Foreigner

Chapters

1 - Commander
2 - Interloper
3 - Arranger
4 - Delver
5 - Betrayer
6 - Sorcerer
7 - Partner

1 - Commander

"Praetor!" The cry, shrill and piercing, smacked Gilda awake. "Emergency!"

By then, she was already rolling from her blankets, her claws digging into the faded rug that did pretty much nothing to mask the eternal chill of her room's stone floor. Blinking in the just-after-dawn light flooding in from outside, she leaped forward, shouldered the sliding glass door open, and charged out onto the balcony, the heights of the Wyvern Range on the other side of the valley rising like vast rocky talons into the autumn sky, sheer and blue now after last night's storm.

Gentle now, the winds batted their invisible kitten paws at her crest, the air cool and damp when she sniffed it. Stretching her neck, she peered around, trying to see where the cry had come from.

"Praetor!" The echoes told her to look down, a figure rising from the river and the ruins on the valley floor: her senior aedile, she could tell from the gray streaks in his dark, tawny fur. "We've someone on the site!"

Pushing off from the edge of the balcony, Gilda let herself drop. "Tell me where, Godfrey!" she shouted, the wind's claws suddenly fully-grown, tearing at her fur and feathers, and waking her in the best way a griffon could come awake: wrapped in the heart-pounding joy of free fall.

"The civic plaza!" Godfrey's shriek ripped though the sky like no one else in the company, another reason he made such a perfect senior aedile.

"I'll meet you there!" Taking a breath of the wonderful rush around her, she opened her wings and gave the morning one tiny caress. Then she flexed her muscles and dove, slicing the air to ribbons, pounding it into submission with each mighty beat of her pinions, and making it give way before her as all things should, as all things did. The ground rushed up under her, but she laughed, her blood boiling and her heart alive; wrenching the whole world sideways with the sheer force of her down stroke, she pulled up a feather's breadth from the age-scoured stones of Catlatl's civic plaza, the center of the ancient city, and landed with an ease that she'd practiced, practiced, practiced until it looked natural.

One of the cadets stood properly at attention near the weathered dais at the western edge of the plaza: the Judges' Platform, the professors who studied the site called it. Gilda nodded to the cadet—Godfrey was the one who knew their names—and rising with a single wing flap—another move she'd practiced till it was both graceful and forceful—she settled next to the younger griffon. "Report, fledge."

He nodded exactly as sharply as he should have—Gilda made a mental note to have Godfrey put a silver star in the kid's record. "Aedile Godfrey and I had just begun the morning's first sweep, ma'am, when I saw—" His crest feathers fell, his eyes going shaky all of a sudden. He stepped to the side, turned, looked down the little embankment behind the Judges' Platform—

And Gilda's heart skittered against her ribs like a captive pigeon. Four smooth, gray legs; a blond mane and tail; a gray rump sticking into the air with a series of little bubbles on it; wings that always seemed way too tiny to be useful tucked against its side: a pegasus pony lay sprawled in the drainage ditch behind the Judges' Platform in the civic plaza of the ancient city of Catlatl.

A pony. Here.

She could almost feel the stones slipping away beneath her. This one place, this one pony-less place—the old stories all said that nobody but griffons had ever set talon in Catlatl, and Gilda had found that to be true when she'd researched the place on her return to griffon territory after—

Frosting dripping from her feathers; those wide-eyed grass-eaters laughing all around her; the weird mixture of confusion and disappointment on Dash's face; everything inside Gilda turning to ice and shattering. Three years later, the memory still stabbed at her even if, she had to admit, the experience had been exactly what she'd needed at that point in her life...

"Praetor?"

Godfrey's voice, the deep, cutting tone of it again hitting her like a bucket of water: Gilda shook herself, took a breath, and glanced over her shoulder to see her senior aedile standing a step back and to her right, exactly where a senior aedile should be standing when addressing his commander.

Protocol. It steadied her, the stones again firm under her paws and claws, and she nodded to the cadet. "Back to the Eyrie, fledge, and get ready for morning classes."

The cadet gave as prefect a salute as Gilda had ever seen, spread his wings, and rose into the shadowy air, the sunlight bathing the mountains above but still hours from reaching the valley floor. She watched him angle his flight toward the gleaming glass front of the barracks just below the Eyrie itself, then with another breath, she forced herself to look away, to look down and focus on those gray and yellow hindquarters. "Where did it come from, aedile?"

"'She,' I believe, praetor." Godfrey raised a single talon like one of the professors making a point. "And 'mare' is the term for a female pony if I'm not mistaken."

Sometimes Gilda suspected that her senior aedile had a way of smirking at her that didn't reach even the corners of his beak. She'd always accepted it as the proper way for an older subordinate to help guide a younger officer, but at this moment, she found his tone absolutely irksome. "I know the word, Godfrey! I lived in freaking Cloudsdale for six years!"

"Of course, praetor."

"Just tell me!" She managed to swallow most of the shriek: a good praetor never shrieked at an aedile. "Where did this pony come from?"

"That, I couldn't say." He gestured to the rump sticking up from the ditch. "When Cadet Garamond and I saw her, I immediately roused the alarm as protocol says we must when we find a lone pilgrim on the site after a storm."

Gilda stared at him. "She's a pony, not a pilgrim! No way she's here for any real reason! Ponies are more like fleas than people! Always a problem! Always!"

Godfrey's gaze never wavered from hers, his eyes as deep and dark as the pools further up in the mountains. "Forgive me, praetor, but the regulations fail to specify the species when outlining our duties in assisting those we find on the site. As praetor, you must discern whether any visitors are injured or if they—"

"Injured?" The shout echoed around Gilda, and she crooked a shaking claw at the pony. "Shards and shreds, Godfrey! I can hear her snoring! She's fine!"

"Indeed, praetor." He gave that infuriatingly proper little nod again, reached into the pack he always had strapped to his side, and pulled out a pad and pencil. "We can therefore wake the pony and ask her where she came from."

The breath rattled in and out of her throat like dried rice in a kitten's toy. Three years—perfect, pony-free years—she'd served as praetor of the Catlatl Garrison, and in less than three minutes, she'd relapsed into the whining, petulant thing that had worn her name throughout her horrible fledgling years. She was better than that now. She was an adult. A professional. A griffon.

With a nod, Gilda padded forward, hopped down the shallow slope of the ditch to the side of the gently-snoring pony, and bent to take in her scent. "No trace of intoxicants," she murmured loud enough for Godfrey to jot it down in his notes—and intoxication was something she was very familiar with from her lost years in Cloudsdale. She pushed those foggy memories away and focused on the here-and-now. "I'm not smelling any blood or bile, either, so I'd say no major internal injuries. But I'm getting more than a whiff of fatigue poisons: natural enough, I guess, if she really managed to fly all the way here from—"

"The balloon!" a gawky voice shouted, and a sudden flurry of hair and feathers burst into Gilda's face. With a squawk, she stumbled backward, tripped over her own talons, and landed hard on her tail. "The princess's balloon!"

Gilda blinked at the pony, awake and hovering now just above the ditch, her wings beating frantically, her neck craning around, her golden eyes open and—

And pointing in opposite directions.

Which sparked more memories: a gray, wall-eyed pegasus laughing with the others at that horrible party on the last day of Gilda's old life, the day she'd realized that she wasn't who and what she'd thought she was, the day she'd flown straight back to griffon territory and signed up for the Guardian Corps.

Because of course the first pony to violate griffondom's most sacred site would be one of those who'd seen Gilda at her worst. She could practically hear the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father's laughter in the wind that skipped and scampered about the city's tumbled stones...

"Oh, wow!" that thick voice was saying, and again Gilda had to shake herself back to the present, the pony floating right in front of her and staring with those gob-smacked eyes. The pony spun partway around, her snout pointing at Godfrey. "Oh, wow!" Her spine bent backwards, her head tipping up, up, up as she apparently noticed the mountains towering around them for the first time. "Oh, wow!" The hummingbird-fast buzz of her wings slowed to a flap, and the pony settled to the bottom of the ditch, that disconcerting gaze turning back to Gilda. "I don't think I'm in Ponyville anymore."

Another laughing wind whistled through the ruins for a moment; then Godfrey cleared his throat. "The subject appears to be responsive, praetor."

Not answering with 'No duh' was the hardest thing Gilda had done in months. "Thank you, Godfrey," she said instead, her attention still on the pony.

"No, no," the pony said. She tapped a front hoof against her chest. "My name's not Godfrey. It's Ditzelda Derpiella Doo, but ponies all call me Ditzy. Or Derpy. Or sometimes even 'Hey, you,' but I don't know where they get that one from. I mean, 'Hey, Doo' would make more sense, don'tcha think?"

Fighting against hyperventilation at hearing a pony again after so long, Gilda managed to ask, "Do you know where you are?"

That got her some more of that boggle-eyed stare. "I already said: not Ponyville. Isn't that right?"

Gilda suddenly realized she was still sprawled back on her tail, her wings all askew; jumping up, she fluffed her feathers into place, planted her paws and claws firmly on the ancient stones, and looked down at the little pegasus. "You're in griffon territory, Ms. Doo, about as far from anywhere a pony has a right to be as it's possible to get."

"Griffons?" The pony swung her head like a loose shutter in a wind storm, blinked at Godfrey, then came back, one eye rolling to aim more or less in Gilda's direction. "I thought you two looked odd, but I didn't wanna say anything in case, y'know, it was a touchy subject."

"Why would it be a—?" Gilda started to ask but immediately stopped herself. First things first: get the pony off the site. "Ms. Doo, do you feel well enough to—?"

"Oh, now, now!" Flopping back onto her hindquarters, the pony's eyes curled into crescents, her front hoofs clapping together, and a wide smile spread over her muzzle. "We're all friends, so you and your husband can both call me Derpy!"

Godfrey's crest bristled, the corners of his beak definitely turning upward in a grin. "Husband?" he asked.

"No?" Derpy swiveled toward him again. "Uncle, then? Much older cousin? It's just that you two don't look related is the thing, so I figured you'd prob'bly be happy being married to each other."

Gilda fought back a shout; every time this Derpy opened her mouth, Gilda could feel the situation slipping further away from her. "Fine. You're Derpy. Well, I'm Gilda, and this is Godfrey. We're with the Guardian Corps, and we—"

"Guardians?" Those odd eyes seemed to bug out below Derpy's forehead. "Are you soldiers?"

"We're Guardians." A needle-sharp pain jabbed into the space behind Gilda's left temple at the thought of trying to explain to this foreigner what the Guardians were and did. Still, she knew she'd have to try: ponies always wanted explanations, she'd learned in her years living among them. "We watch over the ancient city here to protect it and everyone who comes to visit it."

"Oh!" Derpy's slowly spreading grin and eyes made Gilda think of dandelion fluff floating on the breeze. "You're park rangers!"

"We're Guardians," Gilda got out again through gritted teeth, but it wasn't a point she wanted to waste any more time on. "And since you're apparently well enough to fly, maybe we could move this up to a more comfortable setting?" She pointed to the Eyrie high above them and tried to ignore the sudden grumbling of her stomach: she hadn't had breakfast yet, after all.

The pony's split-level attention seemed both to stay on Gilda and to follow her pointing claw. "Oh, no, Gilda, I couldn't do that. I hafta find the princess's balloon, don't I?" Derpy nodded. "And the answer to that question is: yes, I do."

Princess. Ever since the pegasus had sprung awake earlier, Gilda had been trying to pretend she hadn't heard that word. Now, though, she couldn't stop her mind from running through the procedures: she would have to contact HQ, get them to alert the Diplomatic Corps, have guest quarters arranged for this Derpy till a formal legation arrived...

So much for just pointing her west and waving her good-bye. With tightening shoulders, Gilda asked, "Then you're some sort of envoy from Princess Celestia?"

Ears folding, Derpy cocked her head. "If 'envoy' is a griffon word for 'delivery mare,' then yes, 'cause that's what I am. But I've never really met Princess Celestia. It's Princess Twilight that I know." That big smile came back. "She lives in the town library!" The smile vanished. "At least, she did till that mean ol' Tirek blew it up." She sighed, then everything about her brightened again. "But now Twilight has a castle, and it's nice, too!"

Gilda looked up the slope at Godfrey. "Princess Twilight Sparkle," he said, always ready with whatever information she needed. "The fourth and most recently crowned of Equestria's princesses, she rules from the small town of Ponyville."

"Ponyville!" Derpy hopped into a hover. "Which, as I think we've already established, this isn't!" She dropped back to the ground with a slight squishing noise. "Y'know, I think we're making some real good progress here."

It took every ounce of the self-control Gilda had been cultivating the past three years not to leap forward and wrap her talons around this Derpy's neck. "So you're on a mission from this fourth princess, is that what you're saying? And she sent you here to Catlatl to find a balloon?"

Derpy put a hoof to her chin. "Did I really say that? 'Cause it doesn't sound right."

Godfrey clearing his throat was the only thing that saved the pegasus at that point, the gentle sound reminding Gilda of where she was and more importantly who she was: not the run-away, pony wanna-be of her adolescence, but a griffon embracing the wind and the rocks and the discipline, committing herself to the traditional virtues of her people. Not that most of them even pretended to practice this stuff anymore which was why the Catlatl Garrison had been so desperate for anyone who met the barest qualifications to be commander...

Breathing, she fought to center herself—she wasn't a screw-up anymore; she loved it here and deserved to be here—and listened with one ear as Godfrey said, "And yet you've mentioned the princess's balloon twice now, Ms. Doo."

"Ah, ah, ah!" Grinning, the pegasus shook a hoof at him. "I'm Derpy, remember?"

"Indeed." Godfrey's voice held the faintest rumble of the drill sergeant Gilda knew he'd once been, and hearing it made her feel instantly better. If he was having trouble keeping his temper... "But you do remember speaking about the princess's balloon, don't you, Derpy?"

"Oh, sure!" Derpy waved a hoof at the tumbled stone spires, the lumps of walls and worn-down statues. "It's here someplace; I'm sure of it!"

"How?" Gilda couldn't keep quiet, but she still somehow kept herself from screeching it at the absolute top of her lungs. "This is griffondom's first city, the original spot where the tribes came together in peace and strength and decided to be a people, and that was centuries before any griffon had even seen a pony!" She waved her talons at the ruins around them. "No pony hoof has ever trod these stones! No pony wing has ever stirred this air! No pony horn has ever warped the fabric of space and time anywhere near here! Catlatl is entirely griffon and has been for thousands of years! So how can you possibly think we've got your princess's balloon?"

Derpy gave a few blinks with those wayward eyes. "Because I followed it," she said. "It's a great big purple balloon that she rides around in; maybe I should've mentioned that before."

Every hair and feather on Gilda's body bristled. A hot-air balloon caught in the storm that had thundered through these mountains last night? She leaped to her claws and paws. "Was the princess aboard at the time?"

Godfrey had jumped to attention, too, but Derpy was shaking her head. "I was bringing the balloon to the party. See, when Tirek blew up the library tree, Twilight got all sad. But when ol' Granny Smith started growing the new library tree, Twilight got happy again. Then she asked the mayor if we could have a big castle-warming party to make the new castle feel welcome as a real part of Ponyville."

Forcing herself not to let the adrenaline pumping through her system direct her actions—no lives were in danger; that was the important thing—Gilda gave Godfrey the proper 'stand down' chirp and took a seat again to hear what she hoped would finally be the actual story of how this Derpy had gotten here.

"But my friend Rainbow Dash," Derpy went on, "she remembered that the balloon hadn't been at the library when it got blown up because she'd kind of been borrowing it to use as the center of her floating obstacle course. Rainbow's a pretty fancy flier, y'see."

Gilda managed to keep her reaction to a single grunt.

Derpy nodded. "So we were gonna go get the balloon and bring it to the party as a surprise. But then Rainbow Dash had to go help Twilight bring water to some crocodahlias that had come wandering into town, so I went to get the balloon by myself. But it was a lot bigger than I remembered it being." She heaved a sigh that Gilda felt ruffle her neck feathers. "And then a lot of wind came up, and I don't do all that well with storms: when I try to make 'em smaller, they usually end up getting bigger." She shrugged. "I'm never quite sure what goes wrong."

It made Gilda swallow, the ghost of her kittenhood fascination with pegasus weather-control shivering through her; she'd wanted so much to have that power, to be a pony, to show the other kits in the state hatchery that she was more than a scrawny little nobody—

The pony was still talking, and Gilda focused her attention back toward her: "The storm blew the balloon away, so I chased it. I think maybe we ended up in the jet stream or something, but I don't really remember a whole lot about most of it. I do know the balloon was in front of me when we started coming down, and since I woke up here, the balloon must be here, too!" Derpy gave a grin, her left eye now looking up, her right eye looking down.

It took Gilda a few breaths to get her thoughts in order. "OK, first of all, Derpy, you're not a balloon. So when you and the balloon were coming in for a landing or whatever last night, the storm would probably have blown you around in a different way than it blew the balloon. Does that seem reasonable to you?"

Several more blinks. "Y'know, you're right! I'm not a balloon!"

Gilda did her best not to wince. As oddly as this little pony thought, she wasn't really all that much odder than the ponies Gilda had both looked up to and looked down on for all those years. "And if your princess's balloon was here on the site the way you are, my aedile would've seen it on his patrol this morning. So let's head up to the Eyrie and look at some maps and try to figure out where the balloon might've—"

Another clearing of Godfrey's throat interrupted her. "My apologies, praetor, but in truth, Cadet Garamond and I had just begun our patrol when we came across our friend Derpy. And a deflated purple balloon in the shadows of dawn, it's unlikely we would've seen it from a distance."

Teeth clenching, she said, "Thank you, Godfrey."

"Hooray!" Derpy sprang into the winds fluking lazily around them. "If you didn't see it, then that proves it's here!" Hovering, she seemed to look in several directions at once; then she raised a front hoof and pointed toward the north. "In fact, there it is!"

Derpy was rocketing off in that direction before Gilda could even spread her wings; she'd forgotten how agile these pegasi could be when they put their minds to it. "Careful!" she yelled, leaping into the pony's slipstream and pumping her wings in an attempt to catch up. "This place is really old, and we don't want to—!"

"It's OK!" came Derpy's shout from ahead, the north end of the city spreading over the foothills before them and leading to the site's absolute crown: the half-intact Palace of Nine Jaguars, the seat of griffondom's first government. Gilda almost lost Derpy against the gray stones, but a flick of yellow marked her descent, settling into a cobbled street a few blocks south of the palace. Something darker than gray lay stretched over the ruins of a building there, and Gilda couldn't stop her beak from dropping open: it was indeed a deflated purple hot-air balloon.

"See?" Derpy waved a hoof at it, one of her eyes meeting Gilda's as Gilda touched down beside her. "I mean, the gas bag's all outta gas or whatever, but it doesn't look like it's got any holes in it! So— Oh!" She stopped abruptly.

A similar gasp behind her made Gilda glance back, Godfrey clutching a claw at his chest feathers. "The south wall of the Scribes' Union, praetor!" he said in a breathless whisper. "It's knocked down the south wall of the Scribes' Union!"

Now, Gilda knew the essential layout of Catlatl, of course, but she'd never been one for poring over the professors' maps like Godfrey, her senior aedile able to talk to the dweebiest of those tweedy little griffons about particular buildings and streets and all the minor plazas that dotted the site. Still, even she could tell that the spray of stones scattered across the street from the balloon's gondola was new: one the cadets' main jobs, after all, was keeping the walkways clear for any pilgrims who might want to wander the site. "Derpy," she growled, taking a step toward her, a fire crackling to life in her chest at the thought of ponies once again coming into her life to destroy it.

"I'm sorry!" Derpy cowered, her legs folding her to the street, her eyes spinning like pinwheels. "It's all my fault! If I'd caught the balloon earlier, it wouldn't've broken your city and you wouldn't've—!" She stopped, both eyes suddenly snapping to the side and staring into the shadow under the gondola, something glinting there, Gilda could now see. "Ooo! Pretty!" Derpy hopped upright again, trotted over to the detritus, and lifted a drooping flap of purple cloth to reveal—

The colors struck Gilda first, blues and golds, whites and silvers brighter even than the carefully-preserved mosaics up the hill in the palace's main throne room. Then her eyes focused on the image itself, angular and stylized in the fashion of the earliest-known griffon artwork: the familiar jagged outline of the Wyvern Range with sky and sun above; a row of griffons standing in ceremonial ranks and costumes along the left side of the picture, sigils of the old writing above and below each figure; and along the right side—

Ponies. Unmistakably. All of them unicorns, the tiny slice of Gilda's mind that was still thinking noted, and all of them rendered in exactly the same ancient style as the rest of the mosaic.

She was closer to it now, though she didn't remember moving, her claws joining Derpy's hoof to push the balloon fabric further out of the way. "Praetor," came Godfrey's whisper from just over her shoulder. A shaking talon reached past her to point up at the central griffon figure, larger than the others and with more pictograms around it. "That's the image of Nine Jaguar herself, and these other griffons, they...they're the leaders of the First Council. And the text above the ponies says that they're the King of Unicornia and his advisors come to make a treaty regularizing the sunrise."

"Oh!" Derpy said loud enough to make Gilda flinch. "Like in the Hearth's Warming play!" Derpy's smiling face moved into the edge of Gilda's peripheral vision. "Gee, Gilda! I guess I'm not the first pony to visit here, then!"

Swallowing, scrambling to think, Gilda fell back on protocol. When anything changed on the site— "Godfrey, get the professors down here as fast as they can load up their equipment. This takes top priority over anything else scheduled on the site today. I wanna know why nobody ever even suspected this mural was here." She glanced back at the other crumbled gray stone buildings up and the down the street. "And I want some ideas about how many more ancient mosaics might be covered up around the city."

"Yes, praetor!" Godfrey sprang backwards into the morning sky, the grin on his beak the biggest Gilda had ever seen there.

"Derpy?" Everything churning inside her, Gilda turned to the little pegasus. "I hope your princess won't mind if we borrow her balloon for a little while. We'll need to get the wall stabilized before we can do anything else."

"Not a problem." Derpy waved the hoof not holding up the edge of the balloon. "I bet Twilight'll love to look at and learn about your big, old city!"

After I resign my commission, Gilda thought. Not that she would, of course. Because nothing would stop this Princess Twilight from coming here now, Gilda knew, and she would bring more ponies with her—they were herd animals, after all. And if whoever was in charge of the garrison didn't understand ponies and the way they charged around, breaking things that needed to be broken while also fixing things that needed to be fixed, Catlatl was going to suffer.

And that was something Gilda would not allow. "Yes." She took a breath, and blowing it out, she could almost smell the musty dust of her own inner rock slide. This wasn't going to be easy—was likely to be a living nightmare, the more she thought about it. But knowing the worst of both cultures—and the best, she had to admit—well, she was the only one who could keep what was about to happen from spiraling completely out of control.

With a smile she almost felt, Gilda clapped a set of talons over Derpy's shoulders. "Once the professors get their lazy tail feathers down here, you and me can head up to the Eyrie and send word to your friends that you're all right. Then we can start getting everything ready for their visit."

"Yay!" Derpy threw a front leg around Gilda and squeezed with a strength that made Gilda gasp for breath. "This'll be great and so much fun!"

"Yeah." The breeze tweaked Gilda's crest, the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father, she knew, giving her one more little giggle. "Just great."

2 - Interloper

Wild squawking and flapping shattered the valley's morning stillness at that point, but Gilda had been expecting it. She didn't even bother glancing up.

Derpy did, though. "Oh, wow! Gilda! Who are all those griffons?"

They're dweebs popped into Gilda's head, but she pushed it out pretty easily. Sure, it was true, but she didn't say those sorts of things anymore.

Not out loud, at least. "Those're the professors, the ones who study the city here." Giving the mosaic one last look, savoring the feeling of being the first griffon to see this artwork in maybe fifteen hundred years, Gilda sighed—time to get to work—and turned to Derpy. "Now, some of 'em are gonna pretend they're really mad at you when they get here, but you just ignore 'em, OK? This picture you uncovered is gonna make 'em as happy as griffons like them ever can be."

"Huh." One of Derpy's eyes drifted over to fix on Gilda. "Is it just that griffons like being grumpy? 'Cause you were doing a really good job of it earlier."

"Me?" Gilda made a shooing motion with her talons. "I'm an absolute amateur compared to these grouchbags."

"Praetor!" a voice shrieked as gratingly as claws on slate. "This is completely unacceptable!" Wings ruffled above her, and Professor Gloriana dropped to the cobblestones, the smaller griffon's feathers all askew, the white coat wrapped around her so wrinkled, Gilda felt pretty sure that the prof had slept in it. "A pony? Here in Catlatl? Damaging the single most important cultural site our people possess? I demand this interloper be hauled away in chains at once!"

Another eight or ten professors had landed by now—most of the current contingent visiting the site—their squabbling and complaining filling the air like the wailing from a rookery of newly hatched kits. Godfrey, however, settled soundlessly beside her, and when he cocked his head, Gilda nodded. He nodded back, cleared his throat, and let out a single cry so perfect and piercing, Gilda had to fight not to wince, the burst of sound seeming to slice straight through her head.

As always, it did the trick of shutting the professors up. They snapped their attention toward her, and when Gilda raised the edge of the balloon fabric just enough for them to see the mosaic, their beaks fell open and their eyes just about blew up to balloon-size themselves. "Now," Gilda said, feeling more like herself than she had all day, "we'll be following the protocols for dealing with changes to the site. Aedile Godfrey will remain here with you as you begin your initial assessment. I will be escorting Ambassador Doo to the Eyrie, then I'll be informing those cadets on survey duty that they're to report here to fetch and carry for you for the rest of the day. Any questions?"

Even that blowhard Gloriana just shook her head, the prof creeping over the stones of the knocked-down wall like they were unhatched eggs. "Good." Gilda stepped away and let the balloon drop; Gloriana gave an alarmed chirp, leaped forward, and grabbed for it, the rest of the professors practically swarming over each other to get a better view. "Aedile," she said, and she gave the proper chirp for passing command of the situation to Godfrey. He knew the profs better than she did anyway and would certainly be able to keep them from accidentally smashing anything important.

"Praetor," he replied, that not-quite-a-smile not quite visible along the edges of his beak.

Gilda turned to Derpy, the pony watching the scrum with her ears folded, and asked, "Ambassador Doo? Shall we go up?"

For several seconds, Derpy didn't move; then she gave a start and swiveled her head to Gilda. "You mean me?"

"Yes, I do." Gilda spread her wings. "After we get some breakfast, we'll send word to your Princess Twilight that you're safely here instead of anywhere around Ponyville."

Derpy blinked. "Well, they probably know that I'm not there already, but telling them that I'm here would be a really good idea." Those weird little pegasus wings puffed open. "Up, did you say?"

Gilda leaped into the air. "To the Eyrie!" She looked back at the pony and waved her talons toward the peak of Mt. Chimalli.

