Expedition

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 4

Chapter 2

The fireplace had gone out when they woke up, about a couple of hours or so before sunrise. After wolfing down some oats and dried fish, Lenny peeped out the windows and found nothing but pitch blackness beyond the frosty glass.

Here we go.

They had little time for idle chatter as they readied up for the long haul.

After getting everything on, Lenny flexed his wings to ensure that they weren’t obstructed by the hefty array of bags he’d strapped to his sides. He then trotted in a tight circle around the living room, testing the fit and tautness of the straps. Chafing and open sores ranked pretty highly on his list of things to avoid, especially considering how much everything weighed.

All together, they had enough supplies to last for five days, which they could easily stretch to seven or eight if the situation called for it, consisting mostly of dried meat and hard bread. Lenny also kept a pack of pressed hay and grain for himself, since he could not subsist on meat alone for extended periods without risking his health in some way.

They each had their own sets of tinderboxes, oil lamps, blankets, tin pots, water canteens and other essentials. To compensate for his lack of opposable thumbs, Lenny had come equipped with a modified set of bracers, straps and steel hooks which he wore on his forelegs so that he could climb as well as any griffon, and they also doubled as a mount for his slingshot if necessary. He’d strapped his sheathed hunting knife to his foreleg and stowed his sling and pebbles away in one of his packs. A harpoon would’ve been nice, too, but he didn’t think it likely that he could make good use of such an unwieldy tool for an underground trip.

“How do I look?”

He turned and found Audri studying herself in front of a cracked mirror in the corner. She looked like one of those griffs going on a long pilgrimage to far-off lands, heavy-laden with supplies and tools for the journey. Either that, or a lonely merchant who couldn’t yet afford a caravan.

“Good enough,” he replied as he tightened the last strap.

“That’s it?”

Lenny raised an eyebrow. “Is there a beauty contest nobody told me about?”

“What? No.” Audri rolled her eyes and beckoned him over. “This one’s a little more interesting than that!”

Frowning, Lenny trotted to her. Once he got within reach, she pulled him close so that they stood side by side, facing the mirror.

“Something I’m supposed to see?” he asked.

“Yeah. The siblings from Skarhold who helped bring back the Idol of Boreas.”

“Hah.” He shook his head. “Getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?”

“I call it planning in advance,” she replied, playfully punching him in the shoulder. “Like it or not, we’re leaving a mark on our clan’s name once this is over, especially after that little stunt you pulled yesterday. Got to look the part, don’t you think?”

Lenny peered into the mirror and saw a bluish-grey pegasus with pale yellow hair, posing with a griffon who had a tan coat and mottled white plumage. They wore red face paint to accentuate his sky-blue and her golden eyes, honouring Skarhold’s traditions in hunting and foraging. Adding exploration and archaeology to the list wouldn’t hurt, and he saw no reason to pass up the opportunity when they were already all geared up and ready for adventure. A little corny, maybe, but he wouldn’t complain when Audri seemed to enjoy the idea so much.

His reflection grinned. “Find us a bard and we’ll make history.”

“That’s more like it. Come on!” Audri half-dashed over to the front door and unbolted it. “Time to—oh fluff, that is cold!”

Lenny’s breath instantly turned to fog when the blast of freezing air flooded the living room. Say what he might about Griffonstone’s upkeep, but they certainly knew how to set up proper insulation. He’d hardly felt any of the chill from inside Gilda’s house, in stark contrast to the hoarfrost visible on the ground outside. The mountain range had some seriously fickle weather if it could go from rain to ice in less than a day.

He chuckled when his sister shivered, puffed up her feathers and muttered, “Don’t know how griffs here put up with it.”

“Really? It’s not too bad, actually.”

An eyebrow went up. “Maybe you’ve just got more… insulation.”

“Har har.” Rolling his eyes, Lenny barged past her and leapt into the sky.

They flew over the tops of the houses, weaving in and out between plumes of smoke from chimneys on their way to the King’s Roost. Lenny counted just over a dozen griffons assembled in the barren field outside the inn, including the guards stationed at the fences. Lamps hung from poles staked into the ground next to oaken tables to provide light as they worked, casting long shadows in every direction.

An attendant came hurrying over to verify their copies of the contract as soon as they landed. Once done, he pointed at a miniature mountain of equipment and said, “Quartermaster’s that way. After the inspection, he’ll provide your standard-issue supplies. Be quick about it; Lord Karhonnen wants to move out by sunrise.”

After submitting themselves to a brisk inspection by a couple of surly griffons, they received several packs filled with food and other supplies to complement their own, most notably sets of personal harnesses and rope to link to one another for the climb down.

After that, they met with a representative of Griffonia’s leading bank to confirm their account details for the advance payment. The process was more tedious than Lenny cared for, and since Audri had a far better eye for detail than he did in that sort of thing, he left her to deal with the accountant whilst he surveyed the site and inspected their would-be companions for the expedition.

He found it rather easy to sort out the pick-ups from the ones directly in House Karhonnen’s employ. Those who answered directly to Reynard wore blue cloaks embroidered with the emblem of black, outstretched talons, poised for the kill. Everyone else had a more rag-tag appearance with mismatched gear and, in a few cases, slightly malnourished physiques. There was a pair of scruffy vulture-like griffons – probably twins – dressed in hardened leather armour with knives on their belts who looked as likely to go out mugging as exploring; a surly, dark-feathered fellow wearing a bone necklace and a longbow slung on his back; a rather large peregrine-head who wore scale mail and seemed to walk on her hind legs all the time; and several others that he couldn’t clearly make out in the hustle and bustle.

Not the most promising companions in the world, save for maybe the big female.

In comparison, Reynard’s armed subordinates looked a tad more impressive. Two of them in particular stood out: a massive guy with the head of a grey hawk and hindquarters of a snow leopard, dressed in chainmail with a sword strapped to his belt, and an odd sort of reverse-hippogriff with a pony’s head instead of an avian one, complete with pale, purplish mane and bright orange eyes. Both wore the House’s cloaks, and the… mare flanked Reynard like a bodyguard whilst he conversed with the big griffon, gesturing emphatically and pointing repeatedly to the map on the table before them. Judging by the big guy’s frown and tense posture, he wasn’t too happy with what he was hearing.

“He sure looks annoyed. Wonder what’s got his tail in a twist?” Audri quipped.

Just then, the big griffon arguing with Reynard glanced in their direction and locked eyes with Lenny.

His hackles immediately rose when the griffon abandoned his conversation – much to Reynard’s apparent displeasure – and began plodding towards him like a mountain of bone and muscle.

Lenny unfastened the buckles on his equipment and set them all on the ground; he knew trouble when he saw it, and judging by the way others paused whatever they were doing to watch, things were going to get ugly in short order.

Audri had tensed up as well and moved closer to him, but he quickly stopped her with a sidelong glance and a discreet shake of his head. Reluctantly, she put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently, then retreated to give him some space as he trotted forward to meet his adversary. If it came to a fight, it wasn’t hers to win, especially not when they had an audience watching.

“Lenny Redtail,” said the griffon as he towered over him.

He stood firm and met his gaze. “That’s me. Something you need?”

The griffon inclined his head just a tiny bit and said gruffly, “I am Sir Grell, Champion of House Karhonnen. Lord Reynard tasked me with leading this expedition of his, and now—”

“Might I remind you that I will be leading from now on?” Reynard called out.

Grell stiffened. “You most certainly have, my lord.” He then focused on Lenny and continued, “It has come to my attention that you insulted Lord Karhonnen in the presence of his subjects yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“And you still wish to join his expedition?”

Lenny didn’t blink. “Yes.”

The corners of his beak curled upward in a grin, but his black eyes remained cold and hard. “Would you consider yourself stupid or brave?”

Lenny could tell that Grell was just toying with him. The way he answered mattered more than the answers themselves, so he simply shrugged and said, “Both. Is there a problem?”

“No, I suppose not. Every king needs a fool.” This time, a hint of mirth twinkled in Grell’s eyes. “You’re quite the interesting long-face, Lenny Redtail, which makes it all the more regrettable that I have a duty to perform. Defend yourself.”

Lenny ducked when Grell swung a huge fist at his face, and then spun around to kick up dirt with his hind legs. Like most griffons who’d tangled with him, Grell had probably expected him to buck and instead got a faceful of dirt for his trouble. Less than what Lenny would’ve liked because ice had hardened the ground, but enough to distract his opponent. He then twisted back around, lunged at Grell and stomped on his toes, hard enough to feel something crack. A quick, powerful beat of his wings propelled him backwards and out of harm’s way when Grell swiped at him with outstretched talons.

Rats, he’s fast!

He felt a streak of hot, itching pain on his foreleg where Grell’s talons must’ve grazed him. A split-second afterward, Grell barrelled forward, intent on ramming him head-on. Rather than resist the blow, Lenny loosened up and spread his wings so that air resistance would absorb most of the impact. Still, the sheer force behind the attack winded him, and he lost his footing as soon as his hooves hit the ground a good ten feet or so from the point of contact.

