with a thing like a strange cake. All at once I feel hungry. One day without getting proper food down's not enough to bother me—not after my time in the North, with melted snow for dinner often enough on slow hunts—but it's still a promising thought.

But not this sort of food. I turn away and keep walking. The town's small enough I'll find something even just by wandering. They've started to wake by now, the ponies, and a wandering griffon's not enough to interrupt them. I've moved my bags enough to hide the heads of my axes. The hilts are plain enough, but it should prevent any casual panic. An open square, familiar—yes. The shattered house is in sight down a side street.

There's a bench, wood-slatted with cast-iron feet. I lean back onto it, half-sitting, letting the wood take the weight of my gear. The position's comfortable and uncomfortable all at once in a strange way, with the weight-tension pulling my meridians into a compressed-relaxation alignment. I watch the square. There are a few ponies here and there, I think setting up for the day. One, horned and furred in a bright cyan, stares at me from the other side of the square.

I stare back at her. She looks away, finally, caught somewhere between awkwardness and embarrassment. I find myself wondering why I got her attention. The rest are looking at me, of course, while they get their things ready or sidle by, but they're not staring. They're getting little glances, trying to guess at my axes, trying to guess my connection to the events of yesterday. They've not yet panicked. Events have gone so far past what the mass of them know how to handle that they've all gone past panic, I think, into something like cold shock. I've seen it before, when war rolls over a city large enough.

But, there. That has my attention. A winged pony in white with a blue mane has got a row of pies she's laying out on a booth, still hot. No meat, I'm sure, but anything hot enough should do. I slide back to my feet, letting the weight of my gear settle against me again, and I make my way across the square. The ponies edge away from me as I make my way through, and that gives me room to wobble on three limbs as I fish one of the wagon-wheel coins out of a bag.

"Whatever much this'll get me," I say, and set the coin in front of her. She eyes it and me.

"Two pies," she says, "and you've gotta eat them somewhere else." I don't know how exactly the currency exchange here goes, but she's still got to be overcharging me by a league. I could get a good pouch of qat for that. And the pies are small.

I pick the coin back up. "Two now, six more whenever I want, and I'll eat them where I damn well please." She squints, trying to look firm. I turn away.

"Fine," she says, too quickly. She wouldn't be a good haggler, even if I didn't have her on edge. I set the coin down again and take two of the pies. One I balance on one of my bags as I amble away. I was never going to stay, anyway, but I needed to make the point. The other pie is soft and flaky and has a filling with onions and tomatoes and—I can't quite tell the rest of it, but it's savory and spicy enough to satisfy the faint desire at the back of my mind for meat. There's something else there, a little aching, because it's not at all as good as fresh blood, but I quash that line of thought.

It's been long enough, and the air's cleared the faint fuzz from my head. I start down the lane that goes to the strange tree-house, and start on the second pie. The food's calmed the unease that I hadn't quite realized was there before, and things start to come into better focus. The words at the edge of hearing, the movements of the crowd and where attackers might be hiding, awareness of the roofs and where the cobbles in the road could give way to spikes.

I step aside before I've really processed the faint, motion-shifted noise. "—there you are," gasps the projectile as it half-skids to a stop in the place I'd been standing a moment before. Not a projectile—a pony, winged, blue, with a riot of colors to her mane and tail. "I've been looking all over for you!" For all that she nearly had a crash landing, the pony's got enough energy to be back to her feet a moment later.

I know her face, I think. She was there, when I was still reeling from the Anathema's echoes, and she called me by some other name. I can't remember it now. The fine details have washed into blurs under that golden glare. I'd screamed at her, like the others, until they decided not to follow the demon and my strength gave out. The group of them came together then so fast I'd have almost thought the others were hiding on a side street.

"Hello again," I say. "ah," and I trail off, because I don't remember her name. She must be looking for me in lieu of the others, as the flyer aggressively quick enough to almost ram her quarry. "I had to get some air," I say, and for some reason that makes her smile broadly.

"Everybody's getting ready, c'mon," she says, and she takes off again, and it takes her a few moments, when she's already past the buildings, to realize she's left me behind. She returns, better-aimed this time, and squints at me.

"Yes?" I say, and I keep trudging. My steps are small and steady, as they've ever been when not performing. It takes me longer in a blank stare than it did for her to leave and return, to understand her strange look. "...no flying," I say, and my wings shift uneasily. "Not with what your friend did to my ribs." There's no malice in my voice. It was punishment enough for being stupid.