Giving a flap, Derpy raised her head, part of her wandering gaze following Gilda's gesture. "Oh, wow!" she cried.

With a grin, Gilda faced forward and found herself remembering the first time she'd stood among the ruins of the ancient city and looked up through the quarter mile of empty air at the glass and steel structure built into the top of the mountain. And sure, the Eyrie had grown and changed in the thousand and more years that the Guardians had kept vigil over Catlatl and over those griffons, pilgrims or professors, who felt drawn here. But Gilda still shivered every time she made this flight, her thoughts turning to the hundreds and hundreds of praetors in whose claw marks she'd been treading since she'd taken the post commanding the most griffonish place on this whole pony planet.

"Oh, wow!" Derpy said again. "Gilda! This is so great! Do you live here all the time?"

It took Gilda a couple swallows before she could say, "I wouldn't wanna live anywhere else."

Larger and larger the structure grew, the main landing terrace jutting out from the center of the complex, the cadets' quarters below, the main Corps garrison above. Two cadets stood at attention on either side of the big, wide-open granite doors, and Gilda couldn't help giving her wings a little flare as she touched claws and paws to the carefully smoothed but just as carefully unpolished stone. The cadets tapped their talons in salute, and Gilda returned it before something heavy thumped down beside her. "Oh, wow!" Derpy exclaimed a third time. "When you said this was griffon territory, I didn't know you meant ev'rypony was a griffon!"

That Godfrey and the eight junior aediles were doing a great job training the cadets, Gilda had never doubted. But when being called "everypony" got nothing but the tiniest eye twitch from the younger of the two on guard, that seemed more a miracle than anything else. Still, with everything that was about to fall out of the sky onto them, Gilda figured the sooner she started preparing the garrison, the better for every griffon here. "Cadets!" she barked. "Introduce yourselves to the ambassador!"

The bigger of the two, a female with multiple badges marking the crimson senior sash cinched across her chest, gave a stomp, hopped forward, and sang out, "Cadet Gyre, Praetor!"

She leaped back into place, and the slighter one, his purple junior sash completely unmarked, saluted less showily and said, "Cadet Gimble, Praetor."

"At ease, cadets," Gilda said. Gyre fell into parade rest as if she'd been hatched in that position, but Gimble narrowed his eyes a bit, sliding more warily into the less-restrictive stance. Nodding—yeah, these two were gonna be perfect—Gilda gestured to Derpy, still sitting beside her and staring in multiple directions. "Cadets, this is Ambassador Doo."

"Umm, Gilda?" Derpy's brow wrinkled. "You keep calling me that, but I don't think that's really me."

Of course, preparations went both ways: Gilda leaned toward Derpy and whispered, "But you can pretend it's you while you're here, can't you, Derpy? As part of the game?"

"Game?" The pony's gray ears perked.

"Kind of." Because one of the several things Gilda had learned during her lost years among the ponies was how much they loved playing stupid games. "It's a game with a lot of rules—there's a whole shelf of books in my office if you're interested in looking them over—but we've got to follow as many of them as we can. And one of them says that a pony this deep in griffon territory has to be an ambassador. Can you do that, Derpy? Can you follow that rule?"

For a moment, Derpy just stared, one eye slightly up and to the left, the other slightly down and to the right. But then the edges of her mouth curled into a smile, and she leaped to her hoofs. "I can sure try!" she declared. "So, can you tell me what an ambassador does in this game? Or is it more fun if it's a surprise?"

"Y'know, in this game, 'surprise' and 'fun' don't go together." Gilda tapped Derpy's chest gently with a claw. "So I'll tell you: an ambassador is supposed to be cheerful and friendly, and she comes to a new place to learn about the folks there while at the same time she teaches those folks about her own folks back home."

"I can do that!" Derpy's smile seemed to radiate from her whole body. "I can do that really well!"

"Yeah, I thought so." And since the pony was gonna be here for who knew how long— "But one other thing an ambassador needs is an honor guard." Gilda swept a talon toward the two cadets. "Ambassador Doo, may I present Cadets Gyre and Gimble? They'll help you in any way you need while you're visiting us."

"Oh, wow!" Derpy sprang into a hover, her front hoofs clapping together. "This is gonna be so great!"

Gyre seemed to puff out her chest, though Gilda was sure any measurements would show the cadet hadn't actually moved.

Gimble, though, came all over wary again for the briefest instant, then it was like he slid a mask over his face, fear and uncertainty showing there suddenly. "Permission to speak freely, Praetor?" he asked, a phony quiver in his voice.

"Of course, Cadet." Gilda gave him a smile, not bothering to soften any of the predatory edges.

Feathers ruffled along his neck as he swallowed. "I'm the fifth lowest-ranking junior in the squadron, ma'am, and for an honor guard, well, Ambassador Doo deserves nothing but the best."

Which just made Gilda's smile get wider. She'd had Gimble pegged the moment she'd laid eyes on him three years ago, a frosh recruit skinnier than the rest but one whose sharp eyes, she was sure, didn't miss a thing. Most of the cadets assigned to the Catlatl Garrison, Gilda had quickly found, were either kits from wealthy families looking for a fancy entry to put on their university application or were kits with nowhere to go who'd been dumped into the Corps by a judge or a social worker. Gilda had nearly been in that second group herself before she'd run off to Cloudsdale, and she recognized some of the same signs in Gimble: a griffon without a single badge on his sash, for instance, was working very, very hard to stay unnoticed.

She stepped toward him. "Tell me, Gimble. Are you a cadet in the Catlatl Garrison?"

Another sharpening of gaze spattered so quickly across his face, Gilda was sure she would've missed it if she hadn't been watching for it. Then that droopy, underachiever look slipped back into place, and he said, "Uhh, yes, ma'am."

"And that—" Gilda poked him a good deal harder in the chest than she'd poked Derpy. "—makes you better than ninety-five percent of the griffons in this world." She snapped her attention toward the other cadet. "Isn't that right, Gyre?"

"Yes, ma'am!" the fledge just about shouted, and Gilda knew she meant it. Not that Gilda had memorized the cadets' files, but Gyre carried herself in a way that stank of an old-school military family. More than once, watching this kit lead the drills above and around the peaks of the Wyvern Range, Gilda had found herself picturing her own retirement ceremony forty or fifty years from now, Gyre as the Grand Imperator or even one of Aquileon's Consuls snapping a medal to Gilda's chest...

"OK, then." Gilda shook her thoughts back into order; so much could still go wrong with all this, she couldn't afford to get distracted. "Cadets, fall in behind the ambassador and myself. We'll stop at the company clerk's desk for a moment, then it's down to the mess hall for breakfast."

"Mess?" Derpy blinked, each eyelid moving at slightly different rates. "Do we hafta eat the jam without toast or spoons or anything?"

And as much as part of Gilda wanted to rear back roaring, grab the pony by the scruff, and shake her till she popped like the bubbles on her flank, vanishing once and for all and letting Gilda get back to the life she'd made for herself, another part of her, an older part, a part that had driven her out of griffon territory all those years ago in search of the magical rulers of the world, that part gave a nearly hysterical little laugh at once again taking a breath scented with the warm, weird, and wonderful dry-hay-and-damp-oats aroma of pony.

Needing to steer a middle course between those two extremes, Gilda let herself smile at Derpy. "It's a part of the game," she said. "We call where we eat the mess hall, but we do all we can to keep it very neat and clean."

Derpy laughed. "I think I'm gonna like this game!"

"Yeah." Gilda gestured to the open doors of the garrison's main entrance. "I'm sure we'll all enjoy it." She started inside, heard the clip-clop-clip-clop of hoofs beside her and the shuffle of claws and paws behind.

No turning back now...

The main corridor stretched tall, wide, square, and empty into the heart of the garrison, the passage designed to be big enough for a squadron with full packs to wing in and out quickly and in single file. The company clerk's desk sat at the end of the hall, and Gillian was just leaping to attention beside the desk, her eyes wide and her neck feathers ruffling. "Praetor?" the fourth of Gilda's junior aediles asked. "Is that a...a...a pony?"

"Aedile Gillian." Gilda gestured to Derpy. "This is Ambassador Doo. She'll need guest quarters for the duration of her stay, so let's put her in Three Sapphire." She glanced at the pony. "That's just down the hall from my rooms."

Derpy leaned forward and whispered intently, "Do ambassadors say hooray?"

Try as she might, Gilda couldn't keep from grinning. "I think that'd be OK," she whispered back.

"Then hooray!" Derpy practically exploded into the air, wings and legs flailing, the two cadets and the aedile giving little squawks of alarm. "I'm so glad you're here!" Derpy said, darting forward to wrap a huge hug around Gilda's neck. "This'd be really hard without you!" And she flopped back onto her hoofs again, her yellow mane practically glowing in the sunlight streaming through the doorway behind them.

For about five seconds, Gilda couldn't think, both parts of her arguing brain frozen at the pony's embrace. She forced herself to move, though—keep it together, catbird; there's no time to stand around like an idiot!—turned to Gillian again, and found the aedile seemingly just as frozen, her beak hanging open and every hair on her back standing up. "Aedile," she growled, and while she couldn't quite manage Godfrey's deep, resonant tones, her voice was more than enough to shock Gillian into blinking and focusing again. "Three Sapphire for Ambassador Doo," Gilda repeated.

"Right! Yes, praetor! I'll just— Of course!" Gillian hopped behind the desk, seized a quill pen, and started scrawling notes.

"Second," Gilda went on, "get the next shift of gate wardens out here on the double: Cadets Gyre and Gimble will be the ambassador's honor guard while she's with us, so they're to be removed and excused from all other duties and assignments until such time as I tell you otherwise."

"Yes, Praetor." Gillian seemed to be breathing more normally now, her notes almost legible.

"Third, all cadets currently assigned to survey duty are to report to the site. We've had a major find at the Scribes' Union Hall, and most of the professors are down there already. Fourth, I'll be needing a message sent along the relays to HQ, so have our top-rated signal cadet ready with the big mirror on the upper deck." Gilda risked a glance at Derpy. "Anything I'm forgetting?"

Derpy opened her mouth, but the sound that followed came from her midsection, a long, drawn-out rumble that Gilda almost thought she could see rippling through the air around them. "Breakfast?" Derpy asked, a pinkish blush touching her gray cheeks.

"Breakfast." Gilda gave her a nod, then brushed a salute over the floor in Gillian's direction. "Aedile."

"Praetor." Gillian tapped her claws, then gave a series of whistles that echoed ringingly from the stone walls and carried Gilda's orders to the duty cadets down the hall to the right.

With another nod, Gilda turned down the hall to the left. "This way, Ambassador," she said.

On a normal day, the mess hall stood pretty much empty at this time of the morning, the cadets already fed and in class with the aediles while the professors wouldn't yet have begun stirring. And knowing that they wouldn't be having many normal days for quite a while, Gilda was glad to pad into the long, bright room, the bay windows looking out over the valley and the Wyvern Range beyond, and see everything neatly arranged, white mountain laurels in the vases at the center of each rectangular table, cushions in their places on the stone floor. She'd never known a more serene feeling than sitting at the head table here during meals, nearly a hundred griffons quietly eating or chatting in the room around her.

Again, something that she doubted would be happening for a while...

Gilda gestured to the end of the room where she and her nine aediles had their places. "Cadets, please escort Ambassador Doo to the head table." She nodded to Derpy. "Oatmeal OK for you?"

An astonished look never seemed far from Derpy's face. "It's my favorite, Gilda! How'd you know?"

"Lucky guess." She pushed through into the kitchen and gave the 'halt action' chirp at the sight of Cookie starting to pour last night's goose schmaltz into this morning's porridge to make tonight's gravy. "Dish me out two bowls of that oatmeal first, Cookie, and dust off your vegetarian cookbook. We've got a pony visiting."

Of the two possible reactions Gilda was expecting—anger like Gloriana or wonder like Gillian—Cookie seemed to lean toward the second. "A pony, Praetor? Here? For real?"

"Yep." Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Cookie, but the way he augmented the rations HQ sent up the supply lines with locally caught and grown poultry and produce helped to keep the garrison under budget every month. "There'll be more of 'em along any day now, too."

"Never seen a pony afore," he muttered, his claws shaking as he scooped the oatmeal from pot to bowl. "All magical and like that, ain't they?"

Gilda didn't even try to stop her teeth from grinding. If getting half the griffons here not to react with outrage at the presence of ponies was going to be tough, getting the other half not to react with awe was going to be even tougher.

All right. One step at a time. "Bring the bowls out, and I'll introduce you." That was key: once her griffons met Derpy, Gilda figured, they'd see that she was neither the sort of tyrannical overlord ponies tended to be in some of the more lurid branches of popular entertainment nor a fuzzy bundle of golden sunshine, the image of ponies that the Consulate in Aquileon often seemed to embrace. Ponies were people no better or worse than any given griffon, and while learning that lesson had destroyed Gilda's view of the world, her equilibrium, and much of her life during her time in Cloudsdale, she'd come away a good deal stronger afterwards.

Or so she kept telling herself...

No. No time for doubts. She pushed the kitchen door open and gestured for Cookie to precede her. He flew out slowly, his talons more clutching the bowls than holding them, and she followed to see Derpy settled at the end of the head table. Gimble stood so rigidly at attention along the wall, Gilda thought he was trying to become part of the stonework, but Gyre was chatting with the pony: "—many business connections in Manehattan, Ambassador, so my parents often have pony guests at the estate."

Derpy nodded, her mane flouncing around her face. "I don't get out of Ponyville too much, and we've only ever had one griffon come there, I think. A real party-pooper, too, the way she called ev'rypony names when all we wanted to do was—"

"Ambassador!" Gilda interrupted, hoping that Derpy's train of thought really was as easily derailed as it seemed. "I'd like you to meet Gideon, our cook."

Cookie opened his beak, but before he could make a sound, Derpy launched into a long story about a baker friend of hers back home and the amazing things she could do with oatmeal. Watching Cookie's reaction shift over the course of the next several minutes from slack-beaked amazement to blinking confusion to his usual glassy-eyed stoicism made Gilda want to cheer, and she sucked down her luke-warm porridge with a feeling that this might work out after all. "Thanks, Cookie," she said then, cutting Derpy off in mid-sentence and reaching a claw over to tap the pony's bowl. "Better eat up, Derpy. We've still got lots to do today, and Cookie's gotta start lunch."

"Oh!" Derpy snapped her crooked gaze down to her bowl, grabbed it between her front hoofs, and rammed her snout in. Four seconds of slurping, and she straightened, her tongue darting out to catch a last splash of oatmeal dripping from her nose. "All done! And it was really good, too, Mr. Gideon! You should come to Ponyville and show my friend Pinkie—"

"Yeah, he should." Gilda nodded, and Gyre leaped forward, grabbed both their bowls, and zipped into the kitchen. "Right now, though, he's got to get to work, and so, Derpy, do you."

"Work?" Derpy's face fell. "I thought we were playing a game?"

"The work's a part of the game. Kind of." Gilda gestured to where Gyre was standing now next to Gimble. "The cadets are gonna take you down and show you your room, and then I'll need you to make a list of your favorite things to eat so the cadets can give that list to Cookie."

"Cookies?" Derpy's face rose again. "I love cookies!" She sprang to her hoofs. "I'll get started on that list right away!"

"Good." Giving Cookie the little 'dismissed' chirp, she got to her own paws and claws. "I'll come see you after I've sent the message to your Princess Twilight telling her that you and her balloon are here."

"OK!" Derpy took a step away from the table, then seemed to stagger sideways, spinning back to face Gilda. "A message? But...Ponyville's a long way away! It took me all night to get from there to here, and it woulda taken way longer if I hadn't been caught up in that big storm!" She tapped a hoof against her chest. "Believe me, Gilda: I deliver packages and mail and pianos and stuff all the time, so I know it's sometimes not easy to get them from someplace to someplace else. You griffons don't have unicorns to send messages by magic, either, so..." Derpy blinked. "How're you gonna tell Ponyville I'm here?"

Her own divided head and heart smacked her back and forth again for half an indrawn breath: show Derpy the com system to get the sweet rush of her approval, or show it to her just to rub her face in the way that griffons had figured out how to handle the world without resorting to the sort of magic that made the air twitch whenever a pony so much as moved through it.

But no. What Gilda needed more than anything at this point was to get away from the smell of this damn pony and get her brain back on track. "You just let me worry about that message, Derpy," she said, digging up a smile and shoving it into place across her beak. "You go with the cadets, and I'll be down to see you real soon."

Derpy cocked her head. "If you're sure, Gilda."

"I am." She flicked her talons toward the door to stop them from curling into a fist. "You're an ambassador and our guest, remember? You get to take it easy."

"Hooray!" Derpy shouted again, and Gilda flinched, half-hoping and half-afraid that the pegasus might hug her again. Instead, though, she hopped to her hoofs and started trotting toward the door.

"Gyre? Gimble?" Gilda pitched her voice low and straight at the two cadets. "Keep your heads, and keep her in her room."

Both cadets saluted, Gyre turning the motion into a leap that brought her quite smartly to Derpy's side. "Let me show you the way, Ambassador."

Gimble gave Gilda a look that made her think of someone working on a really hard math problem, but he quickly followed, the three of them padding out of the mess hall together. Gilda blew out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, pushed away from the table, and started out into the hallway herself. Equestria's newest ambassador and her honor guard would be heading to the east wing of the garrison—officers' quarters—but Gilda had an appointment on the roof.

Turning left, she ducked down a side passage, the only light provided by the firefly lanterns set into the walls every few yards. An alcove near the end of the hall held a set of stairs that wound upward, and Gilda took them at a scramble, her wingtips brushing the wall to keep her focused on the here and now. She needed to phrase this message exactly right, or she'd have nutjobs of every feather and stripe crowding up here.

That she'd get an imperator or two from further along the chain of command was a foregone conclusion—news that a pony had not just knocked down a wall in Catlatl but had also uncovered proof that ponies had apparently been in contact with griffon society from the first moment of its hatching, that was just too politically volatile not to draw attention. But if she phrased it dryly enough, made it sound dusty and dull—maybe not mention what the mosaic showed—that might limit the impact and keep anyone from Grand Imperator Gustavus's staff from noticing. The less that hack and any of his cronies got involved in things, she'd learned over the past few years, the better those things turned out for everyone involved...

She reached the top of the spiraling stairway then, shoved the door open, and slid out onto the signal platform, a large, circular stone area set at the very pinnacle of Mt. Chimalli. A burly male cadet leaned against the railing, his front claws balancing one of the garrison's two big mirrors on edge. He straightened to attention with a hind paw salute—the only sort of salute allowable under the circumstances—and Gilda started right in: "Message to Consulate Headquarters from Catlatl Garrison. Pony Ambassador Derpy Doo, assigned to the court of Princess Twilight Sparkle, arrived on the winds of last night's storm with the princess's hot air balloon. The ambassador is well and the balloon seems unpunctured. Repeat that, cadet."

He did word for word, and Gilda nodded. "Last night's storm also uncovered a previously unknown piece of mosaic artwork when part of a wall collapsed." Swallowing, she focused on the ruins laid out on the valley floor below. "Scientists on site are currently investigating and—"

"Praetor!" The alarm in the cadet's voice snapped Gilda's head up and over. "To the south-east!" Discarding all protocol for handling one of the big signal mirrors, the cadet removed one shaking claw from the silvered glass and crooked it in that direction. "Something—!

Spinning, staring into the mid-morning blue, Gilda just had time to register what seemed to be a solid mass of swirling color streaking directly toward her. "Look out!" a scratchy and all too familiar voice shouted, and every hair and feather on Gilda's body crackled at the stroke of pony magic, the air around her puffing up into something as soft and pliable as a cushion. She got one glimpse of outstretched blue hoofs and wide-open purple eyes before the pony slammed into her, the magic in the air keeping the impact from being bone-shattering, but it still knocked Gilda back, her forelegs tangling with the pony's and tumbling them both across the signal platform.

Several sounds jabbed Gilda's ears: a shouted squawk from the cadet; a tiny tinkle like the smallest possible bell being dropped; and an explosive shattering of glass that made Gilda's blood freeze. Then she was slamming up against stone, wind swirling like a tornado around her for less than an instant, and silence fell as heavily as an avalanche.

Gilda let herself take a breath, her brain screaming with what she knew had happened; then she opened her eyes with a prayer to the Cat Mother and Eagle Father that she might be wrong.

Several dozen scattered flashes of light hit her first, the shards of the mirror spread over the floor of the signal platform. Damn. Second, she craned her head around till she saw the cadet sitting up a few yards away, his face a grimace of pain, his right talons clutching his left talons to his chest.

Double damn. "Report, Cadet!" she barked at him.

"Just a sprain, I think, Praetor," he said through clenched teeth, but Gilda was staring at the little spots of red starting to seep across his white feathers.

"Infirmary," she said. "Now."

He went to salute with his front claws, winced, and scratched it across the stonework with his back claws instead. Spreading his wings—a quick glance told Gilda they hadn't been injured—he rose over the railing and descended toward the nearest entrance to the garrison.

Only then did Gilda glance down at the weight sprawled across her stomach, at the blue pegasus with that rainbow mane all askew and those big purple eyes blinking. "G?" the pony asked in a whisper.

"Dash." Gilda couldn't keep the growl out of her voice. "You gonna let me up, or we gonna lay here sunbathing all day?"

Rainbow Dash leaped into the air, one front hoof pointing to herself, the other waving behind her. "I was— I mean, I didn't know— I mean, a friend of mine, we think she got caught in a storm last night! I was following the wind traces, and they must've been, like, totally hurricane force! So I maybe got a little caught up in, y'know, surfing them, and maybe wasn't exactly looking where I was—"

"Derpy's fine." Gilda got slowly to her paws and claws and wished everything everywhere wasn't shaking so much. "She's downstairs if you wanna see her."

"Really?" The smile that burst over Dash's muzzle made Gilda wince. "Hey, G, that's great! Lemme just—!" She reached for her chest, fumbled a hoof there for a second, then looked down, her smile vanishing. "Hey! Where'd it go?"

Gilda's feathers began prickling again, the air around her suddenly sharpening. "Go?" she repeated.

"I had this necklace." Dash put both her front hoofs to the back of her neck and fumbled in the mess of her mane. "Twilight gave it to me so we could keep in contact, but I guess I maybe dropped it when I ran into you." Dash looked around, her brow wrinkling. "What goes on here, anyway?"

The air had gotten so sharp now, magic filling it like the scent of molten steel, that Gilda found herself gasping for breath. "Dash?" She managed to raise a claw and point to a little pile of blue powder among the shards of the broken signal mirror.

Dash swiveled her head, and her face fell. "Uh-oh."

Exactly what happened then, Gilda had no idea. But the air tore like a bolt of lightning had struck even though it didn't make a sound or any sort of light. The empty space in front of Gilda just ripped open, and out of that rip charged colors brighter than any she'd seen since returning to griffon territory: purples and pinks, oranges and yellows so vivid, Gilda wanted both to squeeze her eyes shut against the onslaught and open them wider than she'd ever opened them before.

"Rainbow!" a voice shouted, high-pitched but resounding with a magic that Gilda was sure she could taste. "I felt the amulet get smashed! Are you all right? What happened?"

"I'm fine, Twilight." Dash still sounded exactly the same when she was annoyed, some part of Gilda noted. "It was an accident." She still had the same sandpapery laugh, too. "I just ran into an old friend."

The flood of sensation froze, and Gilda was sure her heart froze with it. Then it all whisked away, letting her see and move and think more or less normally again. Not that she wanted to: six figures had appeared on the signal platform, a purple pony front and center, her wings and horn marking her out from the others. To her left, an orange earth pony with a battered brown hat stood glaring, and to her right, the pudgy little purple dragon Gilda had seen wandering around Ponyville during her one and only visit. The other three behind them—another earth pony, a pegasus, and a unicorn—were also familiar from that awful afternoon, and Gilda realized that the moment she'd hoped would be days away had dumped itself fully-formed over her right here and now.

Absolutely certain that no protocols existed for this situation, Gilda forced herself to step forward, nodded what she hoped was an appropriate bow, and said, "Princess Twilight? Welcome to the Catlatl Garrison."

3 - Arranger

"Thank you," Princess Twilight said, but the expression on her face made Gilda pretty sure she actually wanted to say: What in the wide, wide world of Equestria is going on here?

Gilda opened her beak to start explaining, but—

"Oh, my gosh, guys!" Pinkie Pie shrieked, hopping up and down behind the earth pony with the hat, one of several in the group whose name Gilda didn't know. "It's Gilda! Look! Look!" She flailed a front hoof. "Right there! Gilda!" Pinkie stopped, hanging impossibly in the suddenly thick-as-soup air. "Hey! Are we still mad at her?"

The silence then seemed really loud, Gilda not sure if she was still breathing. "I dunno, Pinkie," Dash said from somewhere off to Gilda's right. Gilda managed to swivel her head in that direction, and Dash was looking at her, those purple eyes half-closed. "Are we?"

As much as a part of her wanted to rear back and roar, it was a small and easily ignored part. And for all that she'd known since sunup that this moment was rushing toward her like a storm front, Gilda still had to take a breath and dredge the words up from what felt like the very tips of her talons: "I hope it'll make a difference, Dash, Princess, Pinkie Pie, the rest of you who I don't think I really met, when I say that I'm sorry for the way I behaved when I was in Ponyville three years ago. No excuses: I was a jerk, and I apologize." Now for the real hard part. "So, if you'll all please come this way, Derpy is—"

"Whoo-hoo!" Everything in front of Gilda flashed pink, and at least three legs wrapped themselves around her neck. "Ev'rypony's friends again! Even the ones who aren't ponies!" Another flash, and Gilda found herself blinking at a strawberry bramble of a tail, Pinkie Pie leaning over the signal platform's railing till she was more hanging from the stonework by her hocks than anything else. "Whoa! Guys! Check out how high up we are!"

A nudge at Gilda's shoulder. "Thanks, G," Dash said, then she was swooping past, hooking her hoofs around Pinkie Pie's knees, and hauling the pouting pony back onto all fours. "Try to remember, Pinks: you can't fly."

"Wait." The princess's wings fluffed out a bit, and she jumped over to the railing herself. "Is that the Wyvern Range? Are we—?" She turned a wide-eyed stare at Gilda. "Are we in griffon territory?"

Gilda found another smile she didn't quite feel and let it spread across her beak. "Yes to both questions, Your Highness. Now, if you'll—"

"Please, Gilda." And the princess's smile was so real, it even curled her eyes into little crescents. "Call me Twilight."

"Griffon territory?" The orange earth pony had trotted over, suspicion on her face. "How the hay did Derpy get all the way into griffon territory?"

"Oh, now, really, Applejack." The unicorn in the group sauntered up, the dragon and the other pegasus sticking to her like a couple of shadows. "Surely after all these years, you must know that where our dear postmare is concerned, words like 'how' and 'why' lose all meaning."