As soon as he got back onto his hooves, a grey blur appeared seemingly out of nowhere by his side and took another swipe at him. Lenny managed to block the attack with both forelegs, but then a wing swung out from the other side and struck him in the temple. The world spun, and Grell followed up with a punch right in the midriff, driving out what little air remained in his lungs. Before he could recover, a wall of blue cloak slapped him in the face and stung his eyes. Blinded and gasping for breath, he swung wildly and struck something that felt like chainmail overlaying solid rock. He thought he heard laughter somewhere in the distance as his opponent kicked him in the gut and then, as he curled up in pain, planted a foot on his back and sent him sprawling to the cold, hard ground.

Gritting his teeth, Lenny blinked rapidly to clear his eyes and tried to rise, but found that he could not with the weight of a mountain pressing down on his back and wings.

“Enough.”

He felt pressure at the base of his skull and a pricking sensation on his throat. Grell had him in a death grip and could easily sink a talon into his jugular whenever he pleased.

“Yield. Or do you need more persuasion?”

Lenny squirmed, but Grell had far too much of a weight advantage over him. He could not break his grip or wriggle out from under him.

“I… I yield,” he murmured, feeling his cheeks burn as some of the guards chuckled amongst themselves.

Grell pressed Lenny’s neck to the ground, hard enough that it interfered with his breathing. He then leaned close and said, “You may still join us if you wish. However, remember your place: you follow Karhonnen’s orders in this expedition, be it from Reynard or myself. Also, if you insult my lord again, I will break more than your pride. Is that clear?”

Between the agony in his chest, neck, squashed wings and constricted throat, Lenny only managed a strangled grunt.

“I didn’t catch that, boy.”

He growled and strained against Grell’s weight, gaining just enough leverage to free up his airway and draw a quick breath before his muscles failed.

“Yes,” he choked out.

The pressure lifted, but he could do little more than simply lie on the ground with Grell’s shadow looming over him whilst he caught his breath. After what felt like an eternity, he managed to struggle back onto all fours, suppressing a groan when his aching muscles protested.

“That will do,” said Grell, and he began marching back to Reynard’s table, gingerly nursing his right hand. Halfway there, he looked over his shoulder and said, “You’re a dirty fighter, Lenny. Is everyone in Skarhold like you?”

“You have your talons, I have my moves. We use whatever gifts the Sky Mother gives us.”

Grell studied him in silence for a moment, then turned around and hollered, “All right, show’s over. Briefing’s in fifteen minutes, and then we move out. Get ready or get left behind!”

Almost like clockwork, everyone stopped watching and went back to business.

“You might want to sit this one out,” said one of their companions as they walked past him. “Leave the hard work to griffons, eh?”

Lenny didn’t answer, even though he would’ve loved to take on the glorified pigeon in a fight. Challenging him so soon after losing spectacularly to someone else would reek of desperation, so he simply ground his teeth in silence as the fellow gave him a sympathetic smile and went on his way.

“I think he means well,” said Audri when she came to him.

“That makes it worse.”

“Yeah…” She inspected the cuts on his foreleg and began dabbing them with some cotton from her pack. “Shallow and clean; they’ll heal. How are you holding up?”

Lenny stretched and winced when his sore spots sent little knives digging through his nerves. He was going to have some lovely bruises tomorrow. Still, he bulled through the pain to test his flexibility and check for fractures. Once done, he sighed and said, “It hurt like you wouldn’t believe, but I’m feeling a lot better already. I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“I’m not surprised. He looks like the kind of guy who trains soldiers, and he’s freaking fast for his size.” She shook her head. “Well, at least you got him once, right? His fingers must feel real tender right about now.”

Lenny grinned. “Crowning achievement right there. Where’s my knighthood?”

Audri chuckled and looked east where the sky had already brightened to a light blue glow just before disappearing behind Griffonstone’s neighbouring peaks. Then, she picked up one of his discarded packs and said, “Let’s get these back on you before we miss the briefing.”

Lenny had to admit that Reynard had surprised him by coming along; he’d fully expected him to relax in Griffonstone whilst everyone else did all the dirty work. Altogether, their expedition was fourteen members strong. Reynard, his hippogriff companion, Sir Grell, and four guards led from the front whilst the rest of them hirelings followed, with him and Audri bringing up the rear because he didn’t fancy putting up with snide remarks or staring for the time being. He just needed a little more time for his bruised pride to recover.

The mountain warmed considerably once the sun came up, sending tiny streamlets of ice-melt flowing alongside the rocky path down Griffonstone’s steep slopes towards the Abysmal Abyss. They descended about a quarter-mile northeast before reaching the gaping chasm that ran nearly the full length of Griffonia, from the northern glaciers all the way to the coast in the southeast, nearly three hundred miles or so, according to the most reliable maps. Estimates of its depths ranged anywhere from several hundred feet to Tartarus from those who claimed to have reached the bottom, but the most level-headed griffons believed it to be just over three miles, similar to Griffonstone’s height above sea level.

They’d planned to walk along the edge till they reached the area where Gilda had found the idol and then go down straight down, as far as they needed to retrieve it. Hopefully for no longer than a week, and without any accidents.

Gnarled pines and grass dotted the rocky landscape on either side of the chasm. A constant, dull roar resonated from it – audible even though they kept a respectful distance from the edge – like a massive waterfall even though no significant amount of water ran that close to the surface. It took some serious wind velocity to make it sound like that, which explained why no smart griffs ever attempted to simply fly down there. At times, the roar shifted to either a forlorn howl or a low moan that made his hair stand on end; if anyone asked him to describe what a thousand lost souls would sound like, he would’ve readily suggested that they take a stroll by the abyss.

Upon reaching the place Gilda had indicated, everyone put on their harnesses and linked up with rope for the descent, going in three series of up to five. The chasm was relatively narrow at this point, with the other side less than a hundred feet away when it usually spanned more than five hundred or even a thousand in some areas. Though weathered, the rock face still provided plenty of anchor points for the steel hooks fastened to his bracers, allowing him to keep up with the others. Before long, Lenny had settled into an almost hypnotic rhythm of repositioning one limb after another. No one spoke save for the occasional command from Grell or warnings about treacherous footholds, and the incessant roar of wind from the deep.

The deeper they went, the stronger the wind grew. His mane and tail constantly whipped around in the turbulence that clawed at them, just waiting to pick them like beetles off the wall and fling them into darkness. Every now and then, they found ledges or outcroppings with enough room for a few of them to sit on at a time, so they took turns resting whenever they could.

By the four-hour mark, they found Arimaspi’s bones nestled in a hollow, exactly as Gilda had described. Reynard and his cronies helped themselves to its grave first, picking it clean of any jewellery that the incessant gale hadn’t already snatched away. Once done, they clambered a little lower to make room for the rest of them.

“Ten minutes and then we move on. Make it quick!” Grell shouted over the roar of the wind.

Lenny simply sat down and waited his turn.

“Pretty sure it’s already picked clean,” said Audri.

“That’s not what I’m after,” he replied.

Still, that didn’t stop the others from trying for gold. The twins went about it with great enthusiasm, sticking their talons in just about every nook and cranny. Others rummaged through the detritus beneath the bones. Sure enough, one by one they came away empty-handed and went back to the ledge to join those waiting.

Once he had enough room, Lenny trotted over to a massive arm and used his knife to prize out one of the six-inch claws from its socket. He slipped the souvenir into one of his packs, turned around, and nearly bumped into Grell’s armoured chest.

What the—

He instinctively leapt back, ready to defend himself and everything, before he realised that it was actually that big female griffon he’d seen earlier – the one who walked on her hind legs like a diamond dog. Up close, he saw that she almost matched Grell in size and musculature. She had grey-brown plumage, black fur on her hindquarters, blue eyes and tied her crest behind her head like a ponytail, and in addition to the supply pack, also wore a sword strapped to her back and a long knife at her belt.

“That’s quite a step beyond simple grave-robbing, don’t you think?” she asked in a distinctly Griffish Isles accent. A little deep in tone for a female, too.

Although she had her arms folded in an imposing stance, her merry eyes and half-smile seemed friendly enough, so Lenny found himself relaxing as he answered, “He’s dead. I don’t think he cares.”

She studied him for a moment, during which he wondered if she was one of those who bought into the old ‘angering the dead’ stories.

Eventually, she grinned and offered a hand. “I’m Erin. Nice to meet you, Lenny.”

He almost forgot to extend his hoof in response. “Uh… right.”

After vigorously shaking his hoof, Erin looked past him and sighed, shaking her head as she planted her hands on her hips. “The great Arimaspi... Poor blighter came so close to making it out. Would make for a very interesting story if he’d brought it back to his homeland, wouldn’t you say?”

“Umm, yes?”

“Quite.” She clicked her beak thoughtfully and continued, “If only we could’ve seen what happened. Why did he stop here, of all places?”

“What’s going on?” asked Audri as she came padding over.

“Hi there, name’s Erin!”