Reassure her.

She keeps pace with me with in a slow hover with her little wings until she drops to her hooves beside me. "I'll be back in the clouds in no time," I say, "but until then it's only walking for me." She's looking at my harness and gear, and the hatchet-hilts. It's a lot of equipment. "I spend most of my time walking, anyway," I say, like an apology. "Too much of... this." I gesture with a wing.

"What's with all the stuff?" the blue pony asks. She's—too friendly, somehow. Is that what distinguishes that little group? Maybe she's thinking of me like the other griffon. "You look like you're ready to visit the Zebra Plains, not Ponyville."

"It's the work I do," I say. "A sort of... merchant scouting. I travel—plenty of travel, that's most of the job—and find connections, places where things could come together just right if you could just get things from there to here." I shrug my shoulders and wince as the weight of the harness shifts against my back. "I've got everything I need with me. It's not work that lets you visit home much."

"Oh, that's... kinda cool," she says, and she grins. "You must see all kinds of amazing stuff." She glances away from me and I can almost feel her eyes tightening. "Do a lot of griffons do that?" she asks, almost coy, almost accusing. She must have known the other griffon, though I don't know how well.

I laugh. "Most griffons don't travel unless there's some competition to beat or something new to hunt." I see her almost wince, out of the corner of my eye, at the word hunt. "Not out of the Homereach. I'm not a lot of griffons, and I haven't been for a long time." We're there: I can see the others of that little group of ponies, clustered together outside of the tree-library, as we walk up, and above them three winged ponies in blue suits hover.

Side Material: The Parable of Merchant and Goddess

When I was as young as you are now, there was a rich, rich merchant in the Southern deserts, before the horsemens' knowledge of the waters made them bloom with green, and he had a beautiful daughter. She was brilliant as well, and for her he hired the best tutors so that she might master his business, and to protect her virtue he hired the greatest teachers of the fighting arts to teach her their secrets.

As she grew, the merchant's daughter was wise all past her years. But, she was only mortal, and on the cusp of womanhood she fell ill with a terrible and strange disease. Her hair came out, in pieces, and mocking burns fell upon her face and arms, and the merchant's best physicians could only ease her pains and lance the boils that marred her beauty using the calming oils of the singing trees that grew in rare oases of the South.

His physicians could not heal her, and so the merchant called for priests and shamans from across the South and farther. Each prayed and anointed her with blessings and thaumaturgies, and each failed. Only a wisp of a priestess was left when the others had gone, a girl of the North with silver hair braided with feathers and with three ceremonial hatchets on her hips. "My goddess is the Darling Imn, the Hawk of Ice and Sand," she said, "and I cannot heal your daughter, but my goddess might."

"How would she heal my daughter, and why?" asked the merchant. He feared the hands of gods and elves as he did not fear the hands of the priests, for gods and elves are ever fickle and know not the fears of men.

"She is not a god of sickness," said the priestess, "but she knows the ways to trick the green vapors that cause this disease and draw them away." The priestess prayed and anointed the merchant's daughter with blessings and thaumaturgies. "To find her you must go five days South into the desert, and always have the Hawk of Ice and Sand in your heart, and pray for her at sundown, when the Daystar just touches the horizon. Then you will meet her. You must go alone with your daughter."

When the priestess had left, it was with the pains of the merchant's daughter eased by her craft, where the other priests had been unable to help. Hope grew in the merchant's heart. The next morning the fever had returned, and the merchant had a wagon prepared for himself and his daughter, shielded against the sun, with eleven days of supplies, as was traditional for suicide marches into the sand. At great expense a three-tailed devil beast was harnessed, and it led the wagon out across the sand.

On the fifth day, an hour before sunset, the merchant gathered his daughter into his arms and left the wagon behind and began to walk. As the Sun touched the horizon he knelt and prayed, and his daughter whispered the prayers alongside him with a broken throat.

"You may stand," said the goddess from behind him, and he stood, and turned, with his daughter, and a verdant oasis lay where there had been sand, though half the trees were made of tin and brass, and the water was laid in a pool of silver sand. The goddess was a thing of outlines and sand-shadows, and about her shoulders she wore a cloak of unmelting ice of the farthest North, and at her hips she wore three strange axes. "You have come with her sickness," the goddess said, and she gestured him to the sand beside the water, and they sat.