That squeezed a choking laugh out of Gilda. "I've only known her a couple hours, and I've already seen that."

The slender pegasus behind the unicorn flinched nearly all the way to the platform's stone floor, the dragon glaring at Gilda. A salty stink of fear washed over her nostrils then, and an image popped out of Gilda's memories: that same stink from a pegasus who'd been leading some ducks through Ponyville's town square after Gilda had roared at her...

"But if those are the Wyverns—" The princess—or rather Twilight; whatever the pony wanted to be called was fine with Gilda—Twilight was hanging over the railing now, but with those wings, Gilda didn't feel quite so nervous at the sight. "Then that's the ancient city of Catlatl down there!" Twilight practically shouted.

"Catlatl?" Dash's eyes lit up. "Like in Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet?"

A twitch pulled the side of Gilda's face at the mention of that damn book—it was like the author had kept a checklist of every griffon stereotype she could find so she'd be sure not to miss a single one—but Dash was already sliding up beside Twilight. "Awesome!" And as quickly as that, Dash had pushed herself over the edge, her voice echoing as she dropped out of sight: "Last one there's a meadow muffin!"

"Dash!" Gilda shouted; she rushed to the rail and spread her wings, ready to leap off and try to catch the only person, pony or griffon, who'd ever beaten her in flat-out speed flying, her mind reeling at the thought of all the international incidents that were about to burst into full and boiling fury—

But Twilight was shouting, too. "Rainbow!" Light wavered around her horn, and a purple bubble suddenly bloated through the air above them with Dash inside, flying straight into the wall of the thing and bouncing back like she'd hit a trampoline.

"Hey!" Dash's voice came out slightly muffled. She jabbed a hoof at the stretchy membrane, her wings vibrating, then turned a scowl toward the princess. "What gives, Twilight??"

"Remember in the book?" Twilight asked, Gilda still fighting down the adrenaline surging through her system. "Nopony had ever visited Catlatl before, right? And the griffons were kind of concerned about keeping it that way?" The glance Twilight gave Gilda then was more than a little shaky. "That's pretty much the only thing the book gets right, really."

Catching her breath, Gilda sent a quick prayer of thanks to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father: this pony princess might actually have half a brain in her head. "Also?" Twilight was addressing her whole group. "Now that I think about it, us even being here violates at least four provisions of our treaty with the griffons." She gave a tight grin over her shoulder. "So maybe we should collect our mailmare and be on our way."

And as much as Gilda wanted to nod, flap downstairs, grab Derpy, toss her at them, and wave the whole herd out of her life once and for all— "Your mailmare and your balloon, actually," she forced through gritted teeth.

Twilight just blinked, but a groan from above drew Gilda's attention back to Dash, slumping inside her bubble. "Don't tell me," Dash said.

Gilda gave a shrug. "I wish I didn't have to."

"My balloon?" Twilight was looking back and forth between Gilda and Dash; then her mouth went sideways, the glow disappeared from around her horn, and Dash's bubble popped with a tiny crystalline chime. "What about my balloon?"

Again, Gilda opened her mouth, but this time it was Dash who interrupted her: "We were gonna surprise you with it at the party, but with the crocodahlias and that storm that blew in from the Everfree and everything..." Dash's wings had flared when the bubble vanished, and she drifted to the stonework like so many autumn leaves. "I kinda got distracted."

The pony with the hat cocked her head at Gilda, her bumpkin accent not matching the sharp look in her eyes at all. "So lemme get this straight: some storm or other blew Twi's balloon with Derpy attached all the way 'cross a quarter of the world? That what'cher telling us?"

Once more, the urge to flick her talons and ignore the real problem almost overwhelmed Gilda. But— "I really wish that was all I was telling you," she said.

***

"Hooray!" Derpy shouted for maybe the thirtieth time in the ten or fifteen minutes since Gilda had led the princess's party down the stairway, past a goggle-eyed Gillian and into the garrison's east wing. Gimble, standing outside the door to Three Sapphires, had gone as pale as any griffon she'd ever seen, but he'd still saluted smartly and opened the door to show them into the sitting room, Gyre and Derpy chatting away at a desk by the big picture window that filled the far wall. Their entrance had gotten the first "Hooray!" but the exclamation came over and over again once they'd pulled a bunch of cushions into a circle to get everyone up to speed.

Gilda had told the ponies everything about the damage to the site and the discovery of the hidden mosaic, but she'd learned quite a lot, too: that Derpy had a young daughter named Dinky, for one. "Oh, yes," Derpy had said, nodding at Pinkie's report of Dinky staying with the family who ran Ponyville's bakery. "My little muffin knows that, whenever Mommy disappears, she's to go straight to Sugarcube Corner till Mommy comes back."

She'd also learned the names of those who'd accompanied Princess Twilight—Fluttershy, Gilda noticed, still hadn't darted more than a glance in her direction, and Spike, his glare never quite vanishing, had managed to keep himself between the two of them the entire time. But more than those things, Gilda had learned that this Twilight Sparkle really did have a brain. "However you want to handle this, Gilda," Twilight was saying. "It'd be easy enough for me to pop us all back to Ponyville and put the request for the return of my balloon through proper diplomatic channels if you think that'd be best."

The gleam in her eye, though, told Gilda something else entirely. "But you'd like to see the mosaic, wouldn't you, Twilight?"

"I really, really would." Her wings gave a tiny flutter, her voice fluttering more than a little. "I mean, evidence that one of the unicorn kings actually met with Nine Jaguars? It's the greatest archeological discovery of the past twenty or thirty years, and my balloon's sitting right on top of it!" Twilight took a breath, touched a hoof to her chest, and moved it away while exhaling. "But I know how delicate this issue is going to be, so maybe it'd be best if—"

"No." And even knowing the thousand feline Hells she was about to throw herself into— "See, every griffon in the Guardian Corps takes an oath to uphold the Consulate and all that, but us praetors of the Catlatl Garrison, we've got a second oath that talks about our duty to griffondom's ancestral city and everything it stands for." Gilda's throat tried to close, but she forced herself to say out loud—to ponies, for the love of fur and feathers!—things that she usually only thought about while lying awake in the pre-dawn darkness before reveille. "It's a duty to the wind and the stones and the truth of what it means to be a griffon in a world where ponies control the sun and the moon and all the forces of nature."

She realized she was looking at the floor, and when she raised her head, they were all staring at her—even Fluttershy—their eyes wide in confusion. A ghost of a pain twitched her chest, a memory of the heartbroken shards that had gouged into her three years ago when she'd stared at the ponies laughing around her in that podunk bakery and realized once and for all that none of them had any idea what they really were, that most of them would loudly deny it if any non-pony had ever tried telling them what they really were....

But that was a wound long ago scabbed over. "A duty to the truth," she said again. "Because every griffon is taught from hatching that we first met you ponies three hundred years after Catlatl's founding just as the winters here were getting harsher and longer. You were migrating on to a completely different part of the world, and your magic was no good for stopping the snow from falling since it was your magic that was drawing the windigoes down on us in the first place."

"You mean—" Spike, his eyes wide, touched his claws to his chest. "The first part of the Hearth's Warming story happened here?"

Gilda shrugged. "I wondered that whenever I saw the play in Cloudsdale. But all we've ever known was that after the ponies left, ice storms buried ancient Catlatl, and it took ten generations for the remnants of griffon civilization to claw out a new nation in the monster-infested forests and plains to the south." The Great Abandonment griffon historians called it—when they weren't calling it The Great Betrayal—but Gilda didn't think it'd be a good idea to use either of those terms in front of a pony princess. She cleared her throat again. "But now it looks like ponies were here at the founding of Catlatl, not just at its fall, and I—" A shiver made her tail snap to the side. "My duty's to find the truth."

Twilight was nodding. "Just tell us how we can help," she said.

Gilda stood, made herself focus on the here and now. "First of all, I'll apologize again since we don't have rooms for you all." She waved a foreclaw at the door. "We don't get a lotta fancy visitors up this way, so there's pretty much this room for military brass and the one across the hall for any political bigwigs who stop by."

Applejack gave a quiet chuckle. "Some of us ain't got wigs all that big, truth be told. Gimme a bedroll, and I reckon I can flop down right here good enough."

"Yeah!" Dash had that infectious grin on her snout. "Me and Pinks in here with AJ and Derpy, then Twilight can take the bigwig room with Spike, Rare, and Shy!" She brushed her front hoofs together. "Next problem!"

A twinge ruffled Gilda's feathers. "Next would be the broken signal mirror and my injured cadet." A cadet whose condition she hadn't even been down to check on yet...

"Injured?" Fluttershy asked in a voice maybe two steps above a whisper, her ears folding.

Dash's ears folded, too. "Oh. Yeah. That was me, right?" She gave the others a sheepish grin. "I kinda crashed into Gilda and this kid up on the roof; that's when I broke their big mirror and that necklace of yours, Twi."

Twilight's mouth went sideways, and she stood. "Then might you show us to your infirmary, Gilda?"

With part of her wanting to hide the ponies away while another part wanted to parade them around, Gilda tried to tell them they didn't need to bother, but Dash spoke up with a grin: "C'mon, G. We can start making up for some of the damage we're about to start causing around here."

Then Fluttershy rose, her knees shaking and her scent sour with fear. "Please," she said, her voice very nearly audible.

So Gilda led the whole bunch of them down the back stairs to the garrison's cadet level and into the infirmary. Plenty of morning light streamed in from the open door of the receiving balcony at the far end of the long, narrow room, and the cadet sat wincing on a pallet there as Dr. Gordon, a magnifying glass in one front talon and a pair of tweezers in the other, plucked a sliver of glass from the cadet's chest feathers and dropped it onto a tray where a few others already lay. "Doc." Gilda padded toward him past the empty beds. "Report."

Not looking up, Doc puffed through his nostrils. "Might be done by lunchtime, Praetor."

"Actually?" Rarity stepped forward, a grayish sort of glow stirring the air around her horn. "I'm sensing silica glass and quicksilver, and while neither of those are quite considered gems—" The glow swept across the white-tiled room and brushed through the cadet's plumage, a tiny shower of specks and shards raining out. "I might be able to have some slight effect on them," the unicorn finished, her glow catching the fragments and dropping them with a rustling clatter into Doc's tray.

"What the—??" Doc had leaped back as soon as the shimmering had started, and when he snapped around, it looked to Gilda like his whole head was puffing up, his crest feathers rising in outrage. "Praetor! What's the meaning of this??"

Gilda stepped forward. "Princess Twilight, this is Catlatl Garrison's medical officer, Dr. Gordon. Doc, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle and her associates. They're likely to be staying with us a couple days." She nodded to the cadet, his eyes still wide and focused on his chest. "Gonna need the fledge there up and active, Doc, if he's not hurt too bad."

"Ponies??" Doc more sputtered than said. "Here?? Are you mad, Praetor?? It's not—! It hasn't—! There's never been—!"

"Doctor!" Gilda snapped, and while she didn't want to jump over, grab him by the scruff, and start shaking him, that was her next planned move if he didn't pull himself together. She knew he was military through and through, though, and her bark was enough to make him stiffen to attention and clench his beak shut. "This fledge," she said, keeping the edge in her voice. "Is he fit to return to duty?"

Gordon gave a softer snort and turned to the cadet. "Gutierrez? Anything jab you when you breathe?"

It took a little effort for Gilda to hide her surprise—she'd been certain that Cadet Gutierrez was one of the skinnier recruits in the current junior class, but then she'd always been terrible with names... Still, the cadet's chest rose and fell, and he shook his head. "Feeling fine, sir," he said.

Movement at the edge of her vision, and Gilda turned to see Fluttershy moving up beside Rarity. "I can mix you up a lovely, soothing, antiseptic shampoo to help with your cuts if you'd like."

Doc spun to glare at her, and she recoiled as if he'd slapped her. "I mean, I could if I were home." She lowered her head, her pink mane cascading over her face like a waterfall. "Which I'm not, so I...I...I'm sorry..."

"Doctor," Gilda growled.

He sliced a wing through the air. "My opinion of this cadet's health, Praetor, is that he can return to duties that don't strain his sprained foreclaws." His eyes narrowed. "I have many other opinions as well, Gilda, opinions which I will happily share with all and sundry if these damn ponies don't get their filthy hoofs out of my sickbay."

"Oh, yeah??" Dash shouted, and a glance back told Gilda all she needed to know: Dash hovering with her teeth bared; Rarity and Spike each glaring in their own different ways; Applejack with her front hoofs spread and planted like she was able to charge; Twilight's frown just visible enough to remind Gilda that this was one of the four most powerful beings on the planet standing here.

"Yeah, thanks, Doc," Gilda said, turning back with a completely phony smile. "I'm sure our distinguished guests will be equally happy to share some of their own opinions with you during the formal reception after mess tonight. Till then—" She whistled a 'ten-hut.' "On your paws and claws, Cadet. We need the second big mirror out of storage and up on the roof."

"No need, Gilda," Twilight said, and the temperature in the room jumped a couple of degrees, a cloud of sparkling purple forming in the air to Gilda's left. Or rather, what was inside the cloud sparkled: a mass of mirror shards ranging in size from toothpick to hind paw. "We broke this one, so we'll put it back together."

"Ooo!" The squeal made Gilda snap her head around to where Pinkie Pie lay sprawled, a model of a griffon built entirely of tongue depressors on the floor in front of her. She sprang up and frantically waved a hoof. "Pick me! Pick me! I love jigsaw puzzles!"

Magic flooded the room, Gilda once again not sure if she was still breathing, and Pinkie began pointing at various chunks of mirror: "That one goes with that one, then they both go up underneath that one, and if you turn the whole thing— No, the other way. Yeah! Like that! Then that one and that one snap onto the ends!" Hopping over to Doc's tray, she poked through the tiny bits, asked Rarity to slide one or the other of them into place, and in less than five minutes, the completed mirror, its surface spiderwebbed with tiny cracks, hovered in Twilight's purple cloud. Pinkie nodded, turned to stick her tongue out at the still-glowering Gordon, then trotted back to her griffon sculpture.

"Now," Twilight said, Gilda unable to look away from the miracle that had just happened in front of her. "A little fire, please, Spike."

"You got it." The little dragon strode into Gilda's field of vision, the mirror and its surrounding cloud drifting down till they nearly touched the floor; Spike leaned forward, took a breath, and blew out tendrils of fire, green and crackling, curling up and over the surface of the mirror like vines. Where they stroked, the silver seemed to flow, and in half a dozen heartbeats, the most perfect signal mirror Gilda had ever seen settled to rest against the infirmary wall, the whole room suddenly brighter when the purple cloud whisked away.

"There," Twilight said somewhere behind Gilda. "And let me apologize for the inconvenience."

Turning was about the hardest thing Gilda had done in years, one part of her brain wanting to cheer, another part wanting to shriek. Again, though, neither response was an option, not with both Gordon and Gutierrez staring at her, so she nodded, forced her voice to remain steady: "Thank you, Princess. Those things're expensive to replace." She glanced over her shoulder at the two slack-beaked griffons. "Cadet?"

Gutierrez started like she'd woken him; then he jumped to attention. "Yes, Praetor!"

She nodded to the bandage around the base of his right front talons. "That gonna keep you from working the mirror?"

Raising it, he flexed it with a wince, but he set it firmly enough on the tile floor. "No, Praetor!"

Gilda narrowed her eyes, but, well, signaling involved a griffon's whole body, the mirror clenched against the chest and stomach by fore and rear legs while the signaler flapped and spun and flashed sunlight in the specific patterns that sent the message to the next station along the line. So a sprained wrist shouldn't be too bothersome. "All right," she said. "Cancel previous message."

He gave the 'acknowledged' chirp.

"Message to Consulate Headquarters from Catlatl Garrison." No matter how she phrased this, the news of a pony princess in Catlatl was going to set fire to every signal house between here and Aquileon, so— "Equestrian Princess Twilight Sparkle and her closest associates have arrived at Catlatl Garrison on a mission to retrieve the princess's errant balloon, blown onto the site by last night's storm. The storm has also uncovered a previously unknown mosaic; scientists are on the site examining it. Repeat that, cadet."

With another chirp, he did, and Gilda nodded. "Send it, and wait around the platform for a reply."

Gutierrez tapped a salute against the floor, spread his wings, hefted the mirror, and swooped for the open door, the sunlight striking the mirror sharply enough to make Gilda wince. Still, on to step two. She turned to the ponies and said, "Princess? Perhaps you'd like to go down to the site and inspect your balloon."

Twilight opened her mouth and closed it, her eyes shifting sideways. "Yes, thank you, Praetor," she said then. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"Not at all." Gilda chirped to summon Gyre and Gimble from the hallway. "Cadets, kindly escort our guests upstairs to the front gate. I'll join you all shortly."

Gimble still looked extremely concerned, but Gyre gave a broad grin and gestured to the door. "This way, please."

Gilda kept her own smile in place till the last of the ponies had filed out, Gimble pulling the door closed behind them all. She let the smile crumble, then, and turned slowly to Doc. "There anything you'd like to say to me, Dr. Gordon?"

"Not at all, to coin a phrase." If his neck muscles had been clenched any tighter, Gilda figured, his head would've popped right off. "I can't begin to tell you how overjoyed I'll be to see those candy-colored monstrosities galloping around the streets of Catlatl after their ancestors destroyed the city without so much as a single thought."

It took Gilda a couple of breaths to push aside both the part of her that wanted to shout in agreement and the part that wanted to shout in opposition. "First thing, Doc? I'm gonna ask you as a personal favor to keep as much of that talk tucked in your feathers as you can. We're about to have politicians and imperators fall on us like flies on pellets, so for the sake of the garrison, just try to maintain, OK?"

Maybe she imagined it, but Gilda thought his glare lost a bit of its cutting edge. "And the second thing, Praetor?"

She waved a claw toward the landing bay. "The mosaic I mentioned? Godfrey says it dates back to Nine Jaguars and the founding of the city." She stepped closer to him and lowered her voice. "It shows ponies, Doc, the king of Unicornia and his court. They were here fifteen hundred years ago, and not one surviving document from the period even hints at it." She realized her focus was narrowing like it did when she took a turn on the hunting parties, snatching up various rodents for Cookie's menu. "Someone over a thousand years ago decided to hide this info and lie to the entirety of griffondom." She swallowed, forced her shoulders to relax. "I don't like being lied to, Doc. I don't like it at all."

Doc's eyes had been getting wider and wider, his beak gaping open. "Ponies?" he muttered. "Here? Back then?"

Stepping away, Gilda gave herself a quick preening, got most of her ruffled feathers to smooth. "When you can take a break, head down to the site. It's at the Scribes' Union Hall."

She made for the door into the garrison then, practically flew up the stairwell and down the east hall, only settling to the floor when she heard Gyre's voice echoing ahead: "—under constant renovation, of course, but the garrison prides itself on keeping the best of the old while incorporating the best of the new."

A breath to make sure she wasn't glowering like a thunderhead, and Gilda padded around the corner, saw the princess and her party gathered around the company clerk's desk, Gillian staring at them with an absolute galaxy of stars in her eyes. "OK!" Gilda said, aiming a quick 'well done' chirp in the cadet's direction. "By my count, we've got four in the party who'll need an escort down to the site, so lemme call a few of our burlier cadets up here, and we'll—"

Twilight's chuckle interrupted her. "That's all right, Gilda. I'll give Spike a lift down on my back, and Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie—" A little purple bubble appeared at the tip of her horn. "I should be able to float them down in one of these just fine!"

Applejack made a little clicking noise with the corner of her mouth. "See, now, it's that word 'should' in there that gets a earth pony's blood pumping just a mite."

"Oh, you." Twilight poked Applejack in the shoulder with a front hoof. "I haven't lost a passenger yet, have I?"

Spike gave a snort. "Or you could listen to your assistant and teleport us down there. I mean, we know you can do that..."

"Spike!" The edge in Twilight's voice surprised Gilda almost as much as the blush that darkened the princess's cheeks as she turned. "I'd like to apologize, actually, Gilda, for being so ostentatious down in the infirmary. I...I've read about the resentment some griffons hold toward us ponies because of our magic, and the last thing I want to do is cause any sort of incident between our peoples."

"Huh." Gilda couldn't help grinning. "So you thought that drifting down to griffondom's most revered site in a giant glowing bubble of magic would be the least—what was the word?—ostentatious way to do it?"

"I—" Twilight blinked several times. "But teleportation is a much more complicated spell! The displacement and realignment of the air molecules alone is—!"

"Twi?" Dash was leaning against the wall of the main hallway, Derpy and Pinkie Pie beside her playing some game involving a little spinning top and some colorful wooden markers that Gilda vaguely remembered from her days in Cloudsdale. "As much as I really wanna stuff AJ into a big purple ball, drag her off that cliff out there, and bounce her all the way down to the valley floor—"

"Hey!" from the earth pony.

Dash flicked a hoof at her. "If we're trying to keep things a little low-key, a flash of light and a little sparkly noise might be a better way to go."

Gilda had to blink at Dash. "When did you get so practical-minded?"

That got one of Dash's clipped laughs, and she made a show of glancing around the entrance hall. "'Bout the same time you did, I'm thinking." She looked at Twilight then and did that thing ponies did sometimes with their fleshy beak parts—lips, Gilda remembered they called them—pushing them out and kind of flexing them like a fish's. "Besides, if Twi's gonna stop me from busting down with wings flaring all over Catlatl, well, I figure I getta stop her from doing it, too."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Fine. We'll teleport."

Applejack's relieved puff of breath ruffled Gilda's feathers from all the way across the hall, and Spike folded his arms, his scent tangy with self-satisfaction.

"But," Twilight went on, "I'll need to see where we're going first."

"Sure thing." Gilda leaned toward Gillian. "Gillian, we're likely to have visitors from higher up the chain of command before the end of the day. Shifting me outta my quarters and having you aediles double up will give us four rooms to put 'em in." She scratched a salute at the floor, heard Gillian's 'acknowledged' chirp, and waved her wings at the main doors. "Princess, if you'll follow Cadet Gyre, I'll show you the spot."

Gyre chirped and fell in to lead the procession down the hallway, the other ponies and the dragon following her. But when Derpy jumped up from along the wall, her forehead wrinkled and she called out, "Gilda? Are we still playing the ambassador game? Or have we changed to a different game now that Twilight and everypony's here?"

Twilight's ears perked, and she looked back over her shoulder. "Ambassador?"

Gilda opened her mouth to explain, but as she was half-expecting at this point, she was interrupted. "Oh, yeah!" Derpy rose into the air, her front legs tucked against her chest and her eyes curled shut. "Gilda said I was your ambassador and that I was supposed to learn about the griffons here and teach them about us ponies! It was a lot of fun!" Her eyes opened to show her lop-sided gaze, and her wings slowed. "But now that you're here, you'd prob'bly be better at it than me. Or Rarity would be. Or Applejack. Or, y'know, pretty much anypony else..." Sighing, she settled to the floor.

"Derpy?" The warmth of Twilight's smile made the angry part of Gilda's mind shrink almost to nothing, the princess stepping over to touch her horn to Derpy's forehead. "I can't think of a single pony anywhere in Equestria better suited to that job than you, and I'm honored to have you as my ambassador to the griffons."

"Hooray!" Derpy seemed to flash around the whole corridor at once, Gilda feeling herself being hugged at the same time, she was sure, as she was watching Derpy hug Twilight. "Then let's go have some more fun, everypony!"

Laughing, the ponies all started forward again, Gilda recovering more quickly than before and hurrying to catch up with the group just as they trooped out into the morning sunlight on the main landing terrace. Two more cadets, she was glad to see, had taken over in front of the big doors, and the way they stood at attention even while seven ponies and a dragon giggled and sashayed past them made Gilda feel steadier herself. "OK!" she called, spreading her wings and flapping over the group to the edge of the platform. "Those of you without wings, I'll point out that we've got no railing here and that the winds can get a little gusty sometimes."

"No problem, G." Dash's wings puffed out, and Gilda felt pony magic combing over her, spreading into the air, soothing it like a scratch behind the ears might soothe a kitten. "I got it covered."

Swallowing, Gilda nodded, Twilight moving up beside her and muttering, "Wow..."

And for the second time today, Gilda found herself looking at a familiar scene with new eyes, the ruins of Catlatl stretching out across the valley floor below her. The sun had risen far enough by now over the peaks of the Wyvern Range to make the few remaining patches of white fascia stone on the palace walls glow, the crumbled buildings radiating out in a pattern of light and shadow all the way down to the river. "Ancient Catlatl," Twilight whispered. "I never dreamed I'd actually see it."

"Oooo..." Pinkie was crouched to Gilda's left and peering over the edge. "There's gotta be buried treasure down there. I mean, look at it!"

Gilda shrugged. "If there is, we haven't found it."

Pinkie grinned at her. "That's not a 'no.'"

Dash had a similar grin on her snout, but Gilda forced herself to look away—she'd almost forgotten the sweet smell of wild possibility that filled the air when ponies were around, fresher than the scent of free-flowing water and more bracing than the best grain alcohol from Doc's little distillery. "The Scribes' Union Hall," she made herself say, focusing back to the matter at claw. "D'you see the palace wall there, Twilight, and the fourth gate along from the left?"

"I do," came the reply.

"That's the Scribes' Gate, and if you follow the street that leads straight south from there, you'll see—"

"My balloon!" Twilight actually jumped into a hover, one front hoof pointing to a blotch of purple among the brownish-yellow.

"Exactly." Gilda shifted her own talon. "A block east of there, there's an open courtyard, see? Will that be big enough a landing space or whatever you need for—"

The whole world around Gilda just sort of shifted, the panorama melting quicker than any ice and swirling into a view of the collapsed stonework around the little courtyard she'd just been pointing to. "Oh, yes," she heard Twilight say. "This'll be fine."

Unable to quite catch her breath, Gilda gripped the weathered cobbles with her paws and claws, a throat clearing behind her. "Perhaps, Twilight," Rarity said, "you might breathe a word of warning next time?"

"Huh? Oh!" Twilight rushed into Gilda's field of vision, the movement almost making Gilda's stomach turn over. "I'm so sorry, Gilda! I just— I wasn't—" She stopped and took a breath. "I'll make sure to let you know next time. But—" She spun, threatening to take Gilda's stomach with her again. "This is Catlatl! It's older than anything back home! Older than the princesses even! And we're the first ponies in modern times to set hoof here!" She gave a couple little bounces. "It's just so wonderful!"

Her enthusiasm made Gilda feel better somehow, and she mustered a smile. "It is." Forcing her paws and claws to move, she gave the chirp for 'bring up the rear,' heard Gyre respond, and started down the street. "How 'bout we go see what the professors've dug up so far?"