Lenny ignored her as she gave his sister the same bone-crushing handshake and cheery introduction, frowning as he inspected the skeleton. It did seem odd, now that she’d pointed it out. He could see no fractures or notches on the bones to suggest grievous injury of that nature, but something else was off, too. He just needed to—

Oh. That could explain it.

Aside from the bones, there was no trace of its hide, hair or any other stains on the rock to suggest rotting fluids. Something must’ve gotten to it, though he couldn’t tell whether that happened before or after it had kicked the bucket. After was only normal. Before could mean trouble.

“Something might’ve killed and eaten him,” he said.

“Aye?”

He looked at Erin and Audri, then pointed at the skeleton. “Clean bones and nothing else; I don’t think he ever got around to decaying properly. Keep your eyes open; if something managed to take him down…”

“Then griffons are probably prey, too,” Audri finished.

Erin whistled. “I’ll be sure to send word to the big cheese. If anything happens, maybe he’ll get to test his skills on something other than someone half his size, aye?”

As if on cue, Grell shouted, “On your feet, everyone. Break’s over!”

“Ah, back to work. Nice meeting you two. Lovely chat!”

With that, Erin saluted them and re-joined her climbing partners for the descent, leaving Lenny and Audri staring at her as she whistled an admittedly catchy tune.

“What did she want?”

“Just small talk, I guess.”

Audri narrowed her eyes. “Yeah… I don’t believe that for a second. I’m not sure I like the way she was watching you. Be careful, okay?”

Aside from her abrupt friendliness, Lenny couldn’t remember anything suspicious about Erin’s behaviour. Still, he nodded in agreement and followed her over the ledge into the darkness.

Progress slowed from that point on. Reynard wanted everyone to fan out in groups instead of going in a straight line, just in case the idol had snagged or lodged itself onto something on the way down. One of the soldiers recommended angling their descent downwind, which Reynard agreed to until someone else pointed out that the winds sometimes changed direction; Lenny found that incredibly inconvenient. That left them with the original plan: get to the bottom and then search in both directions until they found it or ran out of supplies. With luck, they might just stumble upon it without needing to go all the way down.

Three hours later, Lenny found himself very thankful for his relatively active lifestyle as a hunter in Skarhold. His muscles burned with exertion and his heart rate had accelerated to a constant drumming in his chest. He felt slick with sweat, and occasionally got to taste someone else’s when stray turbulence blew in his face. Only about half of their party seemed to fare as well as he did; the vulture twins were panting visibly, as well as two or three of Reynard’s soldiers – to be fair, though, they were wearing heavy chainmail.

No one could rest properly. Aside from halting their descent every now and then, they had yet to find a suitable ledge to rest on since leaving what Reynard had dubbed Arimaspi’s Hollow. If they didn’t find a good spot soon, they’d have to drive pegs into the rock to serve as anchors whilst they hung on to rest, which did not sit very well with him. He’d much rather have the additional safety afforded by a ledge or mild slope.

They’d gone deep enough that only a dim mockery of sunlight illuminated their way, reaching down from the thin, blue line high above. At Grell’s command, a few of them had already lit their lamps.

“You okay?”

Lenny didn’t answer.

Front right, rear left. Front left, rear right…

“Hey!”

He felt a tug on his harness from above and put his scowl away when he saw Audri looking at him with one raised eyebrow. “Sorry. Was counting steps… I’m fine.”

“Liar,” she huffed. “You’re… totally winded.”

Lenny let his breath whoosh out and wiped his brow. Then, he grinned up at her and retorted, “Right back at you. How long has it been?”

“Four hours… since… the cyclops,” panted the griffon with the longbow, just beneath him.

For a moment, Lenny felt annoyed that the guy had butted into their conversation, but decided to let it drop when he remembered that he’d accidentally listened to some idle chatter from the others earlier, even though he couldn’t remember what they’d talked about.

“Thanks,” he said.

The fellow grunted in response.

Then, Lenny heard a scraping noise followed by a shriek. A split-second later, the harness tightened painfully around his chest and belly as the rope went taut. He fumbled with his footing but managed to wedge the ends of his steel hooks into some cracks just before the wind grabbed his companions and peeled them off the rock face. His bracer straps held, but they bit hard into his foreleg for bearing the load of two fully-laden griffons trailing out at an angle behind him.

Lenny gritted his teeth as he pulled himself up with one foreleg and snagged his other pair of hooks onto rock, then held on tight. He couldn’t quite make out what Audri and the others were shouting. A moment later, the angle of the rope shifted. Risking a look down, he saw Longbow Griffon and the one guard below him swinging back to the wall.

Well, not so much swing as slam into it from the force of the wind that caught their outstretched wings. The rope went slack once more, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

“Sorry! I slipped,” the soldier called out.

“Bloody Tartarus,” muttered Longbow, shaking his head. He was practically hugging the wall as if it might disappear at any moment.

Lenny grunted and motioned for them to keep moving. With the way his heart kept pummelling his ribcage, he didn’t trust his voice to hold steady with a verbal answer. A brisk chirp from above caught his attention, and he waived Audri’s look of concern with a shrug of his wings.

Less talk, more walk.

A little later, Erin’s group had a close call, too. He never saw exactly what happened, but the series of shouts and curses told him enough. By the time he’d looked in their direction, they had already recovered and reluctantly resumed their descent.

Luckily, they encountered a fault line of sorts after just one more hour of descending. Geological formations jutting out from the wall provided some shelter from the wind, and a series of rock shelves interspersed between them were just level enough for them to safely rest on. He even detected a hint of relief in Grell’s voice when he called for everyone to stop there for the evening.

As he expected, Reynard chose for himself the safest rock shelf in the middle of the cluster, and everyone else made do with those surrounding it. Lenny and Audri picked a ledge farther out from the others’ and hammered pegs into the rock to secure their equipment, then treated themselves to some extremely indulgent stretching in what little space they had, groaning and sighing as their joints cricked and popped.

Audri arched her back like a cat and murmured, “Oh yes, that’s so good.”

He rolled his eyes as he righted himself and fished a lamp out of his bag. After lighting it, he stuck another peg into the wall and hung it just above head height. The chasm had some degree of curvature in and out on the way down, so sunlight had no direct path to their position this deep. Night had fallen on the surface anyway, so they’d have to rely on their supply of oil to keep them going further.

They made a quick meal of some bread and rabbit jerky, just enough to satisfy their hunger without going so far as to stuff themselves to lethargy. The others did the same at their respective perches, with varying degrees of excitement. The twins played dice with the guy whose name Lenny couldn’t remember whilst Longbow brooded in silence. Reynard conversed quietly with his hippogriff companion. Naturally, his soldiers had the most camaraderie amongst themselves, and there was an almost festive atmosphere surrounding the biggest ledge where they sat in a group and chattered loudly as they ate. Erin even joined them after a while to play some jaunty tunes on a little mandolin.

Lenny frowned as the whole scene played out before his eyes. Something about it felt wrong to him, though he couldn’t yet put a feather on it. His ears twitched.

“I’m going exploring,” he announced to Audri.

She cocked and eyebrow. “You’re awfully eager to get back into action. Something the matter? Also, for the record, I don’t think that’s the smartest thing to do right now.”

He gazed into the abyss, assuring himself that there was nothing in the impenetrable darkness staring back. After a while, he turned back to her and shrugged. “Long day. Just need to clear my head and think for a bit.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Well… okay.” She nodded reluctantly. “Just wear a rope and yell if you need anything. I’m tired and I’m staying right here.”

After resting a little more, he took a spare lamp, tethered himself with plenty of slack to cover some distance, and set off at a horizontal climb away from the crowd of thirteen. Bit by bit he edged away from them, until their noise dwindled to a dull background hum that melted together with the roar of the—

Wind…

Lenny tested the grip of his hooks, then leaned as far away from the wall as he dared and cocked his ears.

The airflow in the chasm no longer roared, but had slowed down to a low, hollow moan. Less eerie than the sudden dirges it periodically shifted to, and much steadier in tone. The shift must’ve happened gradually, otherwise he probably would’ve noticed it sooner.

Slower wind meant less danger and should have made him feel better, but his ears still refused to stop twitching every now and then. He shook his head and went further, taking extra care as he clambered over the lumpy projections that partially protected their perches from the wind. The noise of his companions dwindled further to near-silence and their lights a dim glow when he got to the other side, and that’s when he noticed a significant change in the nature of the chasm’s wall.

The wall had a massive, crater-like depression in it, large enough that the light from the lamp tied to his belt barely revealed its rim, and deep enough that the wind simply flowed over rather than into it. He could already feel an increase in humidity just going a few feet in, and its surface was pockmarked with holes a few inches wide. A sour scent wafted out of the nearest one, and Lenny frowned when he saw brownish stains flowing out of it.

Whilst gazing at the hundreds or possibly thousands of holes, he briefly toyed with the idea of poking his hooks into one of them, but decided that he’d rather not tangle with anything that lived this deep underground. He was probably risking enough just being there alone. His ears twitched when he heard a cricket-like chirp, and a tingling sense of unease clung to his spine as it echoed out into the blackness.