"I am not a god of sickness, but here, watch," said the goddess, "as I draw the tainted spirits into her hand." And then with one of her axes, bright as the dawn, she cut one of the maiden's hand's off. The stump bled black and then hardened like iron. The merchant trembled in fear for his daughter's life, but did not speak, with the knowledge that gods were strange and fickle. He was a rich man, and his daughter might live well with one hand and well-paid maids.

"But that is not the all of them," said the goddess, "but here, watch, as I draw the rest to her foot." And then with another axe, shimmering like a mirror, she cut one of the maiden's feet off. The stump bled green and then hardened like brass. The merchant was hot and cold at once, but he had no soldiers or guards at the oasis, and he was not a warrior. He was a rich man, and his daughter might live well with one hand and one foot and well-paid maids.

"But that is not all of them," said the goddess, "but here, watch, as I draw the rest to her hand and foot."

"No," said the merchant, and he shook in fear, but he did not move.

"No?" said the goddess, and she looked at him, and she raised up her axes, and her cloak of ice was limned with icicle-knives.

"No," he said, and with her third axe, glimmering like the mist of morning, the goddess cut off his head. The stump bled ruby-red and did not harden. Watching, the daughter's heart broke, and all the good parts of her died. That was the trick of the green vapors, for then they thought all of her had died, and they left. The goddess caught them in a tin box, and then she left, riding away on the winds. The daughter wept and fell asleep on the sands.

In the morning the daughter's fever broke, and her boils subsided, and when she woke in the sand with the oasis gone, she hobbled to the wagon on one foot and one hand. She left her father's body and head in the sand, but for his signet ring, and returned home.

When she claimed her father's business, she found all the evils that had her father had done to become wealthy, and she stamped them out. Without those evils the business was broken and she became a beggar in the streets. Sometimes the wise came to her to ask her questions, for she knew all the secrets of health and sickness and wealth and poorness. But the rest is a different story, for a different day.

Yes, young one?

Oh, no. That is not the moral of the story. The moral of the story is: gods are cruel bastards. Stay away from them.

Chapter 1: "I came out of the darkness, holding one thing."

"The Scripture of the Unrepentant Maiden"

Once, there was a maiden ...

... who'd forgotten what she was running from.

Her bones remembered, and tormented her.

So, she went to the graveyard to find new ones.

The bones there asked why she was running.

The maiden thought, and thought, and said: "I think it was love."

"But why would love make you run?" asked the bones.

"Love is knowing what to leave behind," said she.

It's not like me, to sleep out in the open like I did. But... the weather in these lands is gentle enough, and with the way the hills roll between the mountains I'd hear anything troublesome coming long before it could get to me.

So that leaves me, when I rise with the dawn, to stretch my wings and and gather my things and run my... claws through my feathers and fur to straighten out the slight rumpling of sleep. With the pleasant weather and my personal insulation, I'd only used a single rough blanket under me for a little padding, and it packs away neatly enough. Something feels off, though. I can't quite tell what, so I double-check everything again to be sure.

Harness, yes, tied neatly in the precise places to keep pressure without chafing. The familiar lump in it between my shoulderblades is there as it should be. My hatchets, two on the left and one at the right, in their quick-release looping. My knife. The supplies I carry in the bags at my side—some meager food, but mostly papers and inks and shorthand-copied texts crypted into my private cyphers.

Everything's proper, but I run my claws over it all one more time, just in case. But I can't find what it is that's bothering me, and so I pack up the blanket neatly and stow it, and then I stretch again and head for the fringe of the wood. It's simple enough to catch a bird with one of my hatchets, and I eat it in halves and scrub the leftover blood off my beak and my hatchet with a few leaves. The bird's got a springy, fresh taste to it, like everything does around here.

From there I follow the edge of the woods. I've got the right direction, because by midday the hills have begun settling underneath me. There's a stream I come upon and I bury my head in it, scrubbing with my claws. It's going to make my feathers itch terribly as they dry, I know, but for a little while now it means feeling halfway clean for the first time in days and days. Finally I shake myself like a dog and trudge onwards.