4 - Delver

The clickety-clatter of pony hoofs rattled from the stone walls of the narrow side street, and Gilda couldn't stop her ears from twitching, the sound so completely unlike the usual shuffle of griffon claws and paws. Not that she would be hearing it for much longer, she knew: the shrieking of the professors would easily drown out everything else once she and her guests rounded the corner up ahead.

For their parts, the ponies seemed more subdued than she thought she'd ever seen ponies. Even when Pinkie Pie came out with her inevitable comment—"They really oughtta hire more janitors around here"—she whispered it instead of shouting it. Twilight craned her head around as if she was trying to look everywhere at once, the biggest grin on her snout, and glancing back, Gilda saw expressions ranging from thoughtful to wary spread out over the rest of the group.

Were they actually having more or less appropriate reactions? Maybe this wouldn't be such a disaster after all.

"Umm, Gilda?" Derpy's thick voice said into her ear, and Gilda couldn't stop herself from jumping, the wall-eyed pegasus suddenly right beside her. "D'you think the professors are gonna be less grouchy than they were earlier? 'Cause that doctor friend of yours up in the barracks was pretty grouchy, too, and, well, too many grouchy griffons in the same day—" She stopped, a wide grin splitting her face. "Hey! Grouchy griffons! Those're both grumbly, growly words, aren't they?"

Gilda shook herself. Of course this was gonna be a disaster: what was she thinking? "Yeah, they are," she said, then she turned to Twilight. "So let's keep this formal, OK? I'll call you 'Princess,' and you call me 'Praetor.'" She looked back at the others again and raised her voice. "Like Twilight was saying before, you ponies being here at all is a real big deal, and some of the professors we'll be meeting in a minute are likely to raise a stink about it. Just smile and shrug it off: they're pretty much harmless."

Twilight's giggle drew Gilda's attention back to her. "I knew professors exactly like that when I was in school. But don't worry. We'll all be on our best behavior." She grinned at those behind them. "Right, girls?"

"Mmm-hmmm!" Pinkie nodded so fast, her head blurred, and Gilda was sure she could hear something rattling.

Rarity tossed her mane. "When are we ever not?" A slight wrinkle wavered across her nose. "Although one could wish that one's ancient culture weren't quite so dusty..."

A clearing of throat from Spike. "Just for the record?" He raised a front claw. "Not a girl."

They'd reached the corner by then, and Gilda faced forward with a silently chirped prayer to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father—you two got me into this, and by the thousand feline Hells, you'd better get me out! Padding onto the wider avenue, she took a breath, turned right, and started uphill along the cobblestones toward the flurry of activity around the Scribes' Union Hall.

Poles propped the purple fabric of Twilight's deflated balloon into something like a canopy above the whole scene, and a gridwork of yellow string stretched across the street and up the wall. More canopies shaded the professors crouched down among the grid, and Gilda could only stare at them, dusting little brushes over the rocks that had fallen when the storm had slammed the balloon into the building. Typical profs: a fifteen-hundred-year-old piece of art gets uncovered, and they were focusing on a buncha rubble...

But looking at the little alcove under the balloon, Gilda could see why some of them might choose to find something else to do for a while. Godfrey stood there, of course, but so did Professor Gloriana. And yes, she was the number one expert on ancient Catlatl, but Gilda had always found that her life went a lot easier when it didn't have Gloriana in it.

Cadets swirled everywhere, carrying boxes and bundles and responding to whatever commands the profs barked at them, so Gilda wasn't surprised when one of them, unfolding a table before a glowering Professor Garibaldi, caught sight of her and whistled a sharp 'ten-hut.' She sent out a quick 'as you were' chirp, but enough of the cadets had snapped to attention to make the profs notice.

Which meant that they noticed the colorful parade behind her. Which meant that all sound, all motion, all activity everywhere ahead froze like the windigoes had returned, all eyes and beaks wide and pointed directly at Gilda.

How her voice didn't crack, Gilda never knew. But she nodded, turned to Twilight, and said with enough volume to reach every pricked-up ear in the vicinity, "Princess? May I present the researchers who have made it their lives' work to preserve and study ancient Catlatl?"

The look on Twilight's face somehow combined eagerness with hesitation as she bowed her head to the professors. "It's an incredible honor to be allowed access to—"

"Praetor!" Gloriana leaped down the slope, her wings and talons spread, sparks all but shooting from her eyes. Gilda stepped forward, let her own wings unfurl, set herself between the onrushing prof and the ponies, and fixed the other griffon with as fiery a glare as she could muster. Gloriana seemed to notice—fortunately for all involved; Gilda really didn't want to write up a report detailing why she'd smacked down the site's senior archeologist—and she drew to a quivering halt a few paces away with a shrieked, "What is the meaning of this??"

"Princess Twilight Sparkle?" Gilda gave the slightest glance in Twilight's direction before drilling her glare back down on Gloriana; she really, really didn't want to write up a report detailing how the site's senior archeologist had smacked down an Equestrian princess, after all. "This is Professor Gloriana. She's our—"

"Gloriana?" Twilight stepped around Gilda with an almost liquid ease. "The author of Legends from the Time of the Resettlement?"

For once, Gilda was glad to be looking at the sour-faced old prof, her rheumy eyes going wide and her neck feathers puffing out. "You...you're familiar with my work?"

"Of course!" Twilight literally glowed, the air shimmering purple around her and smelling slightly of blueberries. "In fact, your studies of griffon legends inspired me to investigate obscure pony folklore in the Canterlot libraries when I was a student! That's what eventually led me to discover the truth behind the Mare in the Moon!" She spread her wings. "It's so wonderful to meet you, Professor! And here on the streets of ancient Catlatl as well! It's like a dream come true!"

Gilda had studied a lot of combat techniques since joining the Guardian Corps, but she had never seen an opponent so thoroughly disarmed as Gloriana was just then facing the princess. "I— That is, you— I mean—" Gloriana stopped and took a breath. "Your Highness, I don't know what to say."

"Oh, please, Professor: call me Twilight." She took another step toward Gloriana. "I know you're still in the preliminary stages of your current investigation, but it's such an astounding find, I hope you'll forgive me for asking if you can share anything of what you've learned so far?"

And Gloriana smiled: a brief thing, sure, less than the flutter of a butterfly's wing, but Gilda knew she'd seen it and knew they'd moved past one of the several obstacles in the path toward getting this all resolved without any mountains collapsing or buildings bursting into flame. "Certainly, Twilight." Gloriana gestured to the alcove under the balloon. "Let me show you the mosaic."

Blowing out a breath, Gilda heard a rough chuckle beside her, a sound she'd once known so well, she could barely stop her hackles from rising. She glanced over to see Rainbow Dash grinning at the professor and the princess moving up the street. "Eggheads of a feather gotta flock together." Dash shook her head, then spun partway around to face Gilda. "So! What actual fun stuff d'you guys got around here?"

A part of Gilda wanted to let the years whisk away, wanted to leap into the sky and show Dash the cadet training courses further up in the Wyverns, wanted to stretch her wings against the only flyer who'd ever really given her a challenge—

But Godfrey, alighting just then on Gilda's other side, was clearing his throat. And that was that. "Gimme a minute, Dash; I'm pretty much on duty here." She looked at her senior aedile and gave the 'report' chirp.

Godfrey scratched a salute. "All's well, Praetor. But may I say what a pleasure it is to meet the illustrious Rainbow Dash?"

Dash blinked. "Ill—what—strious?"

A snort from Applejack. "It's a good thing, sugarcube."

"Indeed." Godfrey had that annoying little not-quite-a-smile playing around his beak. "I've often wondered about the adventures you and our praetor must've shared during her years in Cloudsdale."

Every follicle on Gilda's body seemed to stick straight up, and the laugh she forced out sounded more like she was gargling thistles. "Oh, there's no need to go into that." Any of it. Ever. "We were just a couple stupid kids."

"Yep, yep, yep." Dash threw a foreleg around Gilda's shoulders. "And look at us now: a couple stupid young adults!"

A passing cadet let out about half a laugh, but Gilda's glare sent him quickly flapping down to the far end of the dig. "Yes," Gilda said, her mind racing for an excuse to get the ponies off the site and out of griffon territory as quickly as possible before they could start telling the story of that last awful day in Ponyville. "How 'bout I give you folks the grand tour of the city? If we can pull Twilight away from Professor Gloriana, I mean..."

That seemed an ever-taller order as she started through the professors' grid toward the balloon, the ponies falling in behind her. They had to go slowly, for one thing, the whole crowd of them in single file picking their zig-zagging way along. And it didn't help that the profs seemed to have lost interest in anything except staring like they'd never seen a pony before. Which, Gilda had to admit, was a real possibility: not up close like this and certainly not on the streets of ancient Catlatl.

None of them screamed and leaped like Gloriana had at least. But some of the stares were a lot closer to being glares, and all the ponies—even Pinkie—looked more than a little uncomfortable under the attention. No, actually, Gilda saw quickly: Derpy trotted along completely unfazed by it all, her weaving way somehow never quite running her into any of the rock piles the profs were supposedly studying.

From ahead, Gilda could hear excited voices—Gloriana's and Twilight's—but she couldn't make out their actual words until she'd reached the poles holding up the balloon: "—commemorating the institution of the seasons!" Gloriana was saying, pointing a claw at the ancient writing above the image. "The text says that King Magnus agreed to have his unicorns move the sun further north every day between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice in order to create milder winters here in Catlatl and strengthen our agricultural base!"

"Oh, Professor!" Twilight was nearly hopping in place. "This is...it's revolutionary!"

A small gasp from behind, and Rarity squeezed past Gilda. "And the tile work! The colors! They're exquisite!" The pony's eyes actually sparkled. "But why in the wide, wide world of Equestria was it hidden for so long??"

Twilight's ears folded, and Gloriana flinched. "Yes," Gilda said, unable to stop a grin: trust a pony to cut right to the prickily heart of the matter. "I was wondering that myself, Professor. Why would the evidence of pony involvement in the affairs of Catlatl from the very beginning be covered up like this?"

Gloriana turned, just about all the excitement that had been lighting her face draining away. "Perhaps you can imagine, Praetor, that pony involvement in the Fall of Catlatl created some very strong feelings among our ancestors?"

A coldness gripped Gilda's gut. "So some griffon somewhere just decided to erase the ponies from our history? Is that it, Professor?" Why this bothered her so much, Gilda didn't know. But the thought that hundreds of generations had grown up, lived, and died thinking of ponies as ungriffonly monsters who casually sewed chaos and destruction in their wake made her want to start shouting. She clenched her teeth against the urge and waved her talons toward the city, the ruins stretching down the hill and across the whole valley. "There could be other mosaics, you mean, hidden for a thousand years, covered up like this one was? Other evidence of Catlatl's true past that have been denied to us for all these centuries??"

Something flickered in Gloriana's eyes—anger, Gilda thought it was, but it vanished almost instantly. "It's a certainty, Praetor." A tight smile sharpened across her beak. "But unless we have more freak storms and accidental balloon releases, I don't see how we could ever know which walls cover similar mosaics and which walls are merely walls."

"Ask Rarity," a bored voice said, and Gilda snapped her head over to a shaded section of the street where Pinkie and Derpy were sitting, their top-spinning game set up on the stones in front of them. Pinkie waved her hoof without looking up. "She zappety-zapped those mirror bits earlier, and since the tiles are all shiny, too, she could prob'bly use her horn to sniff 'em out."

"Huh?" Derpy blinked at Pinkie. "Horns aren't noses, Pinkie Pie. I mean, I don't think they're noses." She raised her sideways glance. "Twilight? Your horn's not another nose, is it?"

Twilight was staring at Rarity. "Not really, Derpy, but—" She nodded to the mosaic. "I haven't used your gem-finding spell in years, Rarity, but can you sense anything here?"

"I— I don't know." The unicorn stepped daintily forward, and the air began to shimmer around her horn, Gilda swallowing against the sudden dryness in her throat. Could it really be that easy? Just point a pony at a wall and have her—?

"Hmmm..." Rarity closed her eyes, her forehead wrinkling slightly. "It's not a strong sensation, but the greens have more than a bit of jade in them, and some of the red tones seem to be made using ruby or garnet." She stepped back, took a breath, opened her eyes, and looked up at the artwork. "I'd have to be fairly close to it, but yes, if we had a wall that we suspected of hiding a mosaic—" She shot a narrow-eyed glance at Pinkie Pie. "—I could likely 'sniff it out,' as our dear colleague so delicately puts it."

"Whoo-hoo!" Pinkie jumped to her hoofs. "Totally called it! Treasure hunt, ev'rypony!"

"Pinkie," Twilight began, her mouth going sideways.

But a strangled squawk from Gloriana drew Gilda's attention away from the ponies, the professor's throat vibrating like she was having trouble swallowing. "You—" she said before stopping to cough and sputter a little more. "You could sense a mosaic? Through the stone even?" Her right front talons twitched, clenching and unclenching. "You're sure??"

Rarity had one front leg drawn up to her chest, more than a little alarm on her face. "I believe so, Professor, but as I said, I'd need to be—"

"Praetor!" Gloriana spun, and Gilda almost wanted to take a step back herself. In the three years that she'd been praetor of Catlatl Garrison, Gilda had seen the professor agitated many times, but never like this. "You've got to—!" Gloriana stopped and struggled for several deep breaths; Gilda was about to let out the 'medical emergency' squawk, but the older griffon seemed to get herself under control. "By which I mean: might you and our, uhh, our guests join me for a brief excursion?"

Godfrey gave the quietest possible warning chirp, and Gilda gave a head bob in acknowledgment. She'd be careful, sure, but she definitely wanted to find out what had gotten the prof's feathers in a bunch. "Of course, Professor. I know some of our guests had expressed an interest in seeing more of the city." She looked at the ponies and the dragon arrayed along the wall of the Scribes' Union Hall and noted wide grins from all but two of them: Rarity, who was still staring at Gloriana like she might explode at any moment, and Fluttershy, who Gilda was starting to think didn't know how to grin.

Then Gloriana grinned, a sideways thing that pulled at her beak like a star spider stretching its web, and Gilda found herself hoping that she would never see the professor grin again for as long as she lived.

"Praetor," Godfrey rumbled, and Gilda knew it meant he was worried.

"Understood, Aedile," she said. But as much as she wanted him along— "I'll ask you to keep an eye on things here, though. We're likely to have imperators on route, after all, to view the new find, and I'll need you coordinating things when they come flapping down." Trying for nonchalance, she turned back to Gloriana. "Any idea where this excursion will be taking us, Professor?"

"The heart of the city." Gloriana gestured down the hill. "The Weavers' District." She took another gulp of breath. "And I apologize for my odd behavior. I'll be happy to explain on the way."

***

They had to walk, of course, something for which Gilda was extremely grateful since her guts still felt a little scrambled after the princess's teleportation spell. But the autumn late morning showed every sign of staying clear and lovely—probably Dash's doing—so the short stroll down the hill and into the center of the city, Gilda in front beside Gloriana and Twilight while the others followed with Gyre and Gimble bringing up the rear, certainly wouldn't be any sort of a hardship.

"It's a personal project of mine," the professor was saying. "Back when I was researching the legends of the Resettlement period, I found several references to a mosaic mural that apparently had decorated a wall in the Weavers' District. It was said to have been commissioned by Eight Waterfall early in her reign—she was the last queen of Catlatl, froze to death helping the final group of refugees leave the city. The mural showed her victory over the wyvern tribes who give the mountains their name and who had been a constant, savage scourge to the city throughout its entire three hundred year existence." She gave a slightly nervous glance over her shoulder. "No offence, young dragon."

"None taken." Spike waved his claws. "All the dragons I've ever met have pretty much been jerks, too."

That got another creepy grin from Gloriana before she went on: "The mural was the last great piece of public art ever done in the city—even then, the effects of the windigoes were being felt throughout this entire part of the world—but the three accounts I've found that mention the mural don't quite specify exactly where it was located."

Pinkie Pie popped out of nowhere to bump her shoulder into Gloriana's side. "We'll find it, proffy! Don't you worry your kitty little head! Except—" She blinked. "You've got an eagle little head, don't you? But I can't say, 'Don't you worry your kitty little butt!' That would be really, really rude!" She heaved a sigh. "Maybe we'll hafta start worrying after all..."

Twilight cleared her throat. "So you have three possible locations?"

Gloriana was still staring at Pinkie, but with a shake of her head, she turned to Twilight. "More like ten, I'm afraid. One of my sources only says the mural was in the Weavers' District while another says it was on the north wall of what the author refers to as 'the Great Bazaar.' But the District had nearly a dozen bazaars with north walls, and none of them as far as I can discover was called 'great'." Her crest feathers fell. "This is nowhere near as hugely important as the mosaic your balloon uncovered, Twilight, but it's become something of an obsession of mine over the years. So when your friend said that she might be able to detect it, I...I may have become a bit overly excited."

Twilight gave another one of those smiles, the kind that Gilda was starting to think of as the pony princess's secret weapon: sincere and bracing and making the less cynical part of Gilda's brain feel sure that, whatever the problem was, they'd be able to figure out an answer. Of course, it made the more cynical part of her want to cough up a carefully selected hairball or two, but still—

"Not to worry," Twilight was saying. "I get a little loopy sometimes, too, when I've found a way to prove one of my theories. But, umm, didn't you say you had three sources that talked about the mural?"

"Ah. Yes." Gloriana's eyes shifted again, her beak tightening, and Gilda perked her ears at the prof's sudden reluctance. "The, uhh, the third is a twelve-hundred-year-old manuscript written by a griffon who passed through Catlatl two decades after the Resettlement when the city was still locked in perpetual winter and completely uninhabitable. The parchment is very worn, torn and faded to near illegibility in many spots, but as close as I can tell, it says that the mural was in one of the bazaars along Canal Street or possibly Channel Street." She gestured to a bridge ahead that arched the road over the old East Canal. "Canal Street is just on the other side here, so we'll try its largest bazaar first."

"Huh." Dash had a look on her face that Gilda recognized from school; she hadn't seen it often, though, since it meant Dash was thinking. "So wait. This was a whole city of griffons, right?"

"Indeed," Gloriana said, her voice quietly echoing from the ruined buildings around them. "The heart of griffon civilization for three hundred years."

"Well then—" Wings flaring, Dash leaped into a slow forward drift, not hovering but moving at the same walking pace as the rest of them. "Why'd you have bridges and roads and stuff like that? I mean, yeah, Cloudsdale's got flat places, but they're more for landing and taking off. Didn't you all just fly everywhere?"

The question jabbed hard at Gilda, and the words came out before she could stop them: "We're not magic, Dash. You ponies could just tie on a cart full of provisions and fly it from, say, the river up to the palace. But gravity actually pulls on us; we've gotta put heavy stuff on wheels and haul it along the ground if we wanna move it."

"But—" Twilight turned a crease-browed look at her. "You griffons cloudwalk."

Gilda couldn't stop a snort. "That's not magic: everyone can do that!"

"I can't," came Applejack's voice from behind her.

"Nor I," Rarity added, "not without magical assistance."

"Yes." Twilight cocked her head, Gilda's tongue frozen in her beak. "Y'know, I don't recall ever reading a study of griffon magical abilities. They obviously exist, but—"

"No, they don't!" Gilda shouted. They'd reached the bridge by then, and she couldn't keep on the ground, had to spring up so she could wave all her front talons at the city stretching east and west along the road and north and south up and down the dry and dusty canal. "I mean, look around! This city was the greatest thing griffons ever did, the place where our ancestors developed the art and culture and everything that makes us griffons! And not once did any of them learn how to use magic! Hells, the whole city died because they couldn't use magic, and it almost took all of griffondom with it when it went! Even now, nothing we do on our best days can match what you ponies can do just making breakfast!"

The whole group had stopped at the top of the bridge, the ponies and the dragon—and Gyre, Gilda noted—staring at her with wide eyes. Gloriana and Gimble, though, were looking at the cobblestones, their pinions tight with embarrassment, and Gilda knew they were feeling as hot and tight-stomached as she was. "So yeah, us griffons can fly, Dash." She couldn't keep the growl out of her voice, didn't want to keep it out. "And yeah, we can sit on clouds, Princess. We can even push 'em around a little if they're not too big and we concentrate real hard. But that's as far as the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father let us go. And compared to what certain other folks I could mention can do, it sure ain't magic."

She let the silence sit on them for a couple heartbeats, then she leaped to the paving stones and started along the bridge's downslope. "Now, the largest bazaar on Canal Street's just a block north, isn't it, Professor?"

"Yes, Praetor." Gloriana's words came out tight, too. "It is."

Gilda just nodded, heard the rest of them start shuffling along after her, and refused to feel guilty when that was the only sound for the next several minutes. If they didn't like the truth, well, that wasn't her department. She hadn't invited them here, after all. Stupid ponies...

Taking a right on Canal Street, Gilda led the way to the first of the big market squares, the buildings on the left side of the street folding away to reveal a flat area of stone bordered by the jagged remains of two and three story tall brown brick structures: warehouses for the animal hides and the cotton the weavers used, she thought they'd likely be in this part of town.

"So." Twilight cleared her throat, the cheeriness in her voice more than a little creaky. "The north side, you said?"

"Yes," Gloriana said. "I've examined the walls at all the locations over the years, but since I had no idea where to begin excavating, I didn't want to risk any needless damage to the site by just pulling out random stones here and there."

They crossed the square quickly, Gilda searching the semi-collapsed wall for any sign of a mosaic beneath the stone debris piled three and four times a griffon's height along the entire length of the age-ravaged building. "Let's hope it wasn't up on the top story," she said, still feeling a little grouchy from her outburst at the bridge. Not guilty, though, she kept telling herself. No, not guilty at all...

"It wasn't." Gloriana gestured with a claw. "According to the city chronicles, the artwork ran along the lower story from one end to the other." She turned to Rarity, and Gilda could smell the spicy scent of her excitement. "So anywhere you wish to begin..."

Rarity had been glancing up and down the wall, but now with a shrug, she took the few steps that separated her from the dusty tangle of rocks and dried mud. She clenched her eyes, and that same ghostly glow wavered to life around her horn.

Immediately, her eyes shot open. "Oh! I...I'm sensing— Something, I think." Bending her neck, she swept her horn slowly through the air a hair's breadth from the stones and glanced over at Gloriana. "Usually, I can cause a visual image of the gemstones to appear, glowing through the dirt covering them; it shows me how deep they're buried and what sort they are." She gestured to the wall. "This is so faint, I fear I'm not getting so much as a flicker."

"But—" Gloriana was getting that 'medical emergency' look again, her crest feathers puffing up and her talons bunching; Gilda aimed a 'heads up' chirp in Gyre and Gimble's direction in case they had to evac the professor back up to the garrison. "Is it there?? Or isn't it?? It's got to be one or the other!"

"Whoa, now." Applejack slid between Gloriana and Rarity. "Simmer down, there, Professor. How 'bout we take a little look-see and find out?"

"A little look-see??" Wings pumping, Gloriana rose jerkily a pawspan into the air. "We'd need an entire crew excavating for days to remove just the top layer of sediment! To get all the way down to the wall—"

"Hear me out." Turning a wink toward Gilda, Applejack rested a front hoof on the debris field. "Might be some of us can't walk on clouds, but we know a thing or two 'bout rocks and dirt and how to make 'em behave." She pressed her ear against the wall, tapped her hoof, frowned, moved her hoof slightly up and to the left, and tapped again. "All this stuff's perty much sandstone, and sandstone splits into fissures all nice and polite if'n you ask it just right."

A few more taps, and she nodded, her hoof pressing against a brownish-yellow spot that looked just like every other brownish-yellow spot as far as Gilda could tell. "I buck the thing here," Applejack said, "and I reckon it'll split the face of your rockfall just like so." She sat back and moved her front hoofs upward in a narrow 'V' shape. "The cracks'll run to about there, and this chunk'll crumble on out so we can get us a squint at whatever's underneath." She looked over her shoulder at Gloriana. "Any objections to that, Professor?"

Certain parts of Gilda's brain practically danced, thinking how absolutely worth it this whole crazy pony visitation was just for the expressions it had drawn out of Gloriana. "You...you honestly expect me to believe—!"

"Honestly?" Applejack grinned and pushed her hat back a bit further. "That's my middle name, ma'am. 'Sides, you don't gotta take my word for it." She raised her voice. "Pinkie! You're the rock expert! Back me up here!"

Gilda glanced over her shoulder to where she'd last seen the group's other earth pony, but that glance just made her turn all the way around and gape. Pinkie Pie sat several paces away among the weathered stones scattered across the old bazaar, not just Derpy with her now but Spike and Fluttershy as well. As Gilda watched, Pinkie pulled a deflated balloon from her mane and gave it to the dragon. He filled it with green fire and gave it back to Pinkie. She quickly tied a string to the nozzle, tied a rock to the other end of the string, and set it among the other balloons and rocks already floating in front of them. "Who the what now?" Pinkie asked, moving one of the rocks an inch higher so the whole assemblage suddenly became a bust of Professor Gloriana.

The two pegasi gave several 'Ooo's and 'Ahhh's, but Applejack's sigh gusted from behind Gilda. "If'n I bucks this wall right here—"

"Down just a little." Pinkie flashed a grin and waved a hoof. "You had the right spot the first time."

Beside her, Gilda heard Gloriana sputtering followed by Twilight clearing her throat. "Think of it as an exploratory trench, Professor. And I'll personally vouch for Applejack's touch when it comes to this sort of thing: I mean, she can clear every apple from a tree with a single kick, and they land in their baskets so gently, they don't even bruise." She gave that disarming smile of hers again. "We'll be able to tell right away if anything's there, and if not, we can move on to the next possible site with no trouble at all."

Gloriana's inner argument was playing out so clearly on her face, Gilda could almost hear it. Not that it was really an argument, of course: Gilda knew from experience how hard it was to walk away from ponies when they were standing right there offering to help. "You'll be careful?" Gloriana asked after several seconds of nothing but wind whistling through the ruins.

Applejack nodded. "Like Twilight said, ma'am, this's how I make my living." She turned her hindquarters toward the sloping stone debris, looked back over her shoulder at it, and said, "A little lifting spell or some such, maybe, Twi, in case the rocks get a mite rambunctious?" And with a sniff, she reared back both hind legs and slammed her hoofs into the wall.

Gilda was sure she felt the air shiver around her, cracks spiderwebbing up the rocky face in almost exactly the wedge shape Applejack had traced out a moment before. More splintering sounds, and purple light spattered across the scene just as the whole wedge crumbled into pebbles, Twilight's magic catching the little stones and drifting downward with them embedded in it. And in the space the wedge had once covered—

Green and yellow shone in a scaly pattern, the colors even more vivid than the earlier mosaic up the hill. And Gilda couldn't help grinning at the open-beaked professor. "Wyverns, you said, right?"