Yeah, I’ve seen enough.

Lenny made his way back to safety as quickly as he could.

“You found something,” said Audri when he reached their perch.

“Burrows. Lots of them. I think we have neighbours.”

She sat up straighter. “What kind, and how big?”

“Can’t be much bigger than bats,” he replied. “They’re probably nothing to worry about, but I’m going to warn the others just in case.

“Right. I’ll keep an eye out until you get back.”

Reynard did not look at all pleased when Lenny interrupted his attempt to nap by hopping onto his ledge, and neither did the hippogriff he shared the space with. Lenny almost felt sorry for them – judging by their damp coats, ruffled feathers and droopy postures, they had really worn themselves out in the climb – but he changed his mind when he saw the rich cushions on which they sat. Someone must’ve carried those for them. Probably the soldiers.

“What do you want, Lenny?” asked a gruff voice behind and above him.

He turned and saw Grell watching him from a higher ledge, with one hand on his sword hilt.

Fast, strong and stealthy? He’s one heck of a bodyguard.

“Just letting you know that I spotted lots of burrows just behind those,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the rock formations with a wing. “Not sure if they’re occupied by anything dangerous, but you might want to keep watch just in case.”

“Did you actually see the creatures?” asked Grell.

“No, but…” He remembered that chirping noise. “I heard something. I think I still am. It doesn’t feel safe here.”

“Imagining things now, are we? None of mine have reported hearing anything worthy of attention.” Reynard chuckled and shook his head. “Either way, I think your fears are unfounded. My soldiers are armed and well-trained. They will handle anything you cannot.”

Lenny bit back a retort. The hippogriff hadn’t been paying him much mind at all, at least until he mentioned hearing something, at which point her piercingly orange eyes focused on him and her equine ears perked up.

“Why don’t you ask her?” He tilted his head in her direction. “She looks like she knows what I’m talking about.”

Reynard cocked an eyebrow and turned to his companion. “Ginny?”

She didn’t answer immediately. First, she looked at Reynard, and then turned to stare at the ground as if deep in thought. A moment later, her ears twitched, and she gave him and Lenny a curt nod. “Yes, I feel it too. I just thought it was in my head, but now that he’s mentioned it... this place feels unsafe, and it’s been that way for a while already.”

Her voice was mostly smooth with a slight rasp to it, reminding him of a knife being sharpened on a whetstone. Whoever she was, Reynard probably hadn’t brought her along just for plain companionship; whilst she didn’t appear as fit as Lenny or the soldiers, she possessed some innate intensity that made her feel a lot more formidable than her lightly-built, leonine frame suggested. Aside from her cloak, she wore no other adornments, and she didn’t have any visible tattoos on her dark grey foreleg scales to indicate membership in guilds, clans or the like…

Is she an outcast?

Lenny almost missed Reynard’s response.

“I take it this is a pony-specific quirk?”

Grell leapt from his ledge onto theirs and landed with an audible thud. “It could be, my lord. Ponies are naturally more attuned to danger than griffons, after all.” He turned to Ginny, and Lenny detected a tense undercurrent in his voice when he added, “Even those of mixed blood…”

Reynard glanced at Ginny and then nodded at Grell. “Very well, then. See to it and leave us be.”

“I’ll have our griffs on rotation for sentry duty.” Grell then regarded Lenny with an inscrutable expression for several moments before finally continuing, “Get some rest. If your instincts are right, at the rate we’re going, we’ll be sorely tested before this is over.”

“Got it.” Lenny nodded and headed back to his ledge.

Once he’d brought Audri up to speed on the situation, they decided to turn in for the night. For safety, they still kept themselves tethered to the pegs, just in case the wind got stronger whilst they slept. Besides, despite being well below gale strength, it still had enough velocity to make the chasm feel colder than it was.

As they lay snuggled up together on their sleeping mats, Lenny’s thoughts sifted through the day’s events and with each passing minute his muscles and eyelids grew heavier and heavier, until he could barely lift them. His hearing dulled, too, and eventually he could hear only their breathing and heartbeats. Funny how fatigue had a way of catching up when he least expected it. Still, he couldn’t complain; it made it a lot easier to ignore the noise around him. Sighing contentedly, he sank under the waves of sleep.

* * * * *

A shrill whistle went right through Lenny’s skull. Moments later, he felt rock beneath his sleeping mat and remembered where he was and why. Growling, he sat upright and rubbed his stinging eyes, silently promising a thorough beat-down to whoever had woken him up if they didn’t have a good reason for it. Aside from a couple of sentries, everyone else had their lamps shuttered, dimmed or altogether put out, so he could see little more than silhouettes shambling in the darkness.

“What the—it can’t be morning already!” Audri protested.

Lenny didn’t need a pocket watch to tell him that. His movements were sluggish, like swimming in honey, and his eyes felt dry and crusty. “It sure as heck doesn’t feel like it. Something’s up.”

“Right. Literally.”

“Eh?”

“Look.”

Lenny followed Audri’s gaze upwards and saw a faint light flickering in the darkness, distorted every now and then by projections on the wall above. A lone figure clung to the rock, and its shadowy profile suggested a female griffon. As she climbed down closer to them, he saw Reynard’s soldiers fanning out to take defensive positions along the ledges whilst their fellow adventurers – those who had gotten up, anyway – brightened up their lamps and watched from their perches.

“That’s close enough,” Grell called out when she came within earshot. “What is your business here?”

“Got a message for you crazies!” the intruder hollered back.

Lenny blinked.

Gilda?

“Let’s hear your message, then,” Reynard said.

“You gonna let me come down or not? Been climbing all day.”

“Very well. Be quick about it.”

Lenny shared a look with Audri. She gave him a curt nod, and they both leapt and climbed to a vacant, neighbouring ledge to get closer view of Gilda. Her torso and hindquarters glistened with sweat, a good portion of her feathers stuck out at odd angles, and her chest heaved in and out as she panted heavily. Without much ceremony, she flopped onto the uppermost rock shelf where one of Reynard’s soldiers attempted to help her down the last few steps.

She waved him off and made in down on her own. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she hollered, “Wake everyone up. I don’t want to say things twice.”

“We’re quite capable of repeating the message. Get on with it,” Reynard answered, tapping his talons on the ground.

“It’s important,” Gilda insisted.

“We’ll be the judge of that,” Grell piped up.

Gilda rolled her eyes. “I get it. You don’t want competition and blah, blah, blah.” She paused and surveyed the lot of them, sweeping her gaze from one side of the clustered rock shelves to the other, and then raised her voice. “You should know that there’s a whole lot of meatheads poking around in Griffonstone right now. War Wings, Mad Cats, Steel Talons… the whole deal.”

Lenny recognised one of those names. Steel Talons mercenaries sometimes flew in Skarhold territory, protecting caravans or raiding them, depending on who paid better.

“I just thought your hired griffs might want to know,” Gilda continued, “that they want to sit down and have a serious talk with you, and I don’t think it’s for tea and cookies.”

Reynard scoffed and said, “A likely story. I’d expect another party’s just waiting to steal our lead the moment I waste time investigating your tall tales in Griffonstone.”

“You’re kidding. You’re kidding, right?” Gilda threw up both hands in exasperation. “This is nuts. Fine, don’t believe me. Do what you want.” She shook her head and fixed her gaze on Lenny. “I’m here for the rest of you morons. This field trip is bad enough already, but if you stay here, you’re throwing your lot in with someone who’s crossed griffons with enough pull to send a small army after him. Even if you manage to bring back the idol, there’s no way they’re letting you keep anything you find.”

“Well, that can’t be good,” Audri murmured.

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Lenny replied.

Whispers drifted between their fellow adventurers, like snakes from a disturbed nest. Crests rose, postures stiffened, and all eyes turned to Reynard, whose silence had stretched just a little too long… Long enough that Lenny noticed his talons fidgeting even as he puffed out his chest and cried, “I’ll have no more of your lies. Seize her!”

“Stay your sword!” Grell shouted, just as the griffon pointed his blade at Gilda. “Do you have any proof, girl?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve got a letter signed by Mister Mercenary Captain saying Lord Karhonnen’s a wanted griff and of course I don’t have any proof!” Gilda shot back, wings flared. “Didn’t think I’d need any for something that might save your flanks from a shakedown!”

“Lord Karhonnen. That gold you paid us in advance, or the little fortune it must’ve cost to equip each and every one of us at Griffonstone’s daylight robbery prices… It didn’t happen to come from very powerful individuals with a tendency to pose exceptional interest rates and deadlines, did it?” asked Erin. “The type who are likely to use very, ah… firm methods of exacting payment if you can’t do it on time?”

Silence fell.

Wonderful. Lenny rubbed his forehead. Reynard had royally fluffed up if Erin had correctly guessed that he’d borrowed from loan sharks, crime lords or even one of the more notorious noble houses.