My feathers are itching terribly as the stream leads me to a lumpy many-eaved cottage with a beautiful sod roof. It's a nice piece of work, if completely out of place—there'd be no need for the extra insulation here, not compared to homes in the North, and I wonder at the place likely being far too stuffy in the height of summer—and there's path going from it, too small to be a road, pointed towards what must be the direction of the town. But it never hurts to verify, so I shuffle up the walkway and rap on the door. Shave-and-a-haircut—shave-and-a-haircut—

No bits. There's the noise of animals—there were pens and runs around the back, not enough to be farmers' kit but close (and the faint smell of them is enough to remind me that I haven't eaten properly in some time, birds and fish notwithstanding)—but nothing to indicate the householder. Sleeping or out, maybe. It's a secluded little area, but there's not enough of a garden to live on without regularly getting fresh food from somewhere else.

I turn and eye the path. It splits into two, left and right, and there's no sign. That's only to be expected, seeing as it seems laid down for the benefit of a single family. I doubt the inhabitants were expecting someone to come plodding through from the wilds. Leaving them blameless doesn't help me orient, so I pull a brass-rimmed silver coin from one of my bags and flip. It comes up the side with the angry giant carp crushing a startled austrech, so I turn left.

That I've gone the wrong way becomes increasingly clear when I succeed in finding only endless fields of apple trees and no houses. There's enough of them to feed a whole town—more, probably, with the proximity of the capital in mind. Someone owns them, I think, but whoever the someone is doesn't seem to be around, and my stomach is still complaining... and if they were serious about it they'd have some guard dogs or something, anyway.

I spring up into one of the trees, skittering the last few feet on claws and paws when my jump-power gives out, and perch on a branch. I pluck an apple and dice it my knife, then another, flicking the pieces into my beak. Then another. It's the early afternoon, and the sun is warm enough and the winds cool enough that I stretch out for a nap. My balance is perfect, like it's always been even in my sleep.

There's a faint scrape-schwuff below me of something stepping off the path. It's been two hours, maybe, by the passage of the sun. I have a claw on the handle of one of my hatchets before I'm properly awake. "I hope you realize this ain't a bed-'n-breakfast," says a voice below me. I almost curse to myself. It doesn't feel right, getting caught like that, and yet I'm not even sure why it bothers me so much. I just barely open one eye, too hidden by my feathers to be seen from the ground. Something orange, and no blur-line of a brush-spear or pitchfork.

"So that's why there's no fresh sheets," I say, and roll over, and fall off the branch.

Crap.

It's a low branch, and the dirt is loam-soft, and, most helpfully, I land on something orange and relatively yielding. Then the orange thing, understandably upset and at the very least halfway smothered, kicks me, and I hit the side of the tree. It is a proud, firm tree, and not the least bit orange or yielding. The noise I let out is something remarkably like what I imagine a startled austrech being crushed by an angry giant carp might make.

"Oh, horseapples!" says the same voice. I stare at the sky from my place on the grass and wheeze. "Are y'all right?" She looks down at me with what's either concern—or self-disappoint that I'm still alive after her part in the one-two-three combo. Maybe both. She's still orange, though now I can see the freckle-marks in her fur and the tilt of her broad-brimmed hat. A pony—to be expected, around here. Not many others come in such bright colors.

"Now you're not getting a tip," I gasp, and I flop onto my side, wings and limbs splayed out, eyes shut and face drawn tight in a rictus of death. All down my right side is bruised, now, with what will be the welt of pressure-impact against the hatchet standing out the most. But, suffering is to be ignored when there's a show to be had. She sniggers. Good. She'll blame herself for the whole affair, if she was still worried after I was the one to fall on her. "But, really," I say as I wind myself up to a sitting position, using my one unhurt leg to prop myself up. "I think I might," and then I lose my early and late lunches in the grass.

The pony's more comfortable with the sight of half-digested meat than I'd have thought one of her kind would be. She edges around the vomit to help me back up from where I'd hunched to keep any of it from getting on my harness. I breathe slowly and wave away her offer of a hoof, then turn and slide back so I can pull myself into a rough lotus stance. She's got a face twisted in confusion as I pull the tension into my hips and spine and then let it out again with a puff of breath. "Amn manoé tulka omn," I mutter, and ease myself to my paws and claws again.

"Now what was," she says.

I interrupt before she can finish: "Breathing exercise." And I am breathing more smoothly, with the old lessons nearly printed into me gripping me by the liver and gut and keeping my movements steady despite the pain-tremble in all my extremeties.