"It's true," Gloriana whispered, her eyes wider than Gilda had ever seen any griffon's. "It's here. After...after all these years..." She blinked, took several deep, panting breaths, and turned to the ponies behind her. "I can't— The words, they—" She gave a hiccupping sort of laugh, that frantic tremor coming over her again. "Just the irony of it! Your ancestors destroyed this city, and now in less than six hours, you've returned more of our heritage to us than we've managed to uncover in the past sixty years!"

Was she sobbing? Gilda leaped forward at the same time as Twilight, both of them reaching out to steady the gulping professor, wavering on her paws and claws. "I'm all right," Gloriana said, flicking a talon from side to side. "Or rather, I will be all right." She focused a gaze that Gilda would've called feverish on Twilight. "Saying 'thank you' is simply insufficient, Your Highness. But I promise that I will find a way to show you how much this means to me, how much this means to all griffons everywhere. Count on that; oh, yes, count very much on that."

"Please, Professor." Twilight's scent still came a little sour to Gilda's nose, but the princess was all smiles. "Don't worry yourself. We're just happy to help."

Gilda cleared her throat. "Shall I send the cadets to get equipment from the other dig, Gloriana? You'll need a team down here to start—"

"No!" She masked her panic immediately, but Gilda knew that she'd seen it. "I just—" Gloriana looked back at the slice of color among the tumbled yellows and browns. "I'd just like to be alone with it for a moment, if I might. Then I'll head back myself and gather the others." Her smile had way too many ragged edges. "You've done enough for now, Praetor. In fact, you've made this all possible." She tapped Gilda's chest feathers with a claw. "Something else I shan't forget, let me assure you."

For an instant, Gilda considered asking Twilight to wrap one of those purple bubbles around the professor so they could drag her up to the infirmary and have Doc dose her with whatever tranquilizers he might have in stock. But it was just for an instant. All the profs were crazy in one way or another, Gilda had learned the past three years, but none of them were what anyone might call dangerous... "OK, then." Gilda clapped her front talons together. "I'd say we've done enough for one morning; how 'bout we head back to the Eyrie and see what Cookie's got going on for lunch?"

"Hooray!" from Derpy, and the stomach that Gilda heard growling, she was pretty sure, belonged to Spike.

Twilight gave a nod. "Shall we teleport again?"

Her own stomach gave a little lurch, but Gilda swallowed against it. "If you wouldn't mind, Your Highness?"

"Not at all, Praetor!"

She was ready for it this time at least, the ruins melting into plum jelly around her and reforming into the main landing terrace, the two cadets at the front door earning themselves another gold star apiece for their nearly reactionless reactions. Gilda took a breath to invite the whole crowd of them inside, but Dash spoke up suddenly: "Was it just me, or did that professor seem really creepy?"

"Rainbow!" Twilight's head jerked around. "Professor Gloriana is a highly respected scholar and one of the greatest historians in all of griffondom!"

Dash shrugged. "Still creepy."

The look Twilight turned toward Gilda brimmed with apologies, but Gilda cut her off before she could say any of them: "I've worked with her for three years now, and yeah, 'greatest historian' and 'creepy' pretty much sum her up. Right now, though, how 'bout we—"

A far-off shriek stopped Gilda and made her ears fold, but it wasn't a griffon, she realized immediately. It was just—

"Oh!" Fluttershy had straightened from the crouch she'd been in since the ponies' arrival. "Was that—?" She sprang into the air and wheeled around to face in the direction the sound had come from; Gilda looked that way, too, and saw the gray specks she'd expected to see flapping through the blue above toward the peaks of the Wyverns across the valley. "Peregranite falcons!" Fluttershy finished, breathless wonder in her voice.

"What now?" Spike asked beside her.

"How wonderful!" Fluttershy was still hovering, her gaze fixed on the specks. "They're the only lithic life form capable of flight!"

Spike rubbed his snout. "What now?"

Twilight's mouth went sideways. "It means they're animals that're made out of stone, Spike. Like cragodiles or rock lobsters."

"Those guys?" Spike's snout wrinkled. "They're even bigger jerks than dragons."

Fluttershy landed with a move that was practically a pirouette. "I've read about peregranite falcons, but I certainly never thought I'd see one! I'll be able to check them off in my bird book now!"

The memory struck Gilda again: roaring at Fluttershy and her ducks. With a wince, she waved a wing toward the Wyverns. "They've actually got a rookery over on Gorgonio Peak. We can all head over there later if you want, get you a better look at 'em, y'know?"

The pegasus's eyes went almost as starry as when Rarity had seen the old mosaic. "Could we?" Fluttershy spun to Twilight, then to Applejack, then to Dash. "I mean, would that be OK with everypony? If we...if we went over and looked at the peregranite falcons nesting?"

The other ponies all exchanged glances, and Gilda could see the smiles they were trying to hide. "Yeah, I guess," Dash answered with that phony coolness she did so well.

"Darn tootin'!" Applejack added with another wink at Gilda. "I mean, long as we're already here creating a diplomatic incident and all."

Fluttershy gave a little squeal, and Gilda finally managed to invite them inside: "Derpy? Cadets? Show 'em all down to the mess hall, if you'd be so kind. I'll check in with Aedile Gillian and meet you there."

Happily discussing the morning's events, the whole crowd of them moved ahead of Gilda down the entrance hall, Gillian at her desk perking up and returning their waves. Gilda stopped, waited till the ponies had rounded the corner, then asked quietly, "What response from HQ?"

Gillian's perkiness fell. "Nothing yet, Praetor."

"Nothing?" Gilda felt her own perkiness take a dive.

"Not even an acknowledgment." Gillian hunched over the surface of the desk, her scent drier than usual. "I mean, we've got ponies in Catlatl, Gilda! Ponies! And HQ doesn't give us so much as a—!"

Gilda gave the 'as you were' chirp as forcefully as she could. "Focus, Aedile." Though Gilda had to make a genuine effort to keep her crest feathers up: of all the reactions she'd been expecting from down the line, absolute silence hadn't even been on her list. "We've had another mosaic discovery, too."

"What?" Gillian straightened.

Mind racing, Gilda held up a claw. No response from HQ could mean all sorts of things, of course, but the more she thought about it, the less she liked it. "At the top of the hour, Gillian, call out that classes are cancelled for the rest of the day. Lunch is formal mess for all personnel not assigned to other duties." So they could meet the ponies and get up to speed; whatever was going on, she needed to prepare her people. "One of those other duties, though, is signal corps. Get someone up there to relieve Gutierrez right now, then it'll be half hour rotations after that. The order is to sing out at the first flash of a response."

"Yes, Praetor." Gillian scratched a salute, her ruffled feathers already a bit smoother.

Good. At least—

"Gilda?" Derpy's voice asked in her ear.

This time, it only sent Gilda jumping partway out of her skin, and when she snapped her head over, Derpy was watching her intently, concern in the pony's skewed gaze. "Is ev'rything OK?" she asked.

Taking a breath, Gilda decided to say, "As far as I know." She nodded toward the mess hall. "Did everypony get settled?"

"Yep." Her concern seemed to thicken, though. "But if ev'rything wasn't OK, you'd tell me, right, Gilda? Not just 'cause I'm the ambassador but 'cause I'm your friend." She reached out a hoof and gently touched Gilda's right foreclaws. "Twilight and the others are here to help if you need it, too."

And strangely enough, just hearing her say it made Gilda feel better. "Let's hope I don't need to take you up on that." She gave Derpy's hoof a squeeze. "Now, let's get some lunch; there's some people I wanna introduce you all to."

5 - Betrayer

Following Derpy into the mess hall, Gilda nodded across the rows of empty place settings to the head table where Gyre and Gimble were helping the ponies get settled. "Go on over, Derpy; I'll be there in a minute."

Derpy's eyes curled closed, and she nodded, trotting with hoofs high toward the others. Gilda let the smile she'd been holding in place slip and ducked into the kitchen. "Cookie, tell me you've got something ponies can eat ready to go."

Cookie blinked at her, a cookbook open in front of him, and her heart leaped to see the slices of eggplant he was salting, a pot of what smelled like a nicely spiced tomato sauce bubbling on the stove behind him. "I was gonna do this for supper, Praetor, but—"

"We can't wait. I've called a formal mess for lunch."

"For lunch?" He did some more blinking. "That never happens, does it?"

"It does today." Gilda crooked a claw over her shoulder. "I've got seven ponies and a baby dragon out there, and I'd like them to have something in their stomachs before the troops get here. 'Cause whatever HQ decides to send up the line at us, when it hits, I doubt we're gonna have a lotta free time."

One more blink. "Well, all right, then." Cookie folded the recipe book closed, grabbed the tray full of eggplant slices, and shoved it into the oven. "Gimme three minutes."

"You're a life saver, Cookie." Spinning, she forced herself to open the doors slowly, easily, like she didn't have a care in the world. "OK!" she called to the ponies. "We'll get you all taken care of here in a minute."

The stuff was great, too, Cookie pushing a steaming cart out and the two cadets serving the plates just as neat as could be. Gilda managed to keep the conversation light and focused on her guests—what adventures they'd been having lately, for instance, and how things had been going in Ponyville—but when they were finishing up, Gyre and Gimble collecting the plates, Gilda figured she'd better clue them in a little.

"Well, then," she said, patting her beak with a napkin. "Nice as that was, I'm afraid we're gonna be getting back to work here in a couple minutes." She gestured to the clock on the wall above them. "I'd like the rest of the garrison to meet you all, if that'd be OK, let them see that you're not really monsters bent on destroying ev'rything we hold dear, and tell them what we've uncovered this morning down in Catlatl."

"Of course," Twilight said from the end of the table nearest the windows, and the rest of them nodded in various ways.

Except Derpy: seated right beside Gilda, she had a more confused look than usual hovering around her forehead. "The other griffons think we're monsters?" she asked quietly.

Her plaintive tone struck Gilda right in the chest, and before she'd even thought about doing it, she was reaching out to pat Derpy's front hoof. "They won't think that once they get to know you."

"Good." Everything about the pony seemed to perk up. "Still, I guess I'd better get ready to do some extra-strength ambassadoring, huh?"

"Couldn't hurt," Gilda said, her ears folding as Gillian's screech echoed down the hallway, the tones and cadence of it announcing the cancellation of the day's classes and the formal mess about to begin. "I'll do most of the talking, though, so don't worry about that."

Motion at the doorway drew her attention away from the anxious pony faces, and seeing Godfrey step in nearly made Gilda gasp, all the clenched muscles along her back loosening like she'd been walking around with her wings bound till now. She hadn't wanted to pull him away from the site, of course—that was always the most important work—but with him here, about half the butterflies stopped swirling in her stomach.

The annoying not-quite-a-smile hovering around the edges of her beak made it pretty easy to mask how much better she felt, though. "Aedile." Knowing the answer already but in no mood to leave anything to chance, she asked, "You didn't leave the profs unsupervised out on the site, did you?"

"Not at all, Praetor." He gave her a bow of exactly the proper depth. "When Cadet Goddard brought down the news that we were having formal mess, our colleagues decided that they were much too famished to continue work."

"Good." Gilda let herself puff out a semi-relieved breath, Godfrey sliding into the space along the wall where he tended to stand during mess: as the garrison's Senior Aedile, he was entitled to the place at the far end of the head table, and now and again Gilda would insist that he take it, but he'd long ago made his preferences in such matters known. "Having Gloriana here to present her findings to the—"

"Gloriana?" All trace of Godfrey's smile vanished. "Praetor, when last I saw Professor Gloriana, she was with you and our guests."

"What? But—" Gilda glanced at the clock. "We left her at the second mosaic maybe forty-five minutes ago."

"Second mosaic?" Godfrey's eyes widened, a note of astonishment coming into his voice that Gilda didn't think she'd ever heard there before. "You found a second mosaic?"

But another sound started stroking her ears then, a sound that filled the sometimes hollow corners of her chest and made her rise to her paws and claws in respect: the shuffle and ruffle of approaching fur and feathers.

Her troops were arriving.

By tradition established before Gilda's grandparents' grandparents had been hatched, D Company led the procession to formal mess—"here, the last will be first" was how Godfrey had put it when she'd stood like this three years ago on her first day in command—the twenty-five griffon fledglings marching in with their two aediles and moving quickly to their tables. Under the circumstances, Gilda didn't even glare at their gasps and stares: considering who was sharing the head table with her, she would've been more concerned if they hadn't gasped and stared.

C through A Companies followed, and Gilda couldn't help noticing the holes left by those cadets who weren't in their usual places: Gyre and Gimble, of course, the two of them not down with B Company but standing at attention behind Twilight at the top of the head table; Gutierrez and several others she knew to be in the signal corps, and she let a silent prayer go up to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father that she would hear one of them give the 'incoming message' screech in the next few minutes to douse her remaining fears about whatever HQ might be up to; Aedile Gillian, of course, still out at the company clerks' desk; those cadets who were on kitchen duty today.

And when Doc and the professors straggled in after A Company, the lack of Professor Gloriana made another little twinge pull at the scruff of Gilda's neck.

No time to worry about it now. Gilda stood till the last of the garrison had moved into place, the once empty hall now alive and warm and bristling, the air crisp with the unmistakable tang of starched uniform vests. She stood a moment more and looked out at nearly a hundred griffons, all of them also standing in silence and looking at her, her heart trembling with the mix of wonder and pride she always felt whenever it really struck her: where she was, what she was doing, and how privileged she was to be here doing it.

She nodded to Godfrey; he gave a chirp, and the whole contingent settled to their cushions. "Might be you've noticed," she said, putting a grin in her voice, "that we've a few guests dining in with us this afternoon." Starting with Twilight, then, she went down the table introducing them all—being sure to give Derpy her proper ambassadorial title, of course—and keeping her eyes and ears pricked for whatever reaction might be building out in the ranks.

As expected, Doc glowered along with several of the profs at their tables, but she was pleasantly surprised to see fewer ruffled crests among the recruits than she'd thought likely: less than half, certainly. "The thing is," Gilda went on, figuring she might as well get right to it, "we've just discovered that Princess Twilight and her friends aren't the first ponies to visit Catlatl."

The fledges on kitchen duty had started wheeling out lunch by then, but they stopped with a clattering of dishes, the static charge of so many feathers standing up making Gilda's throat go dry. Reaching for her water glass, she told them about the storm, about Derpy and the princess's balloon, about the Nine Jaguar mosaic they'd uncovered first and the later one they'd found of Five Waterfall defeating the wyverns. Three glasses of water she went through giving them the details, and while the kitchen cadets remembered pretty quickly that they were supposed to be passing out plates of Cookie's eggplant, few seemed interested in eating, the inaudible buzz in the room getting thicker and thicker.

But again for the most part, it wasn't a hostile buzz: disbelief, sure, uncertainty plain on a lot of faces, but by the time Gilda was reaching the end, excitement crackled everywhere around the big, low-ceilinged room. "Professor Gloriana's still down at the site," she said, "and I'll be asking—"

"Forgive me, Praetor." A deep and rumbling voice snapped Gilda's gaze to the far doorway, and the silver-gray brick of a griffon standing there sent her leaping to her paws and claws, an instinctive 'ten-hut!' squawking from her beak. Everyone except the ponies jumped to attention, and Grand Imperator Gustavus seemed to puff up even larger. "Might you be taking questions from the floor soon?"

"Yes, sir!" Details started tickling at Gilda's astonished brain: the Grand Imperator didn't have a cloud of lower-ranking imperators hovering around him, something Gilda had never even heard about happening when he ventured forth from HQ; his sides glistened with sweat and heaved with gasps, telling her that he'd flown long and hard to get here; and the expression he was trying without much success to hide was very nearly the same mix of lust and disgust that Gloriana had displayed while working with the ponies to uncover the wyvern mosaic.

"Good." Gustavus started along the center aisle between the cadets' tables, and Gillian entered the room behind him, her feathers flat with unhappiness. She wouldn't've left the clerks' desk, Gilda knew, unless Gustavus had directly ordered her to, and the thought tightened Gilda's stomach. Had he ordered the signal crew not to sing out, too? Or had he snuck into the garrison without the fledges even noticing?

"Please, please," the Grand Imperator was saying, waving his claws and giving that hearty smile he always seemed to be wearing whenever Gilda saw his photo in the newspaper. "All of you, at ease and be seated. I certainly didn't come all this way to interrupt your lunch."

Godfrey was moving about at the end of the head table—arranging a place setting, Gilda saw. "Of course, sir," she said, taking her own seat and gesturing to the new spot. "We'd be honored if you'd join us."

He nodded. "I wouldn't say no to a bucket or two of cold water." Wiping at his dripping crest feathers, he didn't quite flop onto the cushion Godfrey had laid out for him, but Gilda still couldn't help thinking that, while much of the Grand Imperator's bulk was muscle, much of it wasn't. "Serving a vegetable dish, I see." He let loose another barrage of that smile, this time aiming it at the other end of the table where Twilight sat. "In deference to our guests, I presume." With a bit of effort, he rose once more and bowed. "Grand Imperator Gustavus at your service, Princess."

"Thank you," Twilight said, and maybe Gilda was imagining things under the stress of having the Commander-in-Chief of not just the Guardian Corps but of every military outfit in the whole of griffondom suddenly stroll unannounced into her mess hall, or maybe the years Gilda had spent trying to become as much like a pony as she could had heightened her sensitivities, but Twilight's voice seemed more than a little strained as she went on: "I know you of course by reputation, Grand Imperator, but it's quite the pleasure to meet you under such an interesting set of circumstance."

"Interesting. Yes." Dropping back onto the cushion, Gustavus picked up the glass of water Godfrey had just set down beside a plate of eggplant and drank it dry with four big swallows. "An excellent choice of words, Princess." He lowered the glass, sniffed at the plate with his brow wrinkled, and pushed it slightly away from him along the table. "I've in fact been having a less-than-interesting time of late serving the Consulate, but that, I suppose, is the cost those of us in the soldiering business must pay when Equestria has princesses such as yourself around to keep the peace."

Gilda was fairly sure that hadn't been a compliment, and the continued guarded note in Twilight's voice made her think the princess had caught Gustavus's undertone as well. "Thank you again, Grand Imperator. I'll be certain to convey your compliments to Celestia, Luna, and Cadance when we're done with our business here."

"Business?" Gustavus's mask of pleasantness slipped even further. "And how exactly is anything that happens in Catlatl the business of ponies?"

To her credit, Twilight didn't so much as flick an ear. "I refer to retrieving my balloon, sir." Her gaze hardened a bit. "Though I'm hoping we can also assist in bringing out the truth behind the incredible mosaics Professor Gloriana and her team are currently studying."

For an instant, Gilda had absolutely no idea what Gustavus was going to do, the molten-steel scent of anger coming into the salty tang of his sweat, the fur along his back starting to bristle. But then he went smooth again, his smile returning, and he swigged down the glass Gimble had just refilled. "Of course," he said. "It was news of the mosaic that drew me here, in fact." He turned his attention to Gilda, and she could almost feel the heat there. "I'd brought my staff up to the garrison at Northern Marches last night for a surprise inspection, so when the signal came in this morning about the discovery here, well, I simply had to see it for myself."

Which was nowhere near the whole truth, Gilda could tell. Yes, Gustavus did pull surprise inspections: she'd been through one just after her arrival at Catlatl Garrison. The Grand Imperator and his flunkies had prowled the corridors and the city's streets for an afternoon, disrupting classes and the professors' work down on the site while grousing about the primitive facilities and criticizing everything she and her aediles did. They'd skipped dining with the cadets that evening, had slept through breakfast, and had pulled out before noon leaving behind nothing but two guest rooms reeking of alcohol: she'd never gotten even an informal review let alone anything like a written report.

But for the Grand Imperator to push himself unaccompanied all the way from Northern Marches in the couple of hours since that first message had gone out, that spoke of something more than just an interest in ancient artwork. "And in fact," he was going on, that weird intensity guttering at the edges of his eyes again, "with the level of interest this discovery has already sparked—" He gestured to the princess and her party. "—I believe I'll be taking charge of the situation personally."

In the stone-cold silence that followed, Gilda couldn't keep her feathers from prickling. "Sir?" she managed to ask.

"You've done an excellent job with the preliminaries, Gilda, and I'll be sure to note it in your record." That big smile rolled across his beak again. "I've always felt you were destined for greater things than this backwater posting, watching over raw recruits and dead rocks, and I'll certainly see to it that more opportunities come your way. But for the good of relations between us and our pony neighbors, as of this moment, I'm relieving you of command."

Two things glowed in Gilda's head then as absolute fact. First, she knew that something weird was going on here. And second, she knew that letting Grand Imperator Gustavus down onto the site right now would be the worst thing that could happen anywhere in the entire history of the world.

Why she knew that second one, she had no idea. But everything she'd seen and heard since joining the Corps—as well as everything she'd seen and heard in the last few minutes—told her that Gustavus wasn't concerned with the good of Catlatl, with the good of griffondom, Hells, with the good of anything or anyone except himself. So— "No, sir," she said.

The silence got even colder. "What was that, Praetor?" Gustavus asked, his voice a growl.

Swallowing, Gilda rose to her paws and claws. "I took two oaths, sir: one to protect and defend the Consulate in Aquileon and another to protect and defend the ancestral city of all griffons." She couldn't stop a growl of her own. "Now, I don't know what it is about these mosaics that's getting everybody so unbalanced: I mean, yeah, they're gonna rewrite a big part of our history, but Gloriana just about having a heart attack when we found the second one and you, sir, barging in here, ready to solve a problem we aren't even having—"

"Aedile!" Gustavus barked. He crooked a shaking talon across the table at Gilda. "I'm relieving the praetor of command! Escort her to the brig and detain her there!"

"What??" more than a few voices beside Gilda shouted, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dash and Derpy both spring into hovering positions above the table.

Gilda held up several foreclaws—no way she wanted to drag the ponies any further into whatever was happening—and they must've gotten the message since they didn't swoop over and start kicking Gustavus in the head or anything. A delicate clearing of throat, though, and Twilight spoke: "Grand Imperator, surely there must be some—"

"Princess?" He spat the word more than said it. "While you have absolutely no jurisdiction here and are in fact currently violating every treaty between our respective governments, you may of course register any formal complaint at your embassy in Aquileon. In fact, I'd recommend you head there right now and do just that." He craned his head around, his barbed glare aiming at Godfrey. "Aedile! I gave you an order!"

Godfrey blinked once. "Forgive me, Grand Imperator, but you're overstepping your authority."

A tremor twitched across Gustavus's face, and when he leaped up, he seemed to tower over everyone else in the room, even the unmoving Godfrey. "You'll be joining her in the brig, Aedile!"

Another slow blink from Godfrey. "May I remind you, sir, of Article 1, section 15 of the Guardian Corps charter? There you'll find both the statement that the Praetor of Catlatl Garrison is considered the first among praetors as well as a list of the post's special privileges."

Gustavus stared at him, and some more tickling happened at the back of Gilda's brain. She'd read that part of the charter after she'd joined the Corps but before she'd applied for the position as Catlatl's praetor, but no one had mentioned the list during the interviewing process and she'd just assumed it didn't apply anymore. Because it said right at the top—

"The praetor of Catlatl Garrison," Godfrey's quiet voice was going on, "can only be relieved of command by direct order of the Consulate or by a two-thirds vote of all currently commissioned imperators. Sir."

"Preposterous!" Gustavus waved his talons. "None of that folderol's been considered valid for more than six centuries!"

"And yet?" That almost-a-smile tugged at Godfrey's beak. "They've never been revoked or repealed." Everything about him sharpened, and the glare he gave Gustavus actually made the larger griffon take half a step back. "And should you attempt to act in contravention of the charter, sir, I will be more than happy to perform my duty and escort you to the brig."

"Hooray for Mr. Godfrey!" Derpy shouted, and Gilda almost wanted to join in. But she knew Gustavus, knew he wouldn't let something as small as the Guardian Corps charter stand in the way of whatever he was trying to do here.

Still, maybe calming things down a bit wouldn't be a bad thing. "Sir," Gilda said, "I'm not interested in turning this into some sorta knock-down, drag-out fight. If you'll tell me what's at stake, I'll be happy to help you—"

"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Whirling on her with beak clenched and eyes narrowing, he crooked a claw at his own chest. "I always knew it was a mistake appointing a pony wannabe like you to this post! But you had the credentials and met the requirements, and no one else wanted to be stuck out here in the tail end of nowhere! Besides, Gloriana'd been looking for her damn mosaics for so long, who knew that she'd actually find—?" He stopped and spun to face the stunned rows of griffons filling the hall. "All you aediles and cadets! Effective immediately, I'm reassigning you to my staff and declaring a state of emergency! This facility is to be evacuated at once by order of the Grand Imperator!"

No one moved, but the gaze of every aedile shifted to Godfrey, still in his place along the wall. Gustavus snapped his head over, too, and bellowed, "Well??"

"Forgive me again, sir." Godfrey stood as steady as the mountains outside. "But Article 5, section 18 of the charter calls the senior aedile and the cadets at Catlatl Garrison the sole responsibility of the garrison's praetor. Military courts over the centuries have interpreted this to mean that the senior aedile cannot be transferred without the praetor's express permission and that cadets cannot be pressed into active service until the praetor signs their graduation papers."

Gustavus roared, his wings flaring out like brandished knives. "The rest of you aediles, then! You're now assigned to my personal guard! Clear me a path to door, show me to Professor Gloriana's quarters, then escort me down to the site! I've wasted more than enough time already!"

Another frozen second, then Gillian rose from her regular seat among the cadets of A Company. "Sir?" Her claws went to her vest, and she stripped it off, slapping it onto the table. "Under Article 7, section 6 of the charter, I hereby announce my resignation from the Guardian Corps."

Gilda stared, unable to process it as one by one, the other aediles all stood, took off their vests, and said the same thing. What were they doing?? Why in the wide, wide world of Equestria were they throwing their lives and their careers away like this??

Because of her? Her heart crashed against her ribs like an avalanche down a cliff face. Were...were they choosing shame, dishonor, and possible court-martial just because they trusted her, trusted that she knew what was going on, trusted that, when she said 'no' to the supreme commander of the entire griffon military, she had a damn good reason?

Don't kid yourself, catbird, a part of her whispered. They know you haven't any more of clue than they do. They're doing it for the same reason you are: to stop Gustavus from taking control of Catlatl.

Slowly, Gustavus turned his glare to her, his muscles tensing, and Gilda caught her breath. He would lunge for the door, she knew, and she would leap to stop him. And when the others joined in, the entire garrison would become guilty of—

Blinding white light flashed at the back of the room. "Well, there you are!" a slippery baritone announced, and Gilda found herself staring past Gustavus at a thing unlike any she'd ever seen before. The limbs of four different creatures sprouted from a torso patched with hide, feathers, and fur, its wings and horns just as mismatched, its long, snaggle-toothed head part pony and part dragon. More light flashed around it, and a couple dozen suitcases tumbled to the floor. "If I'd been told we were going on holiday, I would've known what to pack! But as it is, I've had to bring one of everything!"