Slowly, Grell turned to face Reynard. “My lord, you didn’t. The seneschal said all the gold came from Karhonnen’s own coffers…”

“Of course they did! As I’ve said, she’s lying through her beak and—”

“Bloody Tartarus, are you saying that we’ve come all this way for nothing?” someone cried out.

“That’s it, I’m done here. We should get out of town before those thugs find us. They’ll wring every coin out of our bones if they—”

“Too late for that. If they have our names, our accounts are as good as gone…”

“—just stay calm, I’m sure we can work something out.”

“He lied to us!”

The vulture twins drew their daggers. Reynard’s soldiers unsheathed their swords.

“Everyone shut up and put your weapons away!” Grell thundered. He turned and glared at each of them in turn before finally switching back to Gilda. “Do they know where we are?”

“It’s not a secret. They’re watching the passes, and they know you’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“You believe her,” Reynard accused.

Grell drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then gave him a long, hard look. No one said a word as they faced off. Eventually, though, Reynard’s gaze faltered and Grell shouted at the rest of them, “Get back to sleep, all of you. We head back up in the morning, and if we’re lucky, we won’t have to fight our way out of trouble. Gilda, you may spend the night with us.”

“We can still finish our task,” Reynard insisted. “They might leave in a few days. Whoever hired so many mercenaries surely cannot afford to pay them for so long, and even if they don’t, we can sneak out under cover of darkness.”

“My lord, not now.”

Reynard made a swift, cutting motion with his talons and growled, “Damnation, Grell. We have a chance to restore House Karhonnen’s fortune once and for all. I am not throwing that away on account of a few hired thugs after my blood! Let them come. They cannot force us out, not with you and Ginny here!”

“And what of the estate? You know they’ll go after it if they cannot get to you, we’re not there to defend it. They’ll ransack and destroy everything.”

“All replaceable if we get the Idol of Boreas.”

Grell shook his head. “My lord, don’t do this. It won’t replace the griffs and alliances we lose. You’re gambling away everything your father spent a lifetime building up.”

“Whom do you serve?”

“Rey…”

Reynard cut him off with a wave and repeated with narrowed eyes, “Whom do you serve?”

From the way he clenched a fist, Lenny suspected he very much wanted to say a name other than Reynard’s, but then Ginny stepped between them and looked at Grell. It might’ve been a trick of the flickering light, but Lenny thought he saw the huge griffon’s crest wilt under her steady gaze. A moment later, Grell regained his composure and said, “I serve you, Reynard Karhonnen.”

“You will continue leading the expedition. We have an artefact to retrieve.”

“Very well.” Grell turned and addressed the rest of them. “We have our orders. We move out in the morning.”

“Feel free to go on without us,” one of the twins declared.

One of the soldiers moved to bar their way as they climbed, but Reynard stopped him with a sharp whistle followed by a dismissive wave. “Let them go. If they haven’t the stomach for it, I’ll not have them slowing us down on this quest. As for the rest of you… get back to your posts.”

It took everyone a while to comply, but before Reynard could tell them twice, he got into a discreet but clearly heated argument with Grell that involved a lot of fierce gesturing and hard looks. Meanwhile, Gilda had sidled away from the guards and climbed over to their ledge.

“Mind if I crash with you guys?” she asked.

“Sure, why not?” Lenny mumbled as he watched the darkness above swallowed up the climbing twins.

“It’s kind of touching to see you take that much trouble to help us, though,” said Audri with a grin.

Gilda rolled her eyes as she unrolled a sleeping mat from her backpack. “Like I said, it’s my fault everyone and their grand uncle thinks the idol’s retrievable. You can thank the dweeby ponies for infecting me with a conscience, by the way.” She paused. “Actually… don’t. They’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

Audri sniggered. “It’s not a bad souvenir to bring back from pony school.”

“Watch it,” she growled. “I still think I’m going to regret this. We still have a whole lot of horse apples to deal with.”

“Did he double cross them or something?”

“Best guess is that he borrowed heck of a lot of gold without telling them he’s going someplace he might never return from.” Gilda shrugged and lay down. “They’re getting antsy ‘cause shakedowns don’t work on a dead griff.”

Lenny snuffed out the lamp and then curled up on his mat, yawning widely. “Well, it’s his problem. Worst case, they just take everything he paid us and we just wasted a whole day rock-climbing. I’m going to bed.”

* * * * *

Lenny woke in a cold sweat.

He could tell that it still wasn’t morning. Something had woken him.

Despite the background noise of the wind moaning through the chasm, he could hear some rustling, shuffling and clicking noises close by. He slowly lifted his wing, and saw a cloaked figure feverishly unfastening their supply packs from the pegs, illuminated by a lamp kept so dim that it probably didn’t provide more than a few measly inches of visibility in the permeating darkness. Probably one of Reynard’s soldiers, going by the clink of chainmail underneath his cloak.

His heart drummed up to a steady beat as he gently prodded Audri, and her tail immediately curled around his; she was awake and aware of their situation. After a moment’s consideration, he decided not to risk the same for Gilda in case she made any noise waking up.

They watched in silence as the soldier hefted their packs and sidled up to the edge of their shelf and stared down. He peered into the bags once and sighed with almost palpable regret, and then tossed the whole lot of them into the abyss.

“—the hay are you doing?” Gilda hissed.

The soldier gasped and spun round, drawing his sword in the process.

Lenny and Audri rolled away and sprang onto all fours at once, limbs spread wide and ready for a brawl. Gilda did the same, though not as quickly. They faced off in a line, them with their backs to the wall and the soldier’s to empty space.

“Oh, fluffing hell…” The wide-eyed soldier brandished his blade at them and said in an undertone, “Don’t move. Keep your beaks shut, and maybe this won’t have to get ugly, you hear me?”

Lenny frowned. “Wait, you’re the one who nearly dragged us down today…”

“Yeah, sorry abou—don’t change the subject!”

“Okay, okay, fine. You’re in charge,” Audri soothed, raising both hands to placate him. “But why the heck are you throwing our food away?”

“We’re saving your lives. Carry on, Gillon.”

Lenny turned and saw Grell’s hulking figure perched on a neighbouring rock shelf like a gargoyle. At his nod, the soldier on their ledge sheathed his sword and climbed up, past him to another ledge – probably Erin’s. Within moments, another supply pack went flying over the edge into oblivion.

He saw no one else scurrying about in the shadows, which probably meant that not all the soldiers were in on whatever Grell and Gillon were trying to do. But he quickly put aside any thoughts of raising the alarm when he saw Grell’s hand on his sword hilt. No sense in fanning the flames yet, and the big griffon looked very ready to go nuts with his blade.

“Reynard’s ambitions have often exceeded his grasp, but this time, he’s taking it beyond all reason,” Grell continued. He shook his head, and Lenny got the distinct feeling that he was giving him a stern glare, despite the shadows hiding his face. “He was never supposed to come down here with us. I don’t know why he feels so threatened by you – a pony, no less – but he has gotten unusually stubborn about proving himself. He won’t listen to reason, and he’s willing to risk his father’s legacy and his own life on something so uncertain!”

“So you think he’ll turn around if we have no food left?” asked Gilda.

“And you said I’m a dirty fighter,” Lenny murmured. “Why bother with the sneaky way? It doesn’t look like he can make you go on if you don’t want to.”

“He can’t.” Grell chuckled wryly and looked over his shoulder, as if afraid of someone striking from behind, then dropped his voice down to an ominous whisper. “It’s Ginny that I’m worried about.”

Gilda tilted her head. “What, she some kind of freaky-good fighter?”

“She’s not, and that’s the problem. She makes it very hard for me to… encourage my master to see sense.” He made a sweeping gesture towards his subordinates and sighed. “We served his father until his death, and not a day passes for me without hoping that Reynard will somehow display a shred of his father’s wisdom and leadership.”

Lenny’s ears twitched, and a bead of sweat ran down his temple. He tuned out Grell’s voice and discreetly leaned to the side so his ears had a better angle to the abyss, and then he noticed that the wind had died down to near-silence. It barely sighed, and something else kept tickling the edge of his hearing, like a distant conversation that he didn’t want to hear yet couldn’t ignore.

And then he noticed that he hadn’t really stopped sweating, and his heart had yet to drop to a normal pace despite knowing for certain that Grell didn’t intend to hurt them. Not unless he was forced to, at any rate.

Something’s wrong.

His wings fluttered involuntarily, itching to spread and beat for all they were worth.

“You all right?” Audri whispered.

Lenny’s tongue felt thick and clumsy as he murmured back, “I… I’m not sure. You feel that?”

“Feel what?”

He shook his head and turned his focus back to Grell.

“—wait no longer. House Karhonnen is on the edge of ruin, and my last duty is to save the fool’s life, even against his wishes. Let us finish our work, and you can all feign ignorance in the morning whilst I take responsibility for sabotage. And if he still wants to carry on despite all he sees, you will have ample proof that he does not deserve any more protection from his foolishness.”

“Hey what are you—get away from those! You dare—” Reynard’s voice suddenly cut off.