"You sure you should be standin' after that?" she asks. She's not quite blushing, I think—I don't know if I'd even see it through the fur—but the way the edges of her mouth crinkle advertises her embarrassment. She should be... she kicks like a mule, and though I'll admit I'd be no paragon of virtue if suddenly covered in half-cat half-eagle, I'd like to think that something like that wouldn't be my first reflex.

"I'll be fine," I say with all the conviction of a wounded dormouse. The river lotus mantra keeps me steady as I step towards the path—amn manoé tulka omn, aumn manoé tulka omn, the beats matching my steps—but she still looks concerned. One of my legs almost gives out under me and I stumble as the distributed pain suddenly drills into me through a single limb. "Probably," I croak.

"...We should get you into town," she says. "We don't get many of your kind 'round here—" (she winces slightly as she realized how that sounded, but doesn't interrupt herself) "—griffons, I mean, but I'm sure the doc can at least check if anythin's broken. Now you hold onto yourself here'n I'll be right back." She gives me a distinctly mother-knows-best squint before she hurries off through the trees.

I let out a wheeze and settle onto my stomach. I don't know quite how long it is until she comes back—I'm too busy trying to keep my composure, though the sun hasn't moved enough in the sky to notice—but when she does, she's not alone. There's a big, red pony with her, male to guess by his being about the size of a full talon of soldiers huddled in turtle formation, pulling a cart with a light enough step that I almost suspect some secret technique before I realize he's simply that strong.

"—she's the one," the orange pony is saying, "gave me an awful fright for a minute there." The initial shock's worn off, so I have to offer my weak wave to the red one from underneath an increasing heap of aches all over. Between them the two ponies lift me into the cart. The orange one has a set of red apples on her flank, I realize absently, and the red one's got a big green one, and I almost wish it was orange instead to match better. "So I'm Applejack," the orange pony says, "and this is Big Macintosh."

"Eeyup," he says.

Someone in the family, I think, has an unimaginative taste in names. "Telka," I say, and I give the two of them a mock-salute from where I'm sprawled in the back. A few bundles of hay cushion me from the bumps of the hills, because the two promptly ignore the path entirely, heading straight through the trees. I suddenly feel rather more foolish for choosing to follow it at all. "Sorry about... yeah." I laugh, weakly. "I don't usually do that kind of thing. By accident, anyway."

Applejack's walking next to the cart when she could be riding. It's not like it would bother the other pony... the thing's moving just as easily as it was without me, and the big guy is still going at exactly the same easy pace. "Not to pry too much," she says, "but I'm expecting you can give some idea of what you were up to up there?"

"Sleeping, eating, and trying to figure out if I was going the right way," I say, "in reverse order." She squints. "I can pay for the apples," I add, and I wince as I reach to fish out one of those wagon-wheel coins again. I hold it up. She eyes it, appraising but not suspicious. If she wasn't an honest-enough type she'd have gone after me with a pike to start with, anyway. I think. How would one of these ponies even hold a pike? "'Course, the problem there's that you've got to know who you're looking for to do that in the first place, and you pony-folk don't seem all that much big on signs."

"...everypony 'round here knows Sweet Apple Acres," she says, halfway between defensive and embarrassed. "It ain't like we want anypony to get mixed-up which way they're going," she says, and glances at me before turning her attention back to the field. We're cresting another hill, now, and an extremely red building is coming into sight. Fields—not just apples. I squint. Some corn there, at least. No rice, I think, and somehow that makes me feel a little uneasy. "Ponyville's right through this way," Applejack finally adds. She looks at me and then looks away again.

She wants to ask something, or, rather, she wants to know something. She's got just the sort of almost-a-grimace that makes it clear she's worried about the question and answer. "Yes?" I ask, and I prop myself up on the side of the cart. Oh. Oh, no. Bad idea. That puts the weight right on my bruised thigh. I grit my beak and try to keep my face even. Amn manoé tulka omn, amn manoé tulka omn...

"How—nevermind," Applejack says. "Y'ain't here 'cause've Gilda, are you?"

"...who?" I ask, and I sink back down into the cart. As soon as my head's past the side I make a face like a strangled antelope. Shit, shit, shit... I have to lean in the other direction to take the weight off my hurt leg again.

"Right," she says, and lets out a little sigh of relief, and before she can let herself be too terribly appeased of the worry that I'd have noticed the obvious connection, I interrupt.