"Discord?" Twilight asked. "What are you doing here?"

The creature spread its arms—the one sporting a scrawny but perfectly normal set of talons, the other something that looked more like a hind leg than anything else. "You know me, Princess! I can smell a good time a thousand leagues away!"

"Ummm, Discord?" Pinkie whispered so loudly, Gilda thought the signal cadets must've heard it. "I've had good times before, and I'm pretty sure that this—" She twirled a hoof as if to indicate the whole situation. "—isn't one."

Gilda's feathers seemed intent on plucking themselves from her body. Catlatl hadn't been touched during the reemergence of the fabled Spirit of Chaos two years ago, but Gilda had read the reports about buildings in Aquileon turning to pudding and some of the capital's citizen transforming into things with the heads of lions and the hindquarters of eagles. Staring, she couldn't help swallowing, Discord slithering its gangly self between the tables of her mess hall.

"Nonsense, Pinkie!" The creature somehow snapped the digits of its lion paw, and a cushion appeared, unrolling along the whole front of the head table. "Growling and snarling and glaring at each other are the surest signs of griffons having a good time. Isn't that right, Gilda?" It tumbled onto the cushion, its body suddenly as floppy as overcooked pasta, its head practically splashing over the table to rest in front of Gilda. "And by the way," it whispered with a knife-slash of a grin splitting its face. "I prefer being thought of as 'he' rather than 'it.' If it's all the same to you."

"This is an outrage!" Gustavus shouted.

"I agree!" Discord sprang from the table, the air suddenly reeking of week-old cabbage. "I thought you griffons prided yourselves on being zither players without peer! So how is it that we aren't all dancing sprightly mazurkas?"

Gustavus spread his wings. "Is this what you've stooped to, Gilda?? Allying yourself with ponies and monsters against your own people??"

"No, sir." Gilda took a breath. "Only against you. Now, if you'll level with us about what's going on here—"

"Treason!" The Grand Imperator took a step away from the head table, bunched one set of foreclaws into a fist, and aimed the other set at the rest of the mess hall. "Any of you who don't join me this very instant will be charged as traitors and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, all oaths and charters be damned!"

His words seemed to echo from the windows overlooking the Wyvern Range, but as Gilda held her breath, not a single cadet, not Doc, not even the grouchiest of the professors, none of her garrison stood from their tables. And the fiery scent of anger that sizzled from Gustavus's fur and feathers took on the sudden sour stink of fear.

"Fools!" Gustavus shouted, but his fear stink was getting stronger, sweat still dripping from his sides, white rimming his eyes. "I shall be returning with both my personal battalion and the entire complement of Northern Marches Garrison, and then not a one of you will see the outside of a prison until the day of your execution!" He shot down the aisle between the tables and flapped out the door.

All her former aediles leaped to their paws and claws, but Gilda gave the loudest 'as you were' squawk she ever had, her mind turning furiously. "Everything we've done so far we can justify and support under the charter!" she shouted. "But anyone touches that pompous bag of suet, this all gets moved to a whole 'nother level!"

"But Praetor!" Gillian's wings vibrated, her muscles still tensed to spring her toward the door. "If he brings the squadrons up from Northern Marches—!"

Gilda cut the air with a talon. "As long as he doesn't head down to the city, I don't care what in the thousand feline Hells he does!" She swallowed, kept focused on Gillian. "And I know I can't make it an order, Gillian, but could you flap up there and make sure he's heading south instead of north?"

"Tut, tut," Discord said, stretched once again along the front of the head table. A snap of his talons made a glowing circle appear in the air, and Gilda could see in it quite clearly the railing along the signal platform upstairs as well as a brown winged spot getting smaller and smaller in the distance. "And I hate to disagree with you, Pinkie Pie, but so far this entire performance has been very much my idea of fun."

Gilda wanted to scowl at him, but she just plain didn't have the time. "All right." She raised her voice. "Cookie! Get out here! We need all paws on deck!"

The kitchen door opened slowly, Cookie peering out. Gilda nodded and went on: "First off—" Her throat threatened to close on her, but she pressed on anyway. "Thank you, all of you, but this place is about to become white-hot, and we need to be ready for anything. So I'm gonna ask you professors and aediles and Doc and Cookie—" Again, she had to force it out past the tightness in her throat. "Go. Get out. Now."

"Praetor??" Gillian's face looked like she'd just been kicked in the stomach.

"Get to Aquileon." Gilda let her gaze move from eye to anxious eye among those who used to be her staff. "Or to one of the towns or outposts or universities or anywhere they know you. Find griffons you trust and who trust you and get the word out about Gustavus going crazy here. You prob'bly won't be able to get things organized in time to stop him, but you can at least keep him from covering it up once he's done."

"But—" Doc didn't look any better than Gillian. "What's going on, Praetor? I've always known Gustavus was—what was your phrase? A pompous bag of suet? But what was he trying to do, storming in and out of here like that?" His expression hardened. "And odd that this would all be occurring right when we have such unusual guests..."

"Belay that," Gilda growled, glancing at the ponies and the little dragon along the table to her right. They were all looking back at her with varying degrees of panic or confusion— except for Dash, her old friend's face shining with something Gilda couldn't quite figure out. Pride, maybe? But why—?

No. No asking 'why' about any of the stuff that had happened so far today while they were still flailing around in the middle of it.

She shook her head. "No one here knows what's going on, Doc," she said. "It's got something to do with the mosaics, though, and we've got a couple hours to figure it out. So!" She clapped her front claws together. "Godfrey and all you fledges, the charter says you're stuck with me. The rest of you? Fly fast, hard, and in the shadows, but get the word out: something weird's happening in Catlatl, and Gustavus is sunk into it up to his flabby neck."

Doc opened his beak, but after a couple heartbeats, he just closed it again, nodded, and stood. "We haven't always seen eye-to-eye, Praetor, but it's been an honor serving with you."

Gillian gave a hiss. "We can't just—!"

"You have to." Gilda somehow kept her voice from cracking. "'Cause here's Plan A: we find Gloriana, get her to tell us what her and Gustavus are up to, and stop it if it's as bad as I'm pretty sure it is. But you all are Plan B. And knowing you're out there in case we blow it here—"

A squeak from somewhere among the cadets made her stop, and she realized the fear stink was still wafting around the room even though Gustavus was gone. Unsure what she should say, Gilda planted her foreclaws on the table. "Yeah, I'm not gonna lie to you, fledges. Things are likely to get a little itchy around here the rest of the day. But you all stay in barracks and don't lose your heads, you shouldn't—"

"Praetor?" Gyre had turned where she stood at the top end of the table, Gimble beside her. "We can help, ma'am. I mean, reconnaissance flights at least, or—" She swallowed so hard, Gilda could see her neck feathers rustle. "Something, ma'am. Please."

Her heart trying again to jam up her throat, Gilda nodded. "All right. Gyre, I'm naming you Cadet Praetor for the duration of these exercises. Pick an aedile—"

"Gimble," she said immediately, and while the smaller griffon flinched a little, he didn't step away or look any more morose than he usually did.

"All right," Gilda said again. "Surveillance only: you are not to engage whatever forces might be coming our way. Anything you see, you flash a message to the signal corps aloft here, and they sing it out. Understood?"

Both the fledges scratched a salute against the floor, and Gyre turned to the rest of the cadets. "Fall out!" she screeched. "Reconvene in fifteen minutes in the gym downstairs with full kit!" She grinned as fiercely as any griffon Gilda had ever seen. "Gonna go out on a limb here, folks, and say that this is not a drill!"

The hall burst into a kind of controlled mayhem, the aediles and the professors joining the cadets streaming toward the door, voices and wings rising and falling, talons clasping talons and even a few hugs getting shared. Gilda watched it all from the other side of the head table and caught Gillian's last heart-rending glance as her former aedile left the room. A minute, though, maybe two, and the hubbub moved out and away, the sound and scent of her troops fading, fading, fading into a silence that echoed from the walls and windows.

She looked to her left, Godfrey still in his place along the wall, Discord lying on the floor with oversized dark glasses perched on his snout and a silver-paneled sun reflector tucked up under his chin; to her right, the ponies and the dragon sat, Dash again smiling where the others weren't. "OK," Gilda said. "Time for Plan A."

***

"—teleport straight to the embassy in Aquileon!" Twilight was saying as they all followed Godfrey into the east wing; they'd stopped at the clerks' desk, Gilda grabbing the garrison's skeleton keys and passing them to her only remaining aedile so they could get into Gloriana's room. "Then I can let the Consulate know what Gustavus is up to!"

And as much as she wanted to take the pony up on it, Gilda shook her head. "Maybe you're a princess, Twilight, but you've seen how that makes some griffons react, and, well, Gustavus has been Grand Imperator for fifteen years. Who d'you think a buncha bureaucrats're gonna believe? And besides—" The thought made her already tight stomach go even tighter. "Whatever's happening here, it might be we'll need a little magic to get us through to the other side."

"That's right!" Dash flicked a wing. "And, I mean, c'mon, Twi! I'll bet the whole griffon government's in on it! It's totally a conspiracy that goes straight to the top!"

Applejack snorted. "A conspiracy to do what? I mean, I'm plum sorry to say it, Gilda, but just 'cause that big ol' general of yours blew up and stomped outta here doesn't prove that one single thing is really happening!"

"But it is." Pinkie barely sounded like herself, something Gilda might've thought an improvement if the earth pony's mane hadn't been hanging from her neck like tree moss. "I don't know what, but—" She shivered. "It's a doozy. And not a fun doozy, either."

"Discord?" Fluttershy's quiet voice stroked Gilda's ears. "You came here because you knew something was happening, didn't you? Something that you knew we'd need your help with."

When no answer came, Gilda looked over her shoulder at the creature, slouching along beside the pegasus. "There are some things," he said then, "that I can't say."

"Can't?" Rarity almost missed a step on Fluttershy's other side. "Surely you're not admitting that there's something beyond your capabilities?"

Discord stretched his upper body, bending and twisting in ways that made Gilda's spine hurt, till his head was hanging upside-down directly in front of Rarity. "A good question. Let me ask you one now." His weird little wings fluttered, and he rose into the air, his long, snaky body swirling in a slow circle above the whole group. "What exactly do you ponies think I am, anyway?"

A heartbeat or two of silence, then Twilight said, "Well, speaking scientifically, you're a draconequus, a legendary species of which you are the only—"

"No, no, no!" He swirled faster and faster, a breeze stirring Gilda's feathers. "Not what I am! What I am!"

"Wait." Derpy was blinking, one of her eyes spinning to follow Discord around, the other looking at Gilda. "Those're the same words, aren't they?"

Applejack had clamped a front hoof on top of her hat to hold it in place against the increasing wind. "A mischievous spirit of chaos, I reckon's what Princess Celestia called you that first time she told us about you."

A loud bell went off, and the smear churning overhead popped back into Discord again, his fore and hind paws spread, a huge smile on his face. "We have a winner!" His smile soured, and he dropped to the hallway ahead of them, one front talon poking himself in the chest. "Except that I seem distressingly solid for something that's supposed to be a spirit, don't I? I mean, yes—" He melted into a brown waterfall, a sudden scent of chocolate filling the air, and flowed over the stone floor to take his usual shape beside Fluttershy. "There's that, of course, but what kind of spirit has any sort of material form at all? I can't help but wonder..."

Apparently none of the others had any more idea how to respond to this than Gilda did because none of them said a word. A clearing of throat came from up the hall, though, and Gilda turned to see Godfrey standing by a door. "Professor Gloriana's room," he said.

The skeleton key opened it quickly enough, but the clutter of papers and books inside covered every desk, table, and chair—even the bed. Gilda looked at it with a sinking heart even as she heard Spike give a chuckle: "This is looking kinda familiar, huh, Twilight?"

"But where do we start?" Fluttershy asked.

Gilda tried to think. "The mosaics. It was the one with Eight Waterfall and the wyverns that really set Gloriana off, and she said something about some books she had about it."

"A manuscript." Twilight stepped past Gilda, her neck craning around and her horn glowing. "A twelve-hundred-year-old manuscript. So that's not going to be piled up with these: it'll need a special, climate-controlled storage unit."

"Here," Godfrey said; he was still standing by the door and pointing to a black metal box along the wall. Twilight started toward it, and Gilda moved to follow when—

"Uh-oh," that strangely tight little Pinkie Pie voice said.

Turning again, Gilda saw the earth pony standing beside a stack of wooden crates piled up to twice her height. Pinkie tapped one of the crates, and Gilda squinted at the stenciled writing on its side, the same words that appeared on all six of the things. "Mining geodes?" she asked.

Pinkie nodded. "We use these on the rock farm all the time. They're really, really good when you've gotta hard, thick patch you need to blast outta the way."

Cold rattled down Gilda's back. "Blast?"

"Ka-boom." Pinkie whispered it, her mane like a strawberry mudslide along the sides of her head. "They're specially enchanted, too, so it only takes a little bitta magic to set 'em off, and it can be any kinda magic: my papa has this lighter he bought in town, and once wunna these geodes is armed, all he's gotta do is stand within about a hundred feet of it, flick his lighter in its direction, and, well, I already said 'ka-boom,' didn't I?"

More writing on the crates was telling Gilda that each box held ten geodes, and thinking of Twilight's glowing horn, Gilda almost cried out. But the way the crates were stacked, the way they were settled half inside each other, the way they'd thumped hollowly when Pinkie had tapped them, it all told her that the crates were empty, the geodes removed. And that meant—

"The city," Gilda heard a voice that sounded a lot like hers say. "Gloriana's mining the city..."

"What??" Rarity had been using her magic to sort through some of the papers on the bed, but now she snapped her head over, the papers scattering. "But she's spent her life preserving the city, hasn't she? Why would she plant mines in it?"

"Magic." Twilight's voice, filled with astonishment: Gilda turned to where the princess and Godfrey stood in front of the opened metal box. A sheaf of brownish-yellow pages floated in the light of Twilight's horn, while Godfrey was leafing through a small, black-bound journal, his beak gaping. "This manuscript," Twilight went on, her eyes skimming across the cramped and faded writing, "the author was apparently a griffon who calls herself Glendora. She says she discovered how to use magic just before the Resettlement and that she—" Twilight looked over at Gilda. "She hid the secret in the ruins of Catlatl."

6 - Sorcerer

Knowing that she'd misheard because there was no way in a thousand feline Hells that Twilight had really just said— Gilda forced herself to breathe in, then out, then in again before she asked, "What?"

"Griffon magic," Twilight said, her eyes moving back and forth over the manuscript floating in the purple light of her horn. "This Glendora claims that she—"

"No!" The word burst from Gilda like a kit clawing out of its egg. "There isn't—! We're not—! It can't be true!"

"Well..." Twilight's brow wrinkled, and a bar of whiter light passed over the pages. "Both my authentication spell and my own experience working with ancient books seem to agree. The parchment, the ink, the patina: everything indicates that this work is definitely twelve hundred years old."

"But—!" Gilda's mind spun. "It could still be phony! I mean, maybe Glendora just imagined it all! Or maybe when the windigoes buried Catlatl in ice, she...she just went crazy!"

A snort from Discord, stretched along the ceiling above the door. "You don't know the half of it, sister."

"Shut up!" Gilda leaped into the air and jabbed a claw at the space between his red and yellow eyes, his snide tone more than she could handle right then. "You weren't there, monster, so don't you dare talk about it like you were!"

Those eyes went wide, then narrowed, and the silence around Gilda got as prickly as a cactus. "Discord," she heard Fluttershy say below her. "Please remember that Gilda finds any talk of griffon magic to be very distressing."

"Well, she should." Every bit of his snideness had vanished, his next words drifting over Gilda as cold and gentle as winter's first snowfall. "Griffon magic destroyed me, after all, and forced me into a nightmare that after a dozen centuries has only recently become bearable."

"You—" Gilda's wings froze, and she dropped to the floor, unable to tear her gaze away from him, the thought robbing her of breath. "Were you there? In Catlatl? During the Resettlement?"

"Discord?" Twilight was staring up at him as well. "Do you know something about all this?"

"As I believe I mentioned earlier—" He wheeled suddenly away from the wall and flopped down among the papers Rarity had been trying to organize on Gloriana's bed, the unicorn shying away from the cloud of dust that poofed up. "—there are some things I can't say." A grin curled his snout. "But since you've got Mother's interminable manuscript right there, you're bound to run across the passage eventually." He snapped the pads of his lion paw, and the pages hovering in front of Twilight began rapidly shuffling themselves. "So why don't I show you the spot?"

Twilight gasped. "Careful! You'll tear it!"

"Oh, please." Discord waved his talons. "That nasty thing may fade and wrinkle with the ages, but it's as indestructible as I am." The roiling of the papers stopped, and he flicked one of his foreclaws, sent it swooping across the room to tap the page that now lay on top of the stack. "Right about there."

Blinking, Twilight looked down. "It says, 'They had to pay, and mine was the power to make it happen.'"

"No, no, no!" Discord sat up, his dark glasses back in place, a black beret perched between his horns and a scarf knotted loosely around his neck. "Acting is about more than reading the lines, Twilight Sparkle! You have to bring the words alive! Like so!" He snapped his claws again, and—

And Gilda found herself with the others at the top of a wind-swept cliff, the sky so blue overhead, it was practically purple. Craning her head, she saw mountains towering around them, their peaks capped with snow, and spreading out below them lay a green and sunny landscape, forested hills rolling gently into the distance.

A place she'd seen before, she realized with a start. When she'd left griffon territory all those years ago, her vow never to return fresh on her beak, this had been her first sight of Equestria Proper, the Pony Lands, the place she was convinced Destiny had meant for her to spend the rest of her life.

"And?" Discord's voice said behind her; Gilda looked back to see him aiming a talon to her right. "Action!" he whispered urgently.

Following his pointing claw, Gilda sucked in a breath. Another griffon crouched further along the edge of the cliff. "They have to pay," this other griffon said, her words choked and trembling, and when she whirled around, Gilda couldn't keep from taking a step back: the other griffon's eyes were literally burning, tongues of flame licking at her eyelashes, smoke billowing around her with a fiery stench of hatred and despair. "And mine is the power to make it happen!" she shrieked.

She leaped away from the cliff and landed beside a large canvas pack. "The decades I've spent training and striving, tearing the very fabric of reality apart and learning to manipulate its shreds! Now at last, it all comes to fruition!" Sickly green sparks rustled among her feathers, and when she spread her talons, lightning flashed from them. "Ponies sewed chaos and destruction over my people's former lands, so I shall sow chaos and destruction over this new Equestria of theirs, cursing and befouling their nests as they cursed and befouled ours!" She flexed her claws, and the backpack exploded, glowing shapes flying out to land among the rocks in a pattern that made every hair on Gilda's body stand straight up.

"Arise!" the griffon roared, and more spidery bolts of lightning crackled from shape to shape along the ground. "Arise!" she screamed again, and the lightning arched over the pattern to create a shimmery sort of dome. "Arise!" she bellowed, and the area beneath the dome began to swirl with colors and lights. "And one final time I command it!" She sprang upward, the fire around her talons almost too bright for Gilda to look at, and struck the dome, slamming her foreclaws against it and shattering it with a roar louder than any blast of thunder. "Arise!"

Blinking away the purplish afterimage of the explosion, Gilda didn't notice for a few seconds that something was stirring in the ashy center of the now dull and lifeless pattern, something brown and jagged that stretched and yawned and sat up smacking its lips—

Or rather, smacking his lips...

"Discord," the other griffon said, and the word seemed to toll like a bell. "That will be your name, my creature, and that will be your function. Move among those vile ponies and show them what horrors they inflicted upon us when they brought about the destruction of my beloved Catlatl!" She crooked her talon at the green countryside beyond the mountains. "Now go!"

Swiveling his head, Discord blinked first at the landscape, then at the griffon. "Not even a good-bye kiss, Mother?" he asked.

"Scene!" a nearly-identical voice shouted from behind Gilda, and she couldn't keep her wings from flaring out when Gloriana's room snapped back into place, the others looking every bit as disoriented as she felt. Except for Discord, of course: his glasses and beret still in place, he folded his arms. "And that, I'll have you know, is the proper way to create a dramatic presentation."

The silence went on for a few more heartbeats, then— "Discord?" Fluttershy asked with a tremble. "Are you saying that that griffon...created you?"

"I'm saying nothing, my dear Fluttershy." He snapped his costume away. "There are some things I can't say, after all." He waved at the old parchment pages, now scattered across the floor at Twilight's hoofs. "Still, if you dare venture into Mother's convoluted prose, you'll find that the proper term is 'manifestation,' the magical process by which an abstract concept—such as, oh, let's say 'chaos'—is forced to take corporeal form, locked into this horrible, horrible world of light and air and gravity, and separated forever from the thoughtless, emotionless, intangible nothing that is the rest of itself." He sighed. "Ah, the good ol' days..."

"Then..." Twilight was staring wide-eyed at him. "It was Glendora's magic that turned you loose on Equestria. And if Professor Gloriana finds her secrets—"

"Yes," Discord said quietly, Gilda's hackles rising as the implications started popping through her brain. "There are many abstract concepts far worse than chaos. And for all that I'm loath to say anything positive about Mother and will not forgive her for making me powerless against her magic, after she hid her recipe book away in the ruins here, she never fashioned another piece of thaumaturgy as long as she lived. She made her way south to the new griffon capital city and spent the rest of her days working as a mid-level government clerk." His voice dropped to a growl. "Still, I somehow think your professor has something more grandiose in mind."

"All right." Gilda could barely keep from jumping out Gloriana's window, but panic wasn't an option. "We need to find Gloriana and stop her before she can blast open wherever this magic's buried." She had to restrain herself again, this time from grabbing Twilight and shaking her. "Teleport us back to the site of the wyvern mosaic, and we'll—"

"Forgive me, Praetor." Godfrey was leafing through the black-bound notebook he'd taken from Gloriana's lockbox. "But unless I miss my guess, Professor Gloriana did not import those mining geodes to help her unearth Glendora's magic." He turned the book to reveal a double-page spread: a rough sketch of Catlatl's familiar streets, Gilda could see, a random scattering of tiny circles drawn over it. "Six boxes of ten geodes, and I count sixty marks on this map."

The room wanted to start spinning, but Gilda refused to let it. "She planted the mines throughout Catlatl? But...why?"

"Distractions," Applejack said, her orange face paling almost to pink. "If'n parts of the city started blowing up, she musta reckoned y'all'd be more interested in stopping that than stopping whatever she was messing around with."

Even more implications smacked around inside Gilda's head as hard as cudgels, and she had to fight another urge: to curl up mewling on the floor. "So if we go after her, the city gets destroyed. Or while we're finding and disarming the mines, she gets Glendora's magic." Gilda clenched her claws. "That's not gonna happen, though, neither of those."

"Two teams," Twilight said, nodding to Rarity. "These are explosive geodes we're talking about, so with that map, Rarity, you can find them by tracking the crystals inside."

Gilda shook her head. "Magic sets 'em off, remember?"

"Right." Twilight tapped her chin. "I go with Rarity, then: I can cast an area-effect shield spell, make all magic in the whole valley more diffuse and less direct. That should let Rarity detect the things without touching them deeply enough to trigger them and should also keep Gloriana from being able to set them off remotely."

Rarity was nodding. "And with these being actual gems, I should be able to locate them much more easily than I could those little mosaic pieces."

"And then—" Applejack stepped forward. "If Gloriana's hid the things up high, I'll buck 'em down, and if she's buried 'em, I'll dig 'em up. Won't need no magic for that 'cept these li'l darlings here." She rubbed her hoofs together.

The tiniest flicker of hope in her chest, Gilda turned to Pinkie. "So how do you disarm the bombs once they're set?"

Pinkie's mane was still almost entirely flat. "You don't. I mean, you can, but you hafta spend, like, twenty minutes hugging each one and thinking calm, friendly thoughts. It takes a while for rocks to relax, y'know, 'specially when they're all wound up and ready to go."

"So option two." Dash spread her wings. "Twi and Rares find 'em, AJ gets 'em out, I fly 'em up to the tropopause, give 'em a squirt of wind magic, and let 'em blow up."

"Too dangerous," Gilda said. "And yeah," she went on before Dash could start objecting. "I know danger's your middle name or whatever, but don't be an idiot. Magic pours off you like a waterfall. You even flap your wings too close to wunna these things, you're likely to trigger it. We need something—" A memory flashed through her, and Gilda whirled to where Spike sat restacking the scattered pages of Glendora's manuscript. "Those balloons you were inflating for Pinkie when she was making that floating rock sculpture! Was that just hot air, or were you using magic?"

Spike blinked up at her. "Just hot air. I mean, I didn't wanna send 'em crashing down onto Princess Celestia."

A gasp from Pinkie. "And I've still got plenty of string and balloons!" Her mane springing up, she dug out a double hoofful of multicolored little rubber things.

Dash had folded her front legs across her chest. "Fine. Pinkie ties Spike's balloons to 'em and floats 'em outta the city. Then can I blow 'em up?"

Gilda scraped a claw at the floor. "If we can get 'em high enough. Shock waves'll damage the site, too, and I really doubt sending an avalanche down from the Wyverns'd be the best thing for it, either."

"Ummm, Gilda?" The sound was so quiet, it took Gilda a couple looks around till she found Fluttershy peering out from behind Discord. "You said something earlier about peregranite falcons in these mountains?"

Swallowing her impatience, Gilda nodded, and Fluttershy nodded back. "Well, I could ask them to grab Pinkie's balloons and fly them out of the valley. They could take them a safe distance away, leave them there, and then Rainbow could use her magic to, ummm, dispose of them."

"But—" Gilda hesitated. Her first question—How d'you think you're gonna get the falcons to do that?—would likely just make the little pegasus start cowering again. So she asked her second question instead: "Aren't peregranite falcons magic?"

Fluttershy opened her mouth, but it was Pinkie who answered: "Animal magic's a totally different thing. Mining geodes get taught to ignore it."

Silence for a quarter of a moment, then Twilight spoke. "Well! There's our plan. We—"

"It's crazy!" Gilda couldn't keep from shouting. "This can't—! It isn't—! There's no possible way—!"

"Gilda." Twilight was suddenly right in front of her, those purple eyes big and deep and serious. "Let us save Catlatl. You stop Gloriana."

And as much as one part of Gilda wanted to cheer—Of course the ponies'll save Catlatl!—another part was growling—Or finish the job their ancestors started and destroy it once and for all...

But there wasn't time for doubts. "Go," she said, then she turned to Godfrey. "You're with me, Aedile."

"And me!" a thick voice called out; Gilda glanced over just as something gray and blonde wrapped a hug around her. "'Cause we're friends, Gilda! And it's gonna take a lotta friendship to make this work!"

Gilda swallowed against the lump in her throat. "Look, Derpy, I—" But the expression on Derpy's face, tough and tender at the same time, made her nod. "All right," she said.