For a moment, everyone froze and stared in his direction, waiting for the inevitable explosion. When Reynard finally recovered his voice, it practically seethed with fury as his roar echoed into the abyss.

“Treachery! Guards, guards!”

Grell bowed his head and sighed wearily. “Of all times to be a light sleeper…”

The shadows boiled with movement as groggy sleepers fumbled with their lamps. The three soldiers who’d just woken up were quicker about their business and displayed no lethargy or hesitation as they advanced on Gillon under Reynard’s furious direction, trapping him at sword point on the ledge with a somewhat bewildered Erin and Longbow Griffon.

“Let him go. He was merely carrying out my orders,” Grell called out.

“You? That’s just—of all the times…” Reynard sputtered, apparently unable to find the right words. “You’ve ruined everythi—”

“House Karhonnen needs you,” Grell interjected. His frown deepened as he locked eyes with his master. “Abandon this fool’s quest. Go home and get Karhonnen’s affairs back in order, and perhaps one day we might attempt this again without risking utter ruin.”

“You.” Reynard pointed a talon at one of his soldiers. “Check our supplies. We might still have enough to carry on if we downsize the expedition.”

Grell gave Lenny and his companions a pointed look.

“Yeah, he’s lost it,” Lenny heard Gilda mutter.

Others began muttering as well, but Ginny’s voice cut through all of them. “He may have a point. We should go. Now.”

“You too?” asked Reynard. His anger seemed to have evaporated, replaced with surprise and hurt.

Ginny nodded. Lenny saw that she looked paler than usual, and her pupils had contracted. Her mane and coat looked slick with sweat, and her ears twitched in rhythm to his own. A clicky chirp resonated in the distance, piercing his ears and burrowing right into his brain. His legs felt like they had turned to jelly, and he hated the way his voice quavered when he turned to Audri and choked out, “W—we’re in trouble. We n—need to get out of here now.”

His sister gasped and placed her palm on his sweaty forehead. “Crud, you look really sick. What’s gotten into you?”

“Something’s coming. Can’t you hear it?”

The chirping noise came again.

Once.

Twice.

A discordant, unnerving series of chitters in rapid succession that made his hairs stand on end, followed by a distant cacophony of flapping, like an approaching flock of bats. This time, he knew that the others heard it, too, as each and every griffon stiffened with almost perfect synchrony. Their crests wilted, their pupils shrank, and they shivered as if icy water had just rained upon them.

Without waiting for a response, Lenny dashed to their stash of equipment, untethered himself and fitted on his harness as quickly as he could. Audri did the same seconds after. Whilst strapping on the rest of his bags he could see a frenzy of activity at the corners of his eyes as Grell shouted orders, with a distinct note of uneasiness in his voice. No one, not even Reynard, made any complaints about leaving; everyone simply had almost supernatural unity in their haste to return to the surface as quickly as possible.

This shouldn’t be happening.

They didn’t even know what they faced, and yet they acted like frightened rabbits! He tried to slow down and focus, but the chittering noise clawed its way through his thoughts and spurred him into feverish motion, and it was all he could do not to drop everything and leap into the abyss to fly up to safety.

Gilda didn’t have a proper harness, but at least she did have a sturdy belt that she could link up with them using rope. Audri took the lead, followed by him and finally Gilda. In all the chaos, he just managed to make out Reynard linking up with Ginny and two soldiers; the rest might’ve formed their own groups or gone alone for all he could tell.

The storm struck just as Audri took her first steps up.

Something landed on the base of Lenny’s neck and sank its teeth or claws in. He yelped and reared up, flailing like a beheaded chicken, dragging a protesting Audri and Gilda around before one of them slapped him in the face. That cleared his head just enough so he slammed himself back-first into the rock face, squashing his unwanted passenger.

He stared at the creature as it fell to the floor, twitching. It was about the size of a large bat, complete with leathery wings. The similarities ended there. Its black, lumpy body was covered in glistening, fleshy scales that tapered to a long, spiny tail with a nasty barb at the end. The broad, eyeless head reminded him of a sea lamprey’s, composed almost entirely of a sucker-like mouth lined with serrated teeth.

“What the hay is that?” Gilda cried.

It squealed at him, and he smashed it with a hoof without thinking. He had no word for it, other than its simple existence as a winged horror with lots and lots of teeth.

Someone else screamed. When he looked, he saw that a writhing, black cloud had engulfed their party, swirling around them like a hurricane. Every now and then, a few of those flying monstrosities dove in for a bite. Grell, Erin and the soldiers were swinging their swords wildly, the former two displaying a little more discipline in their attacks. Black ichor splattered onto their clothes when their blades split the creatures in half. Longbow Griffon was swinging his bow shaft like a staff; he heard bones crunching when he struck one.

Their shadows and silhouettes danced to a chaotic rhythm as lamps were swung around wildly. Something warm trickled down his shoulder, and his hoof came away red when he used it to explore the back of his neck. His nostrils filled with the coppery scent of blood, and his breath caught in his throat as he curled up on the floor and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Hey. Hey!”

Lenny grunted when someone shook him.

“Snap out of it! That noise – it messes with your head. Ignore it and start climbing!” Gilda yelled in his face.

A thought suddenly occurred to Lenny, and he believed he had a pretty good idea of what had taken down Arimaspi. He tried to move, but his hooves remained frozen in place.

I—I can’t…

Audri’s face suddenly filled his vision. She cupped both palms over his ears, and the horrible chittering grew died down to a muffled din. He focused on her golden eyes as she levelled a reassuring gaze at him, and clarity slowly returned to him and his frayed nerves. He could move again.

She raised her eyebrows in question, and he gritted his teeth as he nodded an affirmative that she could let him go. The maddening chirps and chitters bore down on him once more, but he just managed to keep them from overwhelming his senses by reciting specific lines over and over again.

One step at a time. It’s all in your head, it’s all in your head…

He dodged a beheaded horror that flew his way and climbed up after Audri, hovering just on the verge of a panic attack. Gilda followed. As best he could tell, the three of them were at the rear of the party; the others had gotten a good head start during his temporary freak-out.

The flying horrors clearly didn’t like seeing their prey getting away, and came swooping in with greater frequency, hindering their progress one bite at a time. The memory of the cyclops’ bare bones flashed in his mind, which he vigorously shook out as he swatted at the horrors with his wings. One landed on his foreleg, too high for his wings to reach, so he hauled himself up and bit down on its tail to tear it off. He nearly gagged on the dry, bitter taste and didn’t waste a second spitting it out the moment he got it dislodged.

The swarm thickened as they went up. More and more dismembered horrors fell their way, but deep down he knew that they could not keep it up forever. Not for the distance that they needed to go.

Someone up above screamed in pain. A chorus of shouts followed, and Lenny had to look away when blinding light filled his vision. He heard the whoosh and crackle of flames as he blinked away the after-images of a hundred black shapes getting swallowed by a massive fireball. A moment later, embers and charred carcasses rained down, trailing plumes of greasy smoke that somehow managed to fill him with nausea and hunger at the same time.

At first, he thought that someone must’ve packed fire bombs for their journey, but black powder explosions did not produce that much flame, and Marelotov cocktails would’ve set him, Audri and Gilda ablaze as well when it rained upon them. He changed his mind when another plume of fire burst forth and baked a cloud of horrors out of the air. Just as the flames receded, he traced their point of origin to an outstretched arm and a pair of glowing, orange eyes.

Okay, so she’s a pyromancer.

“Get them off me, get them off me!”

Lenny had no time to reflect on that fact, as a screaming Reynard suddenly fell from above, surrounded by a flurry of biting horrors. His cloak looked charred at the edges, and his safety rope trailed tongues of flame from its end. Lenny hissed when Reynard’s talons grazed his back as he fell past him, and Gilda shrieked when the fellow collided with her and held on like a drowning cat. She lost her grip, the ropes went taut and his harness straps bit into him as it bore their combined weight. Reynard’s frenzied clawing at the creatures biting him didn’t help, either.

“Let go of me, you moron!” Gilda screeched as she tried to throw him off.

“Great Sky Mother, they’re eating me!” Reynard cried.

Bits of rock rained from above as Grell came barrelling down, all concerns for safety discarded as he rapidly dropped from one handhold to another. “Hang on, my lord. I’m coming!”

Lenny felt something around his left foreleg snap, followed by another on his right shortly after. A sense of weightlessness overtook him, and the world spun for a moment before jerking rather painfully back upright. When he heard Audri’s pained cry and felt the chill of cold air on his forelegs, he realised that his climbing bracers’ straps had simply broken after so much abuse, and that his sister was now the only one keeping all three of them from falling into the abyss.

No, no, no!

He beat his wings in an attempt to propel himself back to get a grip on the wall, but Reynard’s and Gilda’s combined flailing effectively countered any force he could bring to bear.

Just then, he heard a series of screams followed by another burst of flame.

Erin and one soldier fell past them like a pair of boulders. About three dozen or so feet below, the soldier struck a rock shelf and scrabbled for a bit before he finally managed to hang on at the edge. Erin missed and disappeared into the darkness.