"And I am going to guess," I say, enunciating carefully so that I don't let the throbbing all over twist my words too much, "that she's another griffon, and you thought that since we're the same species I might know the name." Spot-on, by the way her face tenses as I peek back up over the side of the cart. I feel almost guilty about aiming at such an easy target. "Or that's what I'd say if I was going to call you on that, which I'm not, 'cause I was the asshole who fell on you, and I don't have much allowance after that to be offended by much."

She's got a puzzled look. "Right," she finally says, after a few moments of silence. "I guess." We're past the barn and heading for a sapling-woven gate. It's a nice little farm, or something about it strikes me as little and unfamiliar even with the time it takes to get across it. There's a little buzzing in the back of my head. Move this here, and that over there, and rearrange the paths here and there... it's almost dizzying. I have to stare up at the very blue sky to clear my head.

The conversation dies down after that. I think the mare still doesn't know what to make of my hatchets or gear, but it doesn't show as clearly on her face as the concern about my species did. The big one (and for a moment I wonder if he was always "Big" Macintosh, because that would be an awfully cruel name to give a child who ends up short in adulthood) doesn't seem concerned about much at all, though with that physique he wouldn't have to be.

The pain's enough to keep me from thinking about sleep, and so I eye my surroundings as we roll towards the town I was looking for in the first place. The houses, as they appear over the hills, are laid out in a picturesque sprawl. Not quite so candy-bright as I'd feared, after seeing that barn—most are in this strange timbered style, some with upper floors leaning out over the lower for no reason I can tell. It's a nice place, and for a moment I wonder where the peasant underclass is.

The cart rumbles over a little bridge that goes over a little river. I turn my head to look back at the receding apple trees, and then my gaze follows the river to where the gentle hills block out sight of anything else. Oh, damn.

"What's got your feathers in a twist?" Applejack asks, looking at me.

It takes me a minute to straighten out my expression and regain my composure. "Fickle Lady slap me with slotted spoon," I say, "'cause this morning I was straight over there." I point with a claw down towards where the river curves out of sight behind the the bulk of the town. "Right on the other side of those hills. I spent today just going all the way around..." I sweep my forelimb around from northwest to southwest, and then sink back into the cart. "Here lies Telka," I intone gravely, "only known explorer to reach the Southern Pole entirely by accident."

She laughs, and that makes me laugh, and then I have to clutch at myself wheezing because laughing hurts too much. "Careful with the jokes," says Big Macintosh, and the gentle concern in his voice would be more touching if I wasn't busy keeping any of my organs from deciding to make a sudden exit through my mouth.

"Sorry, sugarcube," Applejack says gently, and then I grab the pink hoof trying to touch me, twist on my shoulders, hook my other limb under the shoulder and toss, shifting all my weight around my hips to put an extra push into it. The pink pony flies neatly over the cart and, quite accidentally, lands on Applejack. There is a long moment of silence, and as the paw I've put all my weight on in the motion starts to give out, I sink back down from my half-standing position until only my eyes show over the side of the cart.

"That was fun!" says the pink pony brightly, and all at once she pops back to her hooves, unhurt by a throw that should have at least cracked her head against the pavement.

"Somebody get the number've that train?" Applejack mumbles as she wobbles back up to all fours.

"That wasn't a train, silly!" says the pink pony. "That was..." She stares at me and sucks in a gasp of breath.

"Telka?" I offer, and my voice is raspier and wheezier than before.

"And I'm Pinkie Pie! And you're new!" she says. She's grinning broadly, so cheerful I can nearly feel the sugar oozing out of her pores. "That means we should have a welcome pa—"

"No," Applejack says. "Not until we can get her by the doc. I may have, uh, kinda—"

"Your friend kicks like a yeddim," I interrupt.

"...what's a yeddim?" she asks. It's a convenient way for her to avoid getting embarrassed about it again, with the way her head tilts a little away from me and her gaze drifts towards the cobblestones.

My brows furrow. "It's a—"

Nevermind.

"—nevermind," I sigh, and wonder why the word came to mind in the first place.

"It's like a really big furry elephant," says the pink pony, "except it's not really like an elephant at all, except for being really big."

I blink.

"This ain't a good time for foolin' around, Pinkie," Applejack says. We're still moving, and Pinkie is following, almost hopping in a strange little skip-running way. "...Pinkie, could you find my sister'n tell her where I'm goin'? She's out with the other two doin'... whatever they're doin' this time... but I don't want her comin' home and deciding that we all got ate by zombies or somethin' like that."