"And me," Discord said, sliding across the room toward her like he had ice skates on. "As I said, I'm not allowed to meddle directly with Mother's magic, but if this carefully-wrought plan of yours collapses into as many pieces as it seems likely to, well—" He stomped a hind leg, and a strip of cloth appeared, wrapping itself around his waist and between his legs. "It's been some time since I did any sumo wrestling, but perhaps I can slow down whatever vile monstrosity this Professor Gloriana of yours manages to manifest from the abstract concepts available to her."

Another swallow, and Gilda looked from the monster to the wall-eyed pony to her trusted aedile, now holding out Gloriana's little notebook with the map for Twilight to take in her magic. He stepped away from the group gathering around the princess, and Gilda sent a quick prayer to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father before saying, "Good luck."

Twilight nodded. A purple bubble formed at the tip of her horn, spread out to encompass the ponies and Spike, and then vanished, taking all of them with it.

"Here," Discord said, tipping over the neat pile Spike had made of Glendora's old manuscript and digging out several pages. "You'll need these."

"Why?" Gilda took the parchment and squinted at the faded writing.

"Directions." He had pulled a set of shoulder pads from the air and was strapping them on. "To where Mother hid her magic. Gloriana's probably memorized them, so it might be a good idea for us to be on our way."

"Right." Gilda turned the pages over to Godfrey and gave Discord a sideways glance. "I don't suppose you could magic us down to wherever those directions are pointing?"

Discord slipped a football helmet over his head, his horns popping out through the top. "I'm already pushing my limits here, so no. I'd best leave the rest up to you."

"Fair enough." Gilda unfurled her wings. "Let's go."

"Weapons, Praetor?" Godfrey asked, and Gilda hesitated.

Just for half a breath, though: "If we go in armed, she'll think we're there to fight. We wanna talk to her, get close, and take her down hard before she can start summoning monsters or whatever. And if she already has..." With a shrug, Gilda gave the chirp for 'tactical withdrawal.'

He chirped his acknowledgment, and Gilda sprang into the air.

***

Down the corridors and out the main doors into the early afternoon sunlight, Gilda refused to think about anything except the mission: refused to think about the empty way her wingbeats echoed through the garrison; refused to think about the absence of cadets guarding the entry; refused to think about the slight breeze stirring up from the south and the barely-trained fledges she'd sent out to face whatever force the Grand Imperator—

No. Not thinking about that. Remember?

Ahead of her, then, lay the city, the fifteen-hundred-year-old remains of Catlatl, abandoned twelve hundred years ago and covering the valley floor from the crumbling docks along the river all the way up to the walls of the Palace. And ticking away inside the city, sixty explosive—

No. Not thinking about that, either.

For all that she wanted to plunge straight down, knowing she could pull out and land just fine, she kept her angle of descent strictly within regulations, Godfrey in perfect position to her right, Derpy's wings buzzing as fast as a hummingbird's on her left, Discord wrapped in padding and flapping like a windsock below her. Eyes fixed on the canal, she swooped to follow it south till she saw the large open area among the ruins, the bazaar where they'd left Gloriana. "There!" she called, gesturing, and she banked over to land, her aedile again matching her exactly.

Derpy came in a bit more heavily, stones slipping under her hoofs, and Discord slithered down with a clattering clank, plate armor now encasing him. "Charming spot," he said, stirring up a cloud of dust with a rear hoof. "I can see why Mother was so fond of it."

Yelling at him would just waste time; instead, Gilda waved a claw at the wedge in the rocks Applejack had kicked open earlier, the green and blue shimmering clearly among the yellows and browns. "That's where the wyvern mosaic's buried." She looked at Godfrey. "Where do we go from here?"

He had pulled the pages from his pack. "Ten blocks due west."

A gasp from Discord, and he wavered like the horizon on a hot day, his armor collapsing to the ground around him. "Perhaps we could hurry?" he asked in a tight voice.

Gilda launched herself toward the western edge of the market square, ticked off the blocks one through nine as she flew past, then pulled into a hover at the intersection. "Do we turn here or at the other end?"

"Here." Godfrey tapped the page, his mouth clenched into such a hard line, Gilda almost expected his beak to start cracking. "The rest of Glendora's instructions make it obvious that she's leading us directly into the heart of Catlatl's meat slaughtering district."

"Mother's non-existent sense of humor." Discord shook his head. "I can't tell you how glad I am to have begun making friends with ponies." A grin squirmed across his snout like a freshly caught fish. "It makes me warm all over knowing how disappointed Mother would be if she could see me now."

Bobbing up and down in the air beside Gilda, Derpy gave a brow-wrinkling frown. "I don't like to say it, but this Glendora sounds like she was pretty mean."

"Yeah." Gilda gestured to Godfrey. "Take point, Aedile, and get us where we need to be."

"Praetor." Godfrey stuffed the papers into his pack and took off over the collapsed roofs to the south-east; Gilda kept pace easily enough, and after cutting in a diagonal over several blocks, he descended to the street, the weathered buildings on both sides still standing three and four stories tall in some spots.

She saw it even as he was raising a foreclaw to point: recently disturbed rocks pushed aside to clear a doorway at the end of the block. She nodded, waited for Derpy and Discord to join them, then said softly, "Anything you're able to do, Discord, feel free to do it whenever you can. Derpy? I want you behind Godfrey and me, and—" There wasn't a single bit of protocol for a situation like this, of course, so she just finished with, "—be careful." Giving a nod to Godfrey and getting one in return, she started toward the open door.

The darkness seemed to crackle as she stepped in, her fur and feathers prickling the way they did before a thunderstorm. The space made her think of a front office or a waiting room, and fallen stones partially clogged three of the four doorways in the back wall. The fourth, though, not only had had the rubble pushed aside, but a faint glow seemed to drift in its air like dust.

Treading carefully over the debris-strewn floor, Gilda moved into the narrow hallway on the other side, Godfrey's familiar paw and claw steps right behind her. The hallway went straight into the building a good four dozen paces, the glow in the air getting stronger with each step, then with a turn to the left, it led Gilda out into—

She stopped at the sight, a part of her wanting to wheel and run. The big room still held more than a whiff of the slaughterhouse it had been all those centuries ago, and the walls weren't nearly as collapsed as most of the interior rooms she'd been in during her three years leading groups around Catlatl. A mound of stone filled the center of the space, more conical than seemed natural, and the still-intact ceiling said that the rubble hadn't fallen into place. No, it looked like it had been deliberately placed there to cover something.

That something, Gilda guessed, was the book Professor Gloriana sat clutching partway down the side of the mound. The professor's beak was moving, her eyes shifting from side to side, her claws turning the pages so rapidly, it was less like she was reading it than like she was sucking the information in through her every barb and follicle. Strange hissing whispers tugged at Gilda's ears, and she wasn't really sure that all the sounds were coming from Gloriana's direction.

The light, though, she could tell where that was coming from: a swirling pillar of greenish sparks reached from the top of the mound to the stone ceiling maybe a story-and-a-half above, the sickly, uncertain glow scattering oddly around the walls like it was bouncing off invisible pieces of glass floating everywhere. Just looking at the light made the urge squirm even harder in her chest to fly as fast and far as she could in any direction that was away from here, but she swallowed against it, started forward, caught Godfrey moving up on her right out of the corner of her eye—

"Not another step." Gloriana didn't look up from the book she was shuffling through. "I've actually enjoyed much of my time interacting with you, Gilda, and you, Godfrey, have been a true pleasure to know. But I will kill you both and destroy this city we all love if you don't do exactly as I say."

Gilda let her hackles spike up. "You can try, I think is what you meant to say."

The professor raised her gaze from the book this time, and Gilda's hackles bristled even higher. Gloriana's eyes weren't pools of liquid fire the way Glendora's had been in the scene Discord had showed them earlier, but they guttered like banked coals, like they were just waiting for someone to toss a clawful of dry straw or twigs over them as fuel for their flames. "Try, Praetor?" She held up a set of talons, something black and rectangular in them. "Perhaps you'd like to try this."

Her claws moved, the box gave off a tiny clicking sound, and Gilda braced herself, hoping and praying to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father that Twilight was right about that shield spell she'd been talking about.

Silence went on all around them, and Gilda couldn't help grinning as Gloriana's expression soured. She clicked the little box a couple more times, and when no explosions rang out either nearby or in the distance, she gave the box a glare before turning that glare toward Gilda.

Gilda shrugged. "When you leave us a map," she said, "you've gotta expect we're gonna use it. So now that all your little pop rocks are outta the city, how 'bout you come on down here and talk to us." Again, there weren't any protocols for this in the manuals, so she swallowed and just said what she felt. "I mean, c'mon, Gloriana! You can't think it's a good idea to mess around with magic! I mean, we're griffons! We don't need—"

"But we do!" Gloriana slammed her clenched talons against the pages of the book, and Gilda swore she heard thunder rumble around her. "You saw the evidence yourself, Praetor! Nine Jaguar, the greatest griffon the world has ever known, forced to debase herself and appeal to the mercy of ponies for the sunlight Catlatl needed! Fifteen hundred years, and the problem's just gotten worse!" The fire in her eyes seemed to glow even brighter, and Gilda felt a cold numbness envelop her wings. "You know as well as I do that they should fear us and respect us. That's what's proper."

"No!" Derpy's thick voice cried out behind Gilda. "We can all be friends! That's always a lot nicer than being mean!"

Gloriana's beak curled into a sneer, and Gilda could only stare as the professor crooked a claw and sent a tiny jagged lightning bolt—not much bigger than an inch worm, some part of Gilda's brain said—flashing through the semi-darkness. The bolt sizzled over Gilda's head, and she forced her head around to see the thing strike Derpy right between the eyes.

Derpy blinked, her mane prickling up a bit. "Hey!" she said, her brow wrinkling. "Why're you giving out tickles? Aren't you s'pposed to be the bad guy?"

A hiss drew Gilda's attention back to Gloriana. "Another few minutes, and you'll find them less pleasant." She waved at the pillar of green fire. "I'll also introduce you to someone who's even less interested in being your friend than I am."

"It's started," Discord whispered into Gilda's ear, then he cleared his throat loudly and slid in front of her, a slouch-brim hat between his ears with a flashing sign on it that said Press. "Professor? Scoop Discord, here, Chaos Daily Times-Picayune." A notepad appeared in his talons, and he began scratching at it with a quill pen. "My readers would love to know what horrific and unnatural being you plan to corporealize and unleash upon the unsuspecting world."

Gloriana smiled, the expression even more ghastly than the last time Gilda had seen it. "Perhaps I'll give you to your big brother as a plaything once I've taken care of this first summoning. After all, you were the greatest mistake my predecessor made." She flipped a few more pages, the light from the pillar getting brighter and brighter. "My observation of ponies has led me to conclude that chaos was simply the wrong force to manifest in the face of their infernal friendliness. The spirit Glendora should have manifested was the spirit of cruelty." She turned over the book's last page. "I think I'll call him Spite."

Behind her, the pillar flared, angry reds flashing among the green, and Gilda finally managed to shake her wings open. "One-five, Aedile! Go!" And she leaped into the air.

"Fools!" Gloriana leaped upward as well, and waves of heat blasted over Gilda from the professor's spreading wings.

"Gilda!" Derpy cried out, and just as suddenly, Gilda felt tiny spots of cold wetness peppering her fur and feathers: snow dropping from a gray cloud growing larger above her.

Gloriana's shriek shook the room. "I will not have this!" Lightning again spat from her talons, and in its spidery bolts, Gilda could make out Derpy diving and spinning through the dimly glowing green air.

Swooping sideways herself, Gilda flapped hard, pulled her wings tight, and dove left, drawing fire from Gloriana's other claws. "This is pointless!" Gloriana shouted. "In another minute, my creature will— Oof!"

The lightning cut off as suddenly as her screeching voice, and Gilda spun to see Godfrey sliding down the side of the rock pile with Gloriana beneath him, the book flying from her grip. Godfrey was dancing as he slid, too, pounding Gloriana with paws and claws all the way to the floor. And when Godfrey flipped off Gloriana's back when they reached the bottom, the professor didn't move, only her sides fluttering with her breathing.

"Hooray!" Derpy shouted, and Gilda had to nod. She'd been fairly sure a standard 'one-five' would work on someone as easily distracted as Gloriana.

"No time!" Discord was yelling, waving what looked like eight of nine arms at the book lying closed in the rubble at his feet. "The summoning's nearly done!"

"What?" Gilda looked from Discord to the pillar; it seemed larger now, the redness whirling through it faster. "But—"

"No time!" Discord shouted again, and Gilda darted back to where Godfrey was picking up the book. "The process can't be stopped at this point! It can only be controlled!"

Ice shot through Gilda's body, but she asked anyway: "Meaning what?"

"Mother's magic!" He waved his paws and claws, the pillar of light definitely bloating, expanding in fits and starts down the sides of the rock pile. "It's still pulling cruelty into a physical form! We might have a chance to disperse him when he arrives, but, well, it's griffon magic, isn't it? And if there isn't a griffon here wielding that magic..."

The fear on his face froze the ice even thicker inside her, but the air thrummed and throbbed, the magic filling it thick and warm and wanting to melt her utterly. Griffon magic, not pony magic: she could feel the difference, could feel its sharp eyes and beak and claws as distinctly as she could feel her own. This was what she'd dreamed of since her days in the state rookery; this was what had driven her out of griffon territory into the Pony Lands; this was the power she'd always known she was destined to carry.

Except—

"No." She stepped back. It wasn't right; she wasn't right. Searching for that power had turned her into a vicious, thuggish shell of a griffon, a caricature of a caricature. Only by rejecting those infantile dreams had she found her true self, her true life as Praetor of Catlatl Garrison. She couldn't turn back. She wouldn't.

"No??" Discord was flailing again. "That isn't an option! We need a griffon and we need one now!"

"Praetor?" Godfrey's voice quivered, something Gilda had never heard before, and when she looked at him, he seemed much paler than usual. "No matter what happens, I will never be anything but your aedile. If that's an acceptable proposition, of course."

Power flowing everywhere, Gilda couldn't catch her breath. If he was saying what she thought he was saying— She reached out and rested her talons on his shoulder. "I'll always be honored to be your praetor."

His nod was of exactly the proper depth. "Then, with your permission?"

She nodded, stepped back again, and managed to squeeze out, "If you'd be so kind, Godfrey."

He spun, tore the book open, leaped straight into the maelstrom, its blood-red and bile-green edges just touching the bottom of the rubble pile—

And everything exploded, Gilda tumbling backwards and smacking hard into the wall. "Mr. Godfrey!" she heard Derpy cry from somewhere, but the roar that rose up then drowned out every other sound, seemed to stab straight through into Gilda's brain like a talon into the heart of a pumpkin muffin.

As much as she didn't want to sit up and look, Gilda did.

The creature was enormous, black and red like a forest still smoldering after a wildfire. It stood on all fours, straddling the rock pile, its head like a bull, its body like a bison, its wings stretching from wall to wall inside the former slaughterhouse. "Who dares?" it bellowed.

Something fluttered up from the floor, and while Gilda's first blink made her think it was a moth, she then realized just how big the monster was and saw that it was actually Discord flopping through the air. "Brother Spite! How dreadfully horrible to see you here!"

The thing's giant fiery eyes squinted. "Discord?" it asked with a voice like bubbling tar. "Surely you've not summoned me to this wretched place?"

"Me?" Discord waved his lion paw and made a rude noise with his lips. "As much as I despise you and everything you stand for, I certainly wouldn't subject you to the sad and endless indignities of corporeal existence!"

"I see." Spite's forehoof lashed out and wrapped itself around Discord like a wedge of partially-solidified lava. "Still, since you're the one I've got, I think I'll blame you and start peeling away the layers of your skin one by one."

"No," came a voice that tolled through the flickering shadows deeper and more clearly than the note of a bell. Gilda's fur prickled up like needles all along her back, and Godfrey rose into view behind Spite, her aedile's wings unfurled but not flapping, his foreclaws spread, lightning dancing and flickering over them. "Instead, I'll be apologizing for the trouble we've put you through and dispersing you back to the abstraction from which you were so rudely wrenched."

The red, glowing cracks across Spite's black forehead narrowed, and he tossed Discord away like a banana peel, the chaos spirit splashing against the wall and running down it to reform into himself to Gilda's left. "Really?" Spite rumbled, lumbering around to face Godfrey. "And if I'd rather not go?"

Every part of Gilda wanted to scream when fire burst from Godfrey's eyes; with a piercing cry, he slammed his talons together, and silver-white bolts of electricity shot from his entire body. The bolts skewered Spite from horns to tail, stabbed into the creature's charred sides, and shattered it into a hundred thousand black shards with a crash like nothing Gilda had ever heard. She flinched, shards flying toward her, but they were breaking up even as she watched; nothing but a peppery smoke ended up washing over her.

Half a heartbeat of silence, then— "Hooray!" A gray streak flashed through the shadows overhead, and Derpy spun into Godfrey with a hug so big, it knocked the both of them halfway toward the floor on the other side of the rock pile. "Mr. Godfrey, you're the best magical griffon ever!"

"Thank you, Ambassador." His voice almost sounded like it should, but Gilda sill couldn't quite get her hackles to settle as the two flew around the cone of stone and landed in front of her. The fire still burned slightly in the back of Godfrey's eyes, after all, and the scent in the air made her think of autumn leaves. But he nodded with his usual exactitude when he said, "Praetor."

"Aedile." Gilda nodded in return. "We're not quite finished yet, I take it?"

"Not at all." That little not-quite-a-smile tugged at his beak. "You shall ever be the claw that brandishes me, and I shall ever be the weapon at your side."

Gilda cleared her throat, not sure she really wanted to think about the implications of all that just yet. "Yeah, well, I kinda meant in the here and now. " She gestured with a wing to where the professor still lay in a barely-breathing heap at the foot of the rock pile. "As much as I might like to, we can't just leave Gloriana here, but with Doc gone and Twilight still dealing with those mines, I don't really know what we can do to—"

"Ah." Godfrey pressed his talons together, and the air around him began to waver again. "If I might, Praetor?"

It took nearly all Gilda's strength not to jump away from him. "What do you have in mind, Aedile?"

Staring at his talons, he said, "This magic I've taken in: it can be a much subtler thing, I think, than either of my predecessors realized." With a hop and a flap, he landed beside Gloriana, his claws suddenly glowing a pale blue. "For the strength inherent in abstract concepts is so vast that one shouldn't need to completely personify them in order to utilize their power. The slightest quivering touch should be sufficient. For instance—" He passed his claws through the air above the professor, and the blue fire began drifting down, falling over her as gently as snow.

Gilda didn't even try to pull her beak closed, the blueness quickly covering Gloriana in a see-through bubble. "Healing," Godfrey said then. "And while a summoned creature would be much more powerful, this way will be less—" He looked over his shoulder, his gaze focusing past Gilda. "—disruptive to the forces involved, I believe," he finished.

Turning, Gilda saw Discord standing among the rubble, his eyes wide, his tail clenched in his paws. "You did it," he whispered. "You made Mother's magic work. You could—" He swallowed so hard, Gilda could see the bulge of it travel all this way down his neck, could hear the splash when it dropped into his midsection. "You could send me back. After twelve hundred years, I could finally go home, could finally be free of this...this—" He shivered. "Horrible physicality."

"Discord?" Derpy blinked from where she sat. "You're going away?" She leaped into a hover. "But...you can't go without saying good-bye to Fluttershy! She'd be so sad if you did! And Pinkie, too! And maybe even Twilight." She touched her chin, one eye rolling to the side. "Prob'bly not Applejack, though: I think she's still mad at you for making her apples all rubbery and bouncy last time she was bucking them."

A scuffling in the rubble beside Gilda, Godfrey taking his place there, his feathers still shimmering with magic. "Your orders, Praetor?" he asked.

With a swallow, Gilda nodded—this was the deal she'd made, after all—and fixed her attention on Discord. "Is that really what you want?"

His head shook so quickly, she heard things rattling inside. "Even just a year ago, I might've said yes. But now?" He pulled in a breath, his chest inflating like a balloon, and when he blew it out, white flowers swirled from his nostrils. "I believe I'll put the whole 'dissolution into the unthinking cosmic vastness' business on the back burner for the time being."

The clench in her gut loosened, but an explosion, muffled and distant, tightened it again. "Was that—?"

"Yes!" Discord stomped a hoof, and confetti popped from his lion paw when he waved it over his head. "That's all sixty of those geodes blown up quite nicely!" He stopped, his eyes going wide and his horns flopping down the sides of his head. "And I missed it!" Scowling, he folded his arms across his chest. "Hopefully, that's the last item I shall ever need to put on my list of things to blame Mother for."

Gilda let a little laugh out, but she didn't dare do more than that: she was still feeling jagged enough around the edges that a good, full-bodied laugh was likely to shatter her as completely as the giant monster whose birth and death she'd just watched. "All right," she said instead, pushing her mind to focus on the more mundane details. "Discord, can you get us to wherever Twilight and the others are? We should have a couple hours before the Grand Imperator gets back, but we need to regroup and figure out—"

Another sound, also muffled and distant, folded her ears, a shrieking cry that had to come from one of the signal corps cadets on station high above Catlatl: 'Enemy sighted,' its pitches and cadences told her. 'On rapid approach.'

Her training had her airborne and through the doorway before she could even think, Godfrey right behind her.

7 - Partner

"What was that?" she heard Derpy ask behind her, but by then Gilda was already halfway down the corridor to the little front room, her wings slicing her through the air as quickly as she could force them.

"Hmmm..." Discord's baritone rumbled, and everything flashed white. A few blinks cleared her vision, and Gilda found herself hovering in the sky above the ruins of Catlatl's slaughterhouse district, Godfrey and Derpy on either side of her, Discord floating below with an ear trumpet pressed to the side of his head. "You know, I'm not sure, Derpy, but I think I may have heard a slight noise as well."

Spinning, Gilda focused on the Eyrie and the three tiny figures circling over the mountain peak. "Get us some information, Aedile," she said.

"Praetor." Godfrey sucked in a breath, and Gilda braced herself. After all, he'd already been the loudest griffon she'd ever met before absorbing the ancient magic Professor Gloriana had tried to take for herself; she had to wonder—

He screeched the cry for 'report,' and the sound smashed over Gilda as forcefully as a windstorm. She arched her wings against the sudden turbulence and was almost sure she could see the cry shooting straight as a slung stone through the quarter mile of empty air directly toward the signal corps cadets.

She half-expected them to tumble like bowling pins when it hit their position, but they just wobbled a little; light began flashing in coded pulses from one of the figures, though, a crispness to the motion that made her think it must be Gutierrez still aloft and on mirror duty.

"It's a report relayed from Gimble six minutes ago just above Sawtooth Pass," Godfrey was saying, Gilda catching about two-thirds of the message the way she usually did with flash code. "The cadets are facing a quarter of the regular troops stationed at Northern Marches as well as a contingent of the Grand Imperator's guard from the capitol." Godfrey's crest went flat against his head. "That will be nearly two hundred griffons, Praetor."

"But how?" Gilda bunched her talons into a fist. "They couldn't've gotten here from Northern Marches so fast! Unless—" It came to her then, and she just wanted to spit. "Damn Gustavus! He's such a stumbleclaw, his aides prob'bly noticed he was gone ten minutes after he left there this morning and scrambled all available paws to track him down."

Godfrey nodded, still watching the flashes. "The Grand Imperator has taken command of the force and is trying to lead them through the pass. Gyre has been employing delaying tactics but has so far avoided any direct confrontation." He glanced sideways at her. "That can't last, Praetor."

"It doesn't have to." Gilda dove to where Discord was floating on his back and eating a sandwich. "Discord! We need to be where Twilight and the others are! Now!"

He swallowed and waved the sandwich. "Some of us didn't get any eggplant earlier, you know, since some of us didn't even know about this party till it had already started."

Rearing back to start yelling, Gilda was interrupted by Derpy bobbing up and down beside her. "There they are, Gilda!" She pointed a flailing hoof over Gilda's shoulder. "Look!"

Wheeling around, Gilda saw a big crystalline bubble floating toward them from the north, three figures inside it—pink, orange and silver-white—a purple one flying beside it, a yellow one behind with gray specks trailing after, and a rainbow moving a good deal faster out ahead of the whole parade. "G!" Dash's voice echoed, and in half an instant, the pegasus herself was skidding to a halt in front of Gilda, wisps of cloud stuff scattering from her hoofs like dust. "Did'ja hear it? When those rock bombs went off? I mean, I thought it was gonna blow me clean back to Ponyville!"

"Oh!" Discord waved his sandwich some more, pieces of it falling out, sprouting wings, and fluttering away. "The ignominy of it all! Why, if I'd been there, I could've made sure that happened! But no! I had to be all noble, sacrificing myself to protect Equestria from—!"

"No time!" Gilda raised her voice. "Twilight! We've gotta get over these mountains—" She crooked a claw at the Eyrie. "—and down to the southern end of the next valley! Gustavus met up with his forces there, and they're already engaging with the cadets!"

Purple light flared, and the bubble picked up speed, Gilda seeing now that Spike was riding between Twilight's wings and that the gray specks—Gilda stared, her breath catching in her throat—were a whole flock of peregranite falcons apparently following Fluttershy. "What about Gloriana?" Gilda heard Twilight call. "Is she—?"

"We got her!" Gilda wasn't anywhere near ready to explain everything that had happened, not with the kids in danger. "But now we really need to get to—!"

"Hang on!" Twilight's horn flared painfully bright, and the temperature around Gilda rose a few degrees, the air thicker, too, like she'd dropped a couple hundred feet.

A blink showed her the jagged teeth of Scaleback Ridge, and she almost crowed—right on target! But the not-so-distant shrieks of griffons focused her attention on the gray, gold, and brown streaks spinning and whirling around and against each other above Sawtooth Pass just ahead.

Derpy gasped beside her. "Gilda! They...they're all fighting!"

"Not all," she said, her mind quickly sorting through the scene. In fact—and Gilda sent a quick chirp of thanks to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father—the vast majority of the griffons, all wearing the dark green vests of Northern Marches Garrison, were hovering at station behind the engagement. Those mixing it up were in the burgundy of Gustavus's troops and the dun of her own cadets. "Aedile!" Gilda yelled, taking off at full speed. "Get their attention!"

The screech he gave then roared past Gilda like a squall, a command every griffon who'd ever trained at a military base would know from sparring practice: 'Suspend!' The sky seemed to boil behind the shriek, and flying into its wake, Gilda couldn't stop a chill from rustling down her back at the thought of anyone other than Godfrey commanding that kind of power—especially when the shout plowed into the targeted griffons like a cannonball dropped into a lake and they splashed everywhere, bodies tumbling, wings wheeling, claws flailing.