Ginny fell, too, harried by a cluster of flying horrors. Just as she went past Lenny’s position, her eyes glowed like a pair of ghostly floodlights, and sparks erupted from her palms.

“Take cover!” Grell shouted.

Lenny pumped his wings furiously and managed to produce just enough downward thrust to keep most of the fire away from himself and his companions, but he couldn’t stop all of it. By the time his eyes had recovered from the blinding flash, his feathers and tail were smouldering at the tips. He looked up to see if Audri was okay, and his blood froze when he saw tongues of fire dancing on the rope between him and her. She hadn’t noticed yet; she was busy putting out the blaze on her tail.

Lenny clapped his hooves repeatedly on the rope to kill the flames, but he knew that he had no hope of doing anything about the parts beyond his reach.

“Big Sis!” he cried.

The rope twanged as several of its braided strands snapped.

Audri looked down, and her pupils shrank to pinpricks. “Lenny!”

The rope snapped. Grell lunged and missed.

And then the lights shrank to tiny dots as they fell.

Lenny tried to fly, but the flames had damaged his feathers and he was still tied to two struggling griffons who were also trying to fly in different directions. They tumbled in the air, bouncing painfully off each other and anything they struck on the way down. The wind roared in his ears, snatching away Gilda’s and Reynard’s panicked cries. It grew stronger the deeper they fell, until he realised that they were no longer falling down in a straight line but were being tossed, beaten and shoved around like insects in a torrential river. A river of air.

Their lamps had either died out or broken loose. Still, he could hear the gale’s tone changing whenever they whooshed past obstacles or got closer to the rock wall, and right then, it sounded like—

He yelped when his forehead struck a hard surface, and lights danced in front of his watering eyes. Then, he felt as if someone had stuffed cotton into his ears; everything sounded distant and muffled. His head swam, and he found it harder and harder to think as the seconds passed.

For some reason, he remembered the chasm’s wind earlier that day, sounding like a thousand lost souls…

They’re us… We’re dead.

And then Lenny’s thoughts sank into oblivion.

Chapter 3

Cold.

Lenny coughed and shivered.

Dark.

Opening his eyes made no difference to the pitch-blackness.

He groaned, vaguely remembering something about fighting griffons in a dirty tavern. Hundreds of ravenous rats had gotten involved at some point, followed by him getting dragged out into the streets and dumped in a refuse pit or maybe an empty grave.

Did I go drinking again?

It would explain the splitting headache and soreness all over his body. The bad dreams, too. Or maybe he really had gotten into an outlandish brawl once the beer had gone to his head…

Lenny grimaced and tried to rub his head, but something held back his foreleg.

Something sticky.

His heart rate shot up when he realised that he couldn’t feel the ground. He flailed for a bit as he tried to disentangle himself, but the material clung to his chin, chest and parts of his right foreleg and left hind leg like glue, leaving him hanging belly-up like a rabbit roasting on a spit. Thankfully not stretched to a painful extent, and he still had his wings and a couple of legs hanging freely. He could still feel the weight of his saddlebags pulling on the straps of his harness, though some must’ve broken off when he fell down the…

Oh, fluffing feathers.

Everything came back to him in a rush. The frantic climb back up, the swarm of flying horrors that tried to eat him, the fire-tossing pyromaniac. And then he had fallen down into the abyss, only to be caught in what felt like a spider’s web.

Lenny moved his free hoof up to explore the material, but quickly changed his mind. He had no way of knowing if the strand was sticky all along its length, and he really didn’t need another snared limb. Judging by the amount of sway and spring when he threw his weight against it, taking into account its apparent strength and thickness, he was probably suspended in a very wide space. High up, too, if the airy acoustics was anything to go by.

His breath caught in his throat when he felt other strands brush against his feathers and free limbs as he moved, but luckily, they did not stick. Maybe only some of the silk was sticky, or some strands had lost it due to age. He really hoped the web was abandoned; anything that could produce silk strong enough to hold him in place could probably eat him, too.

At least he still had his knife, sheathed and strapped to his left foreleg.

He carefully undid the clasp with his teeth, bit down and pulled it out, and then slowly manipulated it with teeth and tongue to work its handle into the tight loops of leather on his foreleg. Once properly mounted, he could use the blade freely without needing to grip it.

Before cutting, he flexed his wings carefully and winced when little knives of pain dug into his muscles. Still flightworthy, and with some luck they’d last long enough for him to glide to the bottom. If he didn’t blindly snag himself on more webbing further down. He certainly couldn’t light the spare lamp in this state, and that was even if he still had it.

The strand of silk felt almost as thick as a pencil – tense as a cable and yet somehow as stretchy as rubber, and it took him some time to cut through it, starting with the thread glued to his chin. It snapped with an audible twang, and Lenny growled to himself when the other strands stretched him out a little tighter.

Halfway through freeing his right foreleg, he felt the strands wobble.

Lenny froze.

More wobbling, distinctly unlike the swaying in the non-existent wind or the swinging motion created by his efforts to free himself. He held his breath and waited, hoping that he had just imagined it. A few seconds later, he felt a rapid series of shifts in the silk’s tension.

Faster, faster, faster!

Lenny grit his teeth and fought to keep his hoof steady as he sliced through the strands stuck to his chest and harness in rapid succession, all the while trying to ignore the increasing frequency and intensity of movement transmitted to him through the silk. He narrowly missed stabbing himself when he tried to nuzzle the blade between the thread and his belly so that he could saw outwards rather than in. That left just one thread, stuck to his right foreleg and left hind leg, pulled taut now that he’d cut the others away.

Something hairy poked his left leg’s fetlocks. He yelped and kicked at it with his right leg. His hoof struck true and produced a meaty crunch similar to that of a crayfish being smashed by a rock, and whatever he’d kicked produced a clicky screech that reminded him of the flying horrors, except buggier. And bigger, much bigger.

Lenny felt it retreat, and he hacked repeatedly at the strand stuck to his foreleg until it snapped. Blood rushed to his head as he swung downwards like a pendulum, hanging by a single thread of silk glued to his hind leg. He curled up to reach it, and then gasped when the muscles in his midriff protested with throbbing agony.

He snarled and curled up again, this time hooking his right foreleg around his hind leg to hold on whilst he worked with the blade. The spider hissed and latched onto his fetlocks just as the knife sliced through the silk, and its fangs or appendages grazed his skin as its chittering faded into the distance.

After a few moments of blankly listening to the whooshing air, he realised that he’d soon end up as a nasty smear on the ground if he didn’t start flying immediately. He spread his wings and grimaced when their joints cracked and popped from the sudden strain, but luckily his feathers didn’t break and he managed to slow his fall to a more sedate glide. Without any light, though, he had no proper way of judging his distance, and since he didn’t fancy crashing face first into a wall or rock formation, he settled into a tight spiral downward.

The gurgle of distant running water and the chirping of insects reached his ears shortly before his hooves suddenly squelched into what felt like fetlock-deep mud. Only slightly better than his previous situation, but at least he didn’t sink any deeper. He plodded this way and that for a bit as the adrenaline rush wore off and left him woozy and thick-headed. The throbbing ache in his forehead didn’t help, either.

Light. Need light.

Lenny sheathed his knife so he could walk freely, listening for the sound of water as he did so. He then headed away from it in the hopes of finding some dry ground to settle on. He probably couldn’t get a light going with wet, muddy hooves, and he couldn’t afford to lose anything in the muck either. So he slowly plodded forward, taking one ginger step at a time with ears cocked for the slightest hint of danger and wings spread and ready to carry him out of harm’s way if necessary.

After a while, he realised that the darkness wasn’t quite as absolute as he’d thought. Specks of amber light dotted the blackness all around, some almost a stone’s throw away and clustered together like a colony of glow worms. He decided to keep his distance from those, at least until he had his own light and a proper way to defend himself.

The mud gave way to rock and gravel as he trotted up a slight incline. His hooves occasionally brushed against what felt like reedy grass and squishy mushrooms, and he tried not to think too much about the invisible insects chirping in protest at his passing. At least, he hoped they were just little insects.

Once he’d found a suitably wide clearing where he could safely lie down in any way or direction without hitting big rocks or touching questionable organic stuff, he sat on his haunches, unfastened his packs and laid them all out in a row on the ground. He went for the lamp first and sighed when he found it fully intact, along with the matches, tinderbox, wicks and spare oil.

With a few quick, practiced strikes of flint on firesteel, he set the wick alight and closed the lamp. After making sure that the giant spider hadn’t envenomed him or anything, he then lifted it high with a foreleg as he trotted in a small circle, sweeping his gaze from one end of the blackness to another. The lamp gave off just enough light for him to see a few metres in any direction – far less than he liked for spotting danger – but it did beat wandering around blind.