Pinkie laughs. "But it couldn't be zombies! We don't even have any spooky graveyards. It would have to be seeecret ghooosts," she intones, waving her hooves broadly, and then she bounces off.

"Well, that's Pinkie," Applejack says, and she glances back at me. "Always a little... off in her own world." There's a guarded tenseness at the edge of her face. It's not the pink pony she's worried about, I realize, but my reaction to her.

"...I've seen worse," I say, after a moment of thought. "At least she's friendly."

"Are all griffons, ah—" says Applejack.

"Bastards?" I interrupt. "I'm being one right now. My minions are stealing all your trees and replacing them with live poisonous snakes while you're busy here. Muaha. Hah." I can't do a proper laugh, not with my ribs aching. She smiles in relief as she sees she won't have to finish the questions. With the way we're into the town now, though, the statement gets sudden stares from ponies passing by, even with only my head half-showing above the side of the cart. Sweet Venus, if that's enough to startle them, I'd best be careful with my hatchets.

I let out a puff of breath, and suck in another one to make myself loud enough. "It's a joke," I say, and a few of them at least have the common decency to pretend to look embarrassed about it, though most just give me dirty looks.

"The last griffon in town didn't come off all that great," Applejack says, and she lets out a noise like half of a sigh. "It ain't like folks here ain't good ponies, just... once burned twice shy, 'n'all that." The cart rounds a corner. "Clinic's right this-a-way," she adds, looking up. "You holdin' together all right?"

The pain continues, as intensely as it has been. But, I'm an old hand when it comes to pain, and the sort that comes from getting kicked into a tree rates lightly by comparison to some of what's out there. But I don't want to let her off easily: "Don't worry, you'll have to pay for the funeral," I say, and I nod firmly.

"The pigs it is, then," she says, just as firmly.

"You wouldn't dare." I huff and fluff up my feathers, though she misses most of the effect from the way I'm sprawled out in the cart.

"If you go dyin' on me, you ain't gonna be in any state to complain, are you?" she says.

"I guess you've got a point," I admit, and I flop the other direction in the cart, looking at the path of the streets. I haven't been paying as much attention as I should, but I still have a solid idea of the layout of the place, at least to the edge of town. That's all I really need—now I can just go all the way around the edges, if I need to, to get my bearings.

"We're here," Big Macintosh says, and he shrugs his way out of the cart's harness. He steps over and silently offers a shoulder.

Inside the whole place is done up in tile and lacquer. There's a sun-yellow pony there who greets us. The way I move, rocking my weight to always keep my one good limb steady, gets her attention instantly. She hurries Big Macintosh and me into an examination room, and then shoos him out as soon as I'm settled on the padded bench that's the centerpiece of it. "You'll need to take that off," she says, eying the harness and gear I have. She's the first pony not Applejack who's really seen my equipment—well, there was Big Macintosh, I suppose, but he seems to count more as a mobile piece of scenery, from the way he acts—and, fortunately, her reaction is distaste, not fear.

I frown, but she frowns back, and then we're stuck in a loop until I sigh and give in. I take special care with the lump between the shoulders of the harness, twisting it off with my back turned away so she doesn't see and bundling it with my field-kit into a pile in the corner of the room. She almost tries to help, seeing the way I wobble when I move, and I have to hiss at her like a cat to make her back off. She shivers and gives me a nasty look. With all that off I sit again, and she tells me to wait.

The doctor, when he comes in, has this odd purple-marbled patterns to the blue fur on his face, and I can't quite tell but think it might be because of old burns underneath. He's got a little horn, too, sticking out of his forehead, and I realize that a good proportion of the passers-by on the street did, too, and I just wasn't really paying attention. He's got a paper chart that he makes notes on as he examines me, with the quill-pen floating by itself in midair. His demeanor stays cold throughout, though I think from the slight quirk at the edge of his mouth that he appreciates my quiet announcements of "yes" or "no" to his questions of pain, even when his prodding at my ribcage has my claws digging into the edge of the bench.

He sighs. "All right, lay down," he says, "on your back," before I can finish settling in place, and from one of the racks and cabinets at the side of the room he withdraws a long, flat box. It goes on a rolling stand and he unfolds it. Inside are a set of thin, thin metal needles. "You've got several cracked ribs, at least," he says. "Your friend out there gave me the sob story," and it had to be Applejack, because Big Macintosh wouldn't talk that much, "and a kick from somebody in that family... you're lucky you're still in one piece, miss. I wouldn't feel right without a full scan—you might have internal injuries—and that means these go in you."