'Regroup to Praetor!' she heard Gyre's unmistakably piercing voice cry out, and the cadets spun into a defensive line just below her. A quick glance—spots and smears of red here and there over the gold of their fur and the white of their feathers—showed her they were all accounted for and airborne, but she couldn't spare them more than that. Not with Gustavus's troops regrouping just as quickly under the Grand Imperator less than twenty yards away.

"There!" Gustavus was screaming, his shaking claws pointing in her general direction. "There's the traitor!"

The eyes of his entire troop focused on her, and when Gilda recognized the griffons in green flying slowly up behind Gustavus, her throat went even dryer: not just Gregory, the imperator of Northern Marches, but both Gerhilde and Garfunkle, his two praetors. Six of their aediles held position at the far end of the pass as well as six orderly ranks of soldiers, a quarter of the garrison just like Gimble had reported.

And here she'd really been hoping that the fledge had exaggerated or miscalculated...

She sensed more than saw the motion on both sides of her, Godfrey's steady and expected grayness moving into place on her right, a surprising but very welcome multi-colored mane and blue body sliding in on her left. "Go get him, G," Dash muttered. "We got'cher back."

"See?" Gustavus was still screaming. "What did I tell you? She's absolutely unfit, betraying everything we griffons stand for by consorting with ponies and monsters and—!"

"Monsters?" Gilda couldn't've kept from shouting even if she'd wanted to. And she definitely didn't want to. "The only monster I see here is you, Gustavus! Conspiring with Professor Gloriana to destroy Catlatl? There can't be anything more monstrous than that!"

It was a stab in the dark, Gilda knew, but the fear that flashed across Gustavus's face told her she'd hit truth. "What?" Gregory swooped in beside Gustavus, his praetors closely flanking him. "Praetor Gilda, that's an extremely serious charge to be leveling, and I—"

"Mining geodes, Imperator." Gilda fixed her gaze exclusively on him when she sketched her salute and had to fight against smiling when Gustavus's crest feathers sprang up at the slight of her so pointedly not saluting him. "Sixty of them planted throughout the city." She gestured over her shoulder without glancing back: if Dash said they were there, then they were there. "Princess Twilight Sparkle and her companions were able to locate, remove, and dispose of the items, but if they hadn't been around to help, the touchstone of our cultural heritage would now be nothing but dust and memory!"

Gustavus waved his talons. "Quite the enchanting tale, Praetor! But all we have is your word and the word of these foreigners that any of this took place!"

Gilda put as much disdain into her voice as she could manage. "I've got six empty crates that those explosives came in, sir! I didn't sign any requisition orders or bills of lading for the damn things, but they somehow ended up in my HQ!" She folded her arms across her chest and focused on Gustavus like he was prey. "Makes me wonder who might've had the contacts to procure magic items from pony territory and the ability to get them delivered way up here. And makes me wonder if he might've been stupid enough to put his name on the paperwork."

Gregory's gaze shifted to the Grand Imperator as well, and Gilda knew she'd scored a point: Gregory had been Imperator of Northern Marches for most of the past decade, after all, and Gilda was sure he'd seen more than his share of Gustavus's idiocy in that time.

"Enough of this!" Gustavus's neck feathers were puffing out like an oversized dandelion. "Imperator Gregory, I want this traitor arrested and a path cleared for me and my guard through this rabble and these ponies! At once, do you hear?"

Not a single griffon moved.

"Well??" Gustavus glared at Gregory, then at his two praetors, then finally at his own imperator, hovering below him with the fifty or so soldiers dressed in Aquileon burgundy. "Gilhooley! Arrest these traitors!"

Gilhooley, a muscle-bound sycophant that Gilda had never heard a good word about, just flapped in place, sweat dripping from nearly every part of him. "All of them, sir?" he asked, his voice cracking.

A cackling giggle pulled Gilda's attention up to Discord, floating above the whole scene with what looked like a bag of popcorn in his claws. "Yes, please, go right ahead!" He waved at the hundred and fifty griffons from Northern Marches. "And don't worry! I'm rooting for you!" He pulled several carrots and potatoes from the bag, then peered into it. "I might even have a parsnip in here if you prefer!"

Gilda could practically smell the smoke from Gilhooley's whirling brain, but at least it kept him stationary. Tamping down her desire to throttle her superior officer, Gilda let herself drift toward Gustavus and lowered her voice. "It's over, Gustavus." And while she still wasn't quite sure how the bits and pieces fit together, she had enough details to fake it. "We know what you and Gloriana were looking for in Catlatl, and we know that she double-crossed you this morning when she went after it by herself."

Gustavus's eyes grew wider and wider the closer Gilda got, Gregory and his praetors' brows wrinkling more and more. Gilda spread her front talons. "The thing is, see, Gloriana found it. Right exactly where old Glendora's manuscript said it would be."

"No." The word slipped from Gustavus's mouth so quietly, it almost got lost in the breeze gusting up the pass. "If she— Then I— Then you—" His eyes narrowed again, and his expression took on the same hard edge that Gilda had seen there when he'd been at his craziest earlier this morning. "You're lying! You must be! Because if that fool Gloriana had gotten to Glendora's magic, she would've unleashed it on your pony friends here first, then gone to destroy Canterlot!"

"Magic?" Gregory looked like he's been kicked in the stomach. "In Catlatl?"

"No!" Gustavus screamed the word this time. "It's a lie! She's insane, Imperator! Arrest her at once!"

Gilda shook her head and kept her attention focused on Gregory. "It's griffon magic, sir, really and truly." She shrugged. "We had to take it away from Professor Gloriana because, well, as the Grand Imperator said, the professor was getting ready to use that magic against our pony allies." And knowing that the future of, well, of just about everything hinged on what happened next, she raised her talons and motioned for Godfrey: he had advanced with her, of course, was hovering as always just to her right. "Aedile Godfrey took control of the magic, though, so—"

"What?" all four of the griffons in front of her shouted at the same time.

Gustavus, though, kept shouting. "It's mine, d'you hear? Mine!" He leaped toward Godfrey with his claws spread. "After all these years, no one deserves it but me!"

"Godfrey!" Gilda flared her wings to shoot forward, to intercept the larger griffon before he could injure her aedile, but—

The air just...just shivered somehow, a shimmer that sprang swirling to surround Gustavus. "Forgive me, sir," Godfrey's calm voice said beside her. "But the Uniform Code of Military Conduct forbids an officer from attacking a subordinate and further allows a threatened subordinate to take all reasonable defensive actions. And the slipperiness I've given to the air around you will, I think, render you effectively immobile." Gustavus was flailing away inside his shimmering bubble, fear radiating all sharp and sour from him, and Gilda didn't need to look at Godfrey to know his eyes were on fire: she could feel the warmth washing through her feathers.

She could see the shock on the faces of the others, too, Gerhilde and Garfunkle moving instantly into defensive positions to either side of their imperator. "Gregory," Gilda said, praying to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father that she might find the words she needed, "please. This is Godfrey. You know him. You trained with him; Hells, he trained all of us in the right way to do what we do!"

Gregory might as well have been carved from granite, nothing but his wings moving. Gilda tried not to let the panic rising inside her color her voice. "And what is it that we Guardians do, Gregory? We wield power in service to others!" She waved at Godfrey, chanced a look at him, hovering perfectly in position despite the gold and crimson flames that played shining across his fur and feathers. "Yes, this is magic! But it's not the magic that destroyed Catlatl and nearly destroyed us all twelve centuries ago! This is the magic that could've saved the city if we'd had it! And, y'know, if the griffon who discovered it hadn't been bat scat insane."

She was getting off track; she shook her head quickly. "But it's griffon magic, Imperator, through and through. You can feel it; I know you can. And there's no griffon anywhere I'd trust with that magic more than Aedile Godfrey."

"Hooray!" Derpy's familiar voice rang out behind her.

Gilda couldn't keep from grinning, but the continued dry and wary scent wafting from Gregory's feathers made that grin pretty short-lived. The silence, though, that seemed to just go on and on, even Gustavus going still, his eyes shifting back and forth, up and down as if he was still trying to figure a way out of the situation. The wind whistled through the rocks of the pass, but this time, all Gilda could hear in it was the wind.

"Imperator Gilhooley?" Gregory said then, and the big oaf seemed to come awake, blinking and shivering out of his Discord-induced stupor. "These circumstances, I think, call for a formal inquiry. Do you agree?" And while the look Gregory gave the younger imperator wasn't aimed at Gilda, she still felt its weight like half a mountain's worth of avalanche.

Gilhooley swallowed so hard, Gilda could hear it. "Of...of course, Imperator Gregory! We must prove the, uhh, the traitor's guilt before we can punish her as she deserves."

Gregory's gaze didn't lighten in the slightest. "I'll ask you and your troops, then, to escort the Grand Imperator back to Northern Marches." He gave a 'ten-hut' whistle, and his two praetors snapped to attention. "Gerhilde? Take half our contingent to help guide our colleagues." His smile was all predator. "We wouldn't want them to lose their way, after all."

Gerhilde wheeled and squawked a series of orders that brought three of the green-coated aediles forward with a group of griffons not quite twice as large as the group of Aquileon soldiers. They moved into positions surrounding the smaller force, and only then did Gilda feel comfortable turning to Godfrey. "If you would, Aedile?"

"Praetor." The shimmering field around Grand Imperator Gustavus vanished, and for all that Gilda half-hoped he'd make a break for it and save everyone a lot of rigmarole, she was pretty sure he was too savvy a politician for that. And indeed, he merely nodded to Gregory, scowled at her, then drifted down to join Gilhooley and Gerhilde before the whole crowd of them started down the pass toward Northern Marches.

"Princess Twilight?" Gregory's voice brought Gilda's attention back. "I certainly have no authority over yourself or your companions, but your testimony would prove invaluable to the inquiry I'm about to begin into these events."

"Of course, Imperator," that perky voice rang out at once, and while Gilda had known how Twilight would answer, the clench in her gut still eased a little when she heard it. "We're happy to help our friend Gilda in any way we can."

Gregory bowed, then his gaze slid back to hers. "Praetor Gilda, Aedile Godfrey, I..." He trailed off, a mix of wonder and fear flashing across his face. "Damn," he whispered. "What in the thousand feline Hells have you two gotten us into?"

And for all that Gilda wanted to reassure him, tell him they had it under control and that everything would be just fine, when she opened her beak, she found that she couldn't quite make the words come out.

Beside her, though, a throat cleared. "Permission to speak freely, Praetor?" Godfrey asked.

Gratefully, she nodded, and Godfrey floated forward, flames still fanning from his wings. "Honestly, Greg?" he said quietly, spreading his front talons. "We don't know what this is yet." He flicked his claws, and the flames puffed away, left him looking exactly like the aedile she'd respected, trusted, and worked with these past three years. "This power, though, we know that it belongs to all griffons everywhere, and we know that we can't abandon it anymore than we can abandon the ruins of Catlatl." He cocked his head, that little not-quite-a-smile curling the corners of his beak. "I'm hoping that makes a bit of sense."

For an instant, nothing; then Gregory gave a snorting sort of laugh. "If it was anyone but you, Godfrey, I'd be laying eggs right now," he said.

And Gilda couldn't help it. "Yes!" she crowed, pumping a fist.

An 'as you were' chirp from Gregory made Gilda swallow her excitement and pull herself back to attention: this was totally gonna work, though! "First things first, Praetor," the imperator said. "We still need to escort you, your aedile, and your, ummm, non-griffon associates to Northern Marches for the inquiry, after all."

That sobered Gilda up quicker than anything else could've. "And the cadets?"

Gregory blinked. "I don't see that we'll be needing their testimony."

"Thank you, sir." She spun in place. "Gyre!"

"Praetor?" The cadet rose quickly out of the ranks below to hover in front of Gilda.

Looking from her to the other fledges, Gilda found her throat too tight to speak. She swallowed, though, and forced out, "As of this moment, you've all earned the highest possible honors, and I want you to know that, if I never see you again, it's been the greatest privilege of my life serving as your commander. That being said, I'm afraid this training exercise will continue until further notice." She brought her gaze back up to Gyre. "Return to the garrison and guard the city: you know how to do it, and you do it well. I'll try to get word to Gillian and Doc and Cookie and the professors and all, but till then—" She reached out and rested a talon on Gyre's shoulder. "Catlatl's in your claws, Praetor."

Gyre's eyes wavered, but the resolve in them glowed almost as brightly as Godfrey's magical fire. "We won't let you down, ma'am."

It took some effort for Gilda to turn away, and her vision went suddenly blurry as she heard Gyre shriek 'fall in!' A hundred wings flapped with the whoosh of a single pair, and Gilda gritted her teeth at the sound of her troops heading back to Catlatl without her. "Imperator?" she managed to say to Gregory. "We're all yours."

***

All this choking up was really starting to get old: Gilda swallowed, but she knew from sorry experience these past three weeks that it wouldn't help. Her voice was gonna crack no matter what she did.

Three weeks. How could it possibly have been the better part of a month since the last time she'd stood like this at the head table in the mess hall at Catlatl Garrison and looked out over a group of griffons all standing and looking back at her?

An all-too-familiar clearing of throat made her shoot a glance at Godfrey in his usual place against the wall, Gimble beside him looking as uncomfortable as ever. The glance also showed her the dignitaries standing at the table to her left: the two consuls themselves, Gabriella and Gilbert; Gyre, rapidly graduated and named Praetor of Catlatl Garrison, her new badge gleaming on her spotless vest; and five imperators including Gregory from Northern Marches and that foul parakeet Gilhooley, who'd somehow come through all this without a scratch even while his former boss Gustavus had gotten—

Another clearing of throat, Godfrey not just displaying that infernal smile of his but adding a cocked eyebrow to it. And as much as the sight made her want to pound the table and shout at him, Gilda instead focused on the consuls and gave them a nod. She then turned to her right and nodded to the pony delegation: Princess Twilight and her friends, of course, but also—and Gilda's heart kept threatening to seize right up and stop every time she saw the two of them standing tall and serene and scary as all the thousand feline Hells rolled together—Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.

Needless to say, the aediles had had to haul the big table out of storage for this particular dining-in...

Letting herself take one more breath, Gilda faced the two hundred griffons who'd somehow managed to cram themselves into the mess hall. "Please be seated," she said, and the words emerged clear and crackless despite everything, thank the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father.

Shuffling and scuffling, the whole crowd of them settled to their cushions, borrowed for the occasion from Northern Marches, and Gilda let her moving gaze rest briefly on Doc and Gillian and Professor Garibaldi at their tables, Cookie standing back by the kitchen door, all the cadets and the others who'd been here when Gustavus had stepped in that afternoon and started this whole thing careening down the hill that had led to—

She cleared her throat herself this time while sending a scowl in Godfrey's general direction. "Thank you," she said. She tapped her notes. "I was gonna start by quoting that old draconic proverb about the curse of living in interesting times." She nodded to Spike, seated beside Twilight at the far end of the table. "But you know? I'm really not feeling all that cursed right now." She looked at the consuls, the two of them smiling in a way too phony to be real but too real to be phony. "Honored is prob'bly the best word for it: honored by your trust in appointing me to this position."

Not that they'd had much choice. Two-and-a-half weeks ago in the Consulate's Great Hall with every senator and curial surrounding them, she'd given Glendora's manuscript to the consuls and had explained everything that had happened back in Catlatl. She'd asked Godfrey to demonstrate and had stood beside him while he'd called up fire and wind and a tiny little snowstorm. She'd then gaped at her aedile as he had calmly informed the assembly—after asking her permission to speak freely—that he would only exercise these new powers of his under Gilda's direct supervision.

Things had moved pretty quickly after that. The formal inquiry into Gustavus's actions had become a trial in the well of the Curia, and while he'd tried to blame everything on the still-comatose Professor Gloriana, by the end of last week, the Grand Imperator had been found guilty on fourteen counts including dereliction of duty and the physical intimidation of a subordinate. His appeals were denied, his resignation accepted, and less than twenty-four hours later, Gilda was raising her right foreclaws and swearing to serve, protect, and defend the Consulate as the new Grand Imperator of all griffondom.

"I'd even say doubly honored," she went on, shifting her attention to the five imperators. "I know my appointment's come under some unusual circumstances, but I'd like to thank the Imperators' Assembly for their overwhelming support."

That had also been Godfrey's doing: he knew them all, and they all knew him. "I've never served with a finer griffon than Praetor Gilda," he'd told the hastily-convened Assembly, Gilda choking up quietly beside him, and they'd voted sixteen to four to allow her simultaneous promotions to Imperator and Grand Imperator, something that had never happened before in the history of the griffon military.

"And while I've made some changes—" She glanced this time at Gyre. "—including the way I've inflicted myself and the entire Grand Imperator's staff on the Corps' newest praetor, I think this'll prove best for the situation we find ourselves in." Gilda's insistence on transferring the flag from those plush suites in downtown Aquileon to the drafty classrooms of Catlatl Garrison had caused a minor revolt among some of the career bureaucrats, in fact. But after she and Godfrey had given the demonstration of griffon magic to the whole office and had told them how they would be instrumental in exploring the way it worked, a surprising number had decided to stay on.

Those who'd still wanted to leave, she'd transferred to Gilhooley's staff, and she'd given him the office suites, too. Because yes, Gilhooley was a useless pile of cat meat, but he breathed politics and knew he owed everything he had entirely to Gilda's forbearance. She didn't trust him, sure, but she trusted that he would watch out for his own interests by watching out for hers in the capital.

"It'll be a challenge." Turning away from the griffon dignitaries, she gave what might've been her first actual smile of the proceedings so far to the various non-griffons seated on her right. "But this adventure we've embarked on here—not just us griffons but all of Equestria—it's gonna be one challenge after another. Fortunately, with the help of our friends and allies who have a little more experience with magic, these'll be challenges that we can meet and overcome."

On arriving at the garrison two days ago, the Royal Sisters had calmly assured Gilda that they held no grudge against the griffons for Glendora's actions twelve hundred years ago and that they would do everything in their power to help. Which was great, but Twilight had so far proven to be a little more enthusiastic than Gilda liked. Several times, in fact, Gilda had found herself physically pushing the youngest princess of Equestria back down the hallway to the guest rooms just so Godfrey could get a break from her.

"But Gilda!" Twilight had said this morning when Gilda had escorted her once again to the ponies' quarters. "This magic of yours! It's—" She'd brought her front hoofs up, and Gilda had seen that they were actually shaking. "Incredible! Like nothing I've ever even imagined! Just the way it deals with the variable nature of tau particle creation and destruction makes me want to rethink the whole structure of—"

"Twilight?" Gilda had wrapped her claws gently but firmly around the princess's muzzle. "Right now, we're trying to figure out how to tell time, not how to build a clock."

That had gotten a laugh from the other ponies in the guest room, and Twilight had blushed all the way out to the tips of her ears. "Baby steps, Twilight," Fluttershy had said, putting a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "Baby steps."

Gilda became aware of the silence around her in the mess hall and realized that she'd stopped talking. She glanced down at her notes, but, well, she'd kind of been ignoring them so far and couldn't really remember what she'd just been saying. "So." She looked back out at the assembled griffons, those she knew and those she was just getting to know. "We're ready for this is the thing. Yes, we messed it up before, both ponies and griffons." She nodded to the windows overlooking the ruins of Catlatl covered with evening's shadows in the valley below. "But ponies learned from that mistake, turned away from the coldness that almost destroyed them and us, and became better because of it. Now it's our turn to see if we can do the same."

Which was when the throat-tightening she'd been expecting since she'd started speaking finally caught her. She reached a suddenly shaking set of talons for her water glass and almost dropped it when applause burst out all around: claws clattering together, squawks of approval, hoofs stomping the stone floor.

Maybe the speech was over, then.

***

The dinner afterwards buzzed by in a blur, and Gilda only remembered small scenes from the reception following that: Doc and Princess Luna engaged in what seemed to be a fairly heated discussion in a corner of the Officers' Club, though she saw them smiling during it, too; the members of her new staff clustered around the architect's model of the Grand Imperator's HQ which crews were already building down the east side of the peak from the garrison; Princess Celestia chatting amiably with the consuls, all three of them looking like they took part in violating unspoken cultural taboos every day.

Godfrey strayed from her side exactly once the whole time, asking for permission to be excused before disappearing into the crowd. Not long afterwards, though, while refilling her glass of punch, she caught sight of him talking with Discord of all people out on the balcony that ran along the northern side of the club. The odd creature laughed at something Godfrey said, slapped his lion paw against her aedile's shoulder, and exploded into a storm of confetti that quickly whisked itself away into the night sky.

Shaking his head with that smile on his beak, Godfrey padded back inside and headed straight for her. Gilda filled another glass of the red, fizzy, pineapple-flavored whatever-it-was and held it out to him. "Let me guess. He wants to call you 'Papa' from now on."

"Please, Imperator." He took the glass. "I'll ask you not to give him any ideas." With a sip, he shook his head. "He merely wanted my reassurance that I wouldn't be calling any more creatures like him into existence. I told him I had no plans to, and that seems to have been the correct answer."

Then another group of well-wishers was approaching, and the evening swirled on. Fortunately, the consuls left early along with the imperators and their escorts—Catlatl simply didn't have the room yet for such large delegations to stay overnight, and it was a few hours to Northern Marches. But with the big harvest moon shining brightly over the peaks, even the consuls' smiles seemed to become genuine, old Gilbert shaking his head and saying, "Haven't been for a moonlight flight since my courting days."

Gyre and Gimble, the other aediles, Doc and the professors, the ponies, they all started trickling away not long after, but Gilda found she didn't want to leave. Someone had opened all the balcony doors at some point, and the night washing in smelled warm and alive, Gilda's feathers tingling. She was about to charge down the hallway, roust out Rainbow Dash, and challenge her to a little moonlight flying of their own through the cadets' obstacle course when Godfrey's discreet throat clearing pulled her attention away from the gorgeous night outside.

Her mind froze, her eyes trying to tell her that both night and day were gleaming right there in the room with her. Several blinks later, she managed to see Princess Luna, her smile as slight and mysterious as the newest of new moons, and Princess Celestia, standing beside her sister in what seemed to be her very own puddle of sunshine. "Forgive us, Grand Imperator," Princess Luna said, "but two old and very dear friends of ours wished to unencumber themselves from their accustomed obscurity and deliver their heartfelt congratulations to you and your aedile."

Princess Celestia's face beamed, and she gestured with her wings toward the balcony. Blinking some more, Gilda turned again to the open doors, and—

Two figures melted out of the night and the moonlight: a curl of pure and perfect feline darkness and a silver-white and golden flex of aquiline wings, eyes simultaneously piercing and smiling appearing to focus on her.

Gilda didn't dare breathe. "Cat Mother," she whispered. "Eagle Father."

All her knees folded her into a bow, Godfrey to her right doing the same, and the feline darkness gave a snort. "None of that, now."

The aquiline brightness seemed somehow to be smirking. "Why d'you think we left the mortal world behind, hmmm? All this groveling and scraping: don't see how Sunny and Starry can stand it, truth be told."

"We manage, Uncle," Princess Celestia said with a laugh from somewhere behind Gilda.

The Cat Mother waved a paw. "And you manage it splendidly, Nieces, the both of you." Her attention shifted and seemed to grab Gilda by the scruff of her neck. "As for the both of you," that impossibly rich voice said, flowing over Gilda so deeply, she thought she must be hearing it with her entire body. "Father and I have offered this gift to our children before and have been very disappointed in how it's been used."

"Steady, now, Mother." The Eagle Father's light shone bright but gentle. "Third time's the charm they say, and, well, I find myself liking the way these two carry their wings."

"We'll see." Her tail snaked around to tap Gilda on the beak. "You will keep directing your catty little comments our way, won't you, dear? We quite enjoy them."

Not sure if she was supposed to reply, Gilda found herself saying, "I'll do my best, ma'am."

But the figures were already going foggy, the voices going distant. "We know you will." She heard the Eagle Father like the echo of a whisper wavering through her thoughts. "Take care of each other, and all will be well." The whisper suddenly rose to a full-throated screech. "Lovely to see you again, Nieces! Keep up the good work!" And as quickly as that, the night was just the night and the moonlight was just the moonlight again.

"Imperator?" Godfrey rumbled in her ear, and when she shook herself, blinked, and managed to focus on him, she saw that he was holding out a cup of punch. She took it with a nod, not quite able to speak, and drained it to the last drop.

A sigh drew her attention to Princess Luna, her dark eyes fixed on the balcony doors. "We must invite them to visit more often, sister," she said.

Beside her, Princess Celestia gave a nod, then she smiled at Gilda. "I just wanted to say again, Imperator, that should you or your aedile ever find yourselves with questions, please get in contact with us."

"Anytime," Princess Luna added, "of the day or night."

The two Royal Sisters bowed their heads and left the room, Gilda staring after them till the swirling shadows they cast disappeared down the hallway.

Feeling suddenly very tired, Gilda turned to Godfrey—

And heard a ragged melody being hummed somewhere nearby. Looking past him at the rest of the empty ballroom, she saw that it wasn't quite as empty as she'd thought: Derpy was sitting slumped against the side of the punch table, her eyes curled shut, her head bobbing more-or-less in time to the tune jittering out of her throat.

Warmth tickled Gilda's chest, and she padded over to the pegasus. "Derpy? Ev'ryone's going to bed."

"I'm not." Derpy's head kept bobbing. "I'm practicing."

For an instant, Gilda flashed back to that morning not quite a month ago when she'd stood beside Godfrey in the middle of ancient Catlatl and tried to figure out where this odd little pony had come from. The only difference being, she thought with a grin, that now she would call her friend 'wonderfully odd' instead of just 'odd.' "Practicing what, Derpy?"

Those lop-sided eyes rolled open. "The song I'm gonna sing at you and Mr. Godfrey's wedding," she said.

Gilda's ears pricked, waiting for the immediate snort from Godfrey, but it didn’t come. Glancing over, she saw him smiling that not-quite-a-smile, his gaze fixed entirely on Derpy. "Indeed?" he asked. "And why do you think the Imperator and I will be getting married?"

Derpy's brow wrinkled. "Well, because!" She waved her hoofs. "That way, see, you can come to Ponyville on your honeymoon and meet Dinky!" Her whole face seemed to curve with her smile. "I've been telling my little muffin all about you, and she's already drawn three pictures of you both for me to hang on the refrigerator!" Her wings puffed out, began buzzing, and flapped her into the air. "So, y'see, you've got to get married."

Her feathers feeling suddenly too warm around her, Gilda said, "Good night, Derpy."

Another big smile, and Derpy swooped toward the door.

Silence settled over the room like a blanket on a cool night, then Godfrey said, "May I escort you to your quarters, Imperator?"

Gilda couldn't help grinning. "And nothing else, Aedile?"

He shrugged ever so slightly, his beak showing her a full-fledged smile. "I'm yours to command."

That got a laugh out of her, and she turned for the door. "How 'bout we stick to one massive, world-shattering paradigm shift at a time, Godfrey?"

"As you wish, Imperator."