"...fine," I say, and I sigh and stare up at the ceiling. "Get it over with." He's got a better hand (invisible hand?) at handling feathers than I'd have expected of a pony, and with the tip of each needle heated over a candle and then blown cool, he presses them neatly into the skin of my chest. "...too far to the left," I say, as I realize by the pinprick-touches the pattern he's trying to lay out without having to pluck any feathers. He gives me a sharp look. "Different wing anchoring. It pushes the earth-phase meridian line out. You need to go a claw-width to the right down that whole line." It's simple, really, because the pressure points of disabling strikes are all the same, and I know them all front to back and top to bottom. It's not work I do, but you need to know them if you're going to block strikes against any of them.

He sighs, rolls his eyes a little, and readjusts all his needles.

Having a stranger's magic poking around in my guts is a less unpleasant experience than I thought it'd be. It's tingly all over, and I can feel the way the energy touching into my meridians makes my muscles twitch a little at a time. "Are you a physician, miss...?" the doctor asks. He's got an odd set of curved metal brackets he's channeling it all with, with barely-visible squiggles of vaporous energy trailing between them and his horn and the needles in me.

"Telka. Martial artist," I say. He frowns. "A good one," I add, "not one of those get-skilled quick hacks. I've been in a different line of work for a while, but... you've got to know everything in the body to match up to best, and that stays with you."

"Well," he says, finally, and he puts away his tools. "You don't have any internal bleeding. You're tougher than any proper griffon should be, I'll give you that, but you've still got more bruises than a mistreated tomato. Between that and the ribs—plenty of bed rest, no, and I mean absolutely no, heavy exertion for at least two months, and no heavy loads." He eyes my pile of gear in the corner. "And since you're going to ignore all that anyway, I can tell, don't you dare let yourself get kicked again like that or I'll hunt you down myself. You're all out of safety margin."

With doctor's orders delivered, I shrug most of the way back into my harness, and he escorts me back out to the front. He's given me a jar of strange grass-green pills, to help with the pain, that he says work well enough for griffons as for ponies. Applejack is there, holding her hooves together tightly, and the tenseness goes out of her shoulders when she sees me.

There's a faint not-noise, a thing like a vibration just past the edge of hearing, and all of us on the room at look toward the same wall. "What was," the doctor says, and before he can finish the question I've stepped outside. For a moment I don't understand, and then I see how all the shadows are too deep and too sharp. I turn.

Above the forest, outside of town, flares a verdigris-green flame, flowing like light breaking across a mountain at dawn, and its light is so bright it hurts to look at. It casts razor-sharp shadows from every corner and edge the light touches. In the flame where it touches the tops of the trees I almost see in it the shape of a thing with four massive arms and insect-carapace armored plates flanked by a legion of lockstep-marching soldiers.

There's a more-intense glint of pinprick light within it, and a sound like a distant explosion. "What in the hay is that?!" Applejack says, because she's come outside without me noticing. If she could stare much harder her eyes would be coming out of her head. Big Macintosh is staring, too, from where he's minding the cart.

A glimmer of gold shoots into the sky from the forest. "Sorry," I say, and I grab Applejack by the leg and fling her behind me. I'm faster than she can react, now that I'm not falling out of a tree, and she lands on her head and lets out a grunt of pain in the moment before the golden comet crashes into the street where she was. It bounces and smashes through the wall of the house on the opposite side.

It clambers out of the rubble, a thing like a minotaur cast in shining gold, easily some three paces tall. It's armor, I realize, fantastical impossible armor that must be so heavy it would crush any normal creature underneath it, for as the being steps out into the street the stray bits of wood and plaster are casually crushed flat under its boots. Golden flames flare around it, and as they touch me it's like a hurricane closing around me like a fist. I cough and splutter, stumbling from my feet and going facedown in the dirt.

There's a noise like a massive hammer striking dirt, and then it is gone, I can tell, because I can breathe again, and because the ice in my spine that froze me is gone, and I struggle up to my feet and shake my head out of hope that the lingering ache the thing's presence left will vanish. The others didn't fare as well, from the way they're still sprawled where the thing's aura touched them.

A golden comet falls towards the forest.