The rock and gravel around him looked water-worn, like those found in rivers or shores, with lumps and clusters of coral-like growths here and there. Little, buggy crustaceans skittered about their business between rocks and pools of mud, occasionally fighting over scraps of food with their claws and pointy feelers. Broken shells littered the ground, along with a few chalky, splintered rods that he hoped weren’t griffish or equine bones. At least they weren’t fresh…

Right. First things first.

Since Lenny couldn’t sense any immediate danger, he sat back down with the lamp by his side and sorted through his remaining supplies. Practically half of them had been dislodged, battered or otherwise torn off in the fall, leaving him with a wrecked harness, one lamp, the cyclops’ severed claw, the tinderbox, knife, one half-empty canteen of water and barely two days’ worth of food in grain bars and salted meat. He sighed when he found his slingshot and shot pouch intact; if there was anything worth eating down here, he had options for hunting other than chasing after it with a knife.

His stomach growled at the thought of prey, and he placated it by slowly munching a hay and grain bar as he sat on the ground, thinking. The bottom of the Abysmal Abyss was way more spacious than he would’ve guessed. Instead of narrowing down to a raging river, it apparently widened so much that it could comfortably house both an underground river and a shore-like expanse of rock and gravel on either side of it. Nearly two hundred metres or wider, if he’d correctly judged the distance of the faint specks of light in the distance.

Something fluttered overhead, and Lenny threw himself to the ground, still and breathless as a statue. A moment later he sat back up, silently thankful that no one had been around to see him panic. He could still hear those things chirping, clicking, swarming, biting…

He shook his head to clear out the memory and groaned when the tender spot just above his eyebrows throbbed like mad. Exploring it gingerly with a hoof, he found that it had swollen up a bit, but thankfully the cut didn’t feel like it needed any stitches. Parts of his mane felt stiff and crusty with dried blood.

He’d forgotten about the sticky silk on his hoof, though, and had to pull out some of his hair to free it after he accidentally got it glued in place. Glancing down, he saw splotches of gluey silk on his chest as well.

Lenny finished off his grain bar and washed it down with a gulp of water before setting about dealing with the problem. He began by smearing dirt all over the gunk to reduce their stickiness. No amount of rubbing could get the stuff to ball up and peel off, and digging at them with his knife only gummed up the blade. Eventually, he settled on shaving his coat in those few patches and gladly buried the clumps of bluish-grey hair, milky silk and black dirt.

With that done, he plodded back to his pile of belongings and lay down as comfortably as he could next to it. He didn’t like the pervasive dampness, but neither did he fancy a walk in search of a drier spot. A huge yawn parted his jaws, and his eyelids suddenly felt too heavy to hold up on their own. Even his unsatisfied hunger and thirst felt insignificant next to the overpowering urge to nap.

He still had a whole lot of things to do in order to survive. Find food, shelter, a way out. But… maybe he could afford to take a break just this once. His head hurt, his muscles were sore, and he just couldn’t care about his missing companions right then. Especially not when he recalled that the smarting cuts on his back were the courtesy of Reynard’s talons when he fell.

Five minutes won’t kill me…

Curling up like a dragon next to his hoard, Lenny sighed and closed his eyes.

* * * * *

The next thing he knew, the darkness had swallowed him again. He opened his mouth to call for help, but no sound came out. The world spun as he grew light-headed and floundered weakly, unable to fill his lungs with air. No one heard him. No one saw him. No one could help him. Nameless behemoths swam in the blackness, closing in on him…

A clinking noise pricked Lenny’s ears, and he gasped as the pressure on his chest disappeared and the spinning world slowed to a barely-perceptible crawl. The darkness remained, though.

Cold sweat drenched his coat. His heart hammered away in his chest, trying to break out of his ribcage as he lay on the ground, curled up tight. Every little noise – every chirp, every scratch, every plop – made his ears twitch and his spine tingle. He wanted to just get a light going to chase away the roiling blackness, but his limbs refused to obey.

Gradually, though, once his heart rate and breathing had slowed several notches below full-blown panic, Lenny regained control.

He grimaced and shivered as he twisted this way and that, sore all over from the fall and sleeping on the knobbly gravel. After groping around for a bit, he found the lamp a little ways off – he’d probably kicked it in his sleep – and cold to the touch, meaning that he’d wasted a whole lot of time and oil. Hours must’ve passed, at least five or six based on how little oil sloshed in the lamp’s reservoir, possibly way longer for it to get that cold.

He relit the thing and stared as the shadows around him danced in the flickering light.

Great Sky Mother, I’m so plucked.

He was stuck at the bottom of the Abysmal Abyss with barely any supplies, likely surrounded by deadly creatures, lost and completely alone. What chance did he have of making it back? They’d been idiots to think they could. Like little gnats, crawling on someone’s coat or feathers, seconds before they got smashed to a bloody smear…

This is it. This is where Lenny Redtail ends.

Though he felt no wind, he could almost hear the moan of the winds above – a thousand lost souls calling to him, drowning him, until his own feeble voice joined in the wailing…

Audri…

He could still see her reaching out to him as he fell, saw her dragging her sorry tail back to Mother to deliver the news. She’d lost her little brother.

Worse still, he had no way of knowing if she’d even made it back to the surface.

He could still see the flying horrors swarming in a black cloud of hunger, their chittering worming their way into his brain and turning his limbs to jelly. Sinking their fangs into him, ripping tearing—

“Argh!”

Lenny covered his ears with both hooves, but the horrible noises didn’t go away. He shook his head violently, then yelped when the shifting pressure sent a spike of agony through his tender forehead and between his eyes. It helped, though – the nightmarish spectres faded away and stopped chittering to him.

He wiped his sweaty brow with a trembling hoof and let his breath whoosh out.

Keep it together. It’s way too early to go insane. Eyes on the prize.

He’d had his fair share of hunting accidents and stupid blunders out in the wilderness. With a bit of luck, he might just add this one to the list of stories to tell if he got home. No, when he got home.

Besides, he owed it to Audri to haul his own flank out of trouble. He wondered what she was thinking right then, wherever she was. If she and the others had managed to get away from the flying horrors, he hoped she had the sense not to try coming back down for him.

His ears drooped at the thought. Fat chance of that; he would’ve done the same for her. Mother would probably go on a rampage if either of them left the other behind like that.

Lenny closed his eyes and focused on simply breathing. He was a griffon. Griffons were predators. They don’t turn into kittens or sparrows when facing danger. He had speed, strength and brains to spare; he just needed to use them properly.

Survive.

He looked straight up and saw nothing but darkness. Three or more miles of sheer drop separated him from the surface, to say nothing of the flying horrors, giant spiders and who knew what else that lurked in the space between. He probably didn’t have the strength to climb all the way back up without all the specialised equipment he’d lost, either. Going up could take more than a week once hunger slowed him down, if dehydration didn’t do him in first.

Lenny glanced at his wings and frowned. He couldn’t hear any wind above, so it must’ve either died down for the moment, or the abyss simply didn’t have any of appreciable strength this far down. Flying straight up would save him some time, but he’d eventually run into the brutal turbulence, and it covered enough of the remaining distance that he’d still have the same problems climbing up.

Waiting for rescue? He might as well pray for pony princess to whisk him away. His supposed rescuers would have no way of telling where and how far the wind had blown him in either direction, much less find him in such a vast expanse of darkness.

That left him with another option: navigating the abyss horizontally. One way led to the glaciers in the north, the other, east all the way to the stormy fjords. Freeze to death in the icy wastes, or drown at sea after getting dashed against the rocks in fifty-foot swells after traversing miles of infested, uncharted territory on hoof or wing? Joy. He couldn’t wait to start!

At least it beat staying put and waiting for his demise. Without any further information, going for the coast seemed like his best option. It had the most reliable means of acquiring food and water as he went along.

Lenny squared his shoulders and began strapping everything back on, doing his best to redistribute the weight evenly. He kept the lamp hanging by his side with a few strands of twine tied to his harness. It had a double layer of glass for insulation, so the outer cover wouldn’t burn him or anything else it came into contact with.

Though his stomach protested rather noisily, Lenny refused to eat anything more – he’d play it safe with the rationing until he had a reliable source of food.

Before setting off, he trotted back down the slope to the sound of running water. This time, the light provided by the lamp allowed him to see that the ‘mud’ he’d plodded through earlier actually consisted of seaweed-like fibres and pinkish thread. When he brought the light up close to one of the lumps, the fibres contracted into a glistening ball, pulsating gently like a disembodied heart.

Worms. Living, writhing, squelchy mats of them splotched all over the rocky ground, interspersed with pools of fetid water. Lenny wrinkled his nose and carried on, careful to avoid stepping on any of those things.

The gravelly shore abruptly gave way to an underground river, too wide for him to see the opposite shore and too deep for the light to reach the bottom more than a couple of metres out. The water shimmered in the light, crystal clear and icy cold to the touch. It tasted a little earthy, but aside from that, he found nothing to complain about and drank deeply. He then sighed and stared at the river, listening to its inviting gurgle as he fought the urge to take a refreshing dip. Despite feeling like a filthy, mucky slob, he couldn’t risk swimming in the strong current – not in his weakened state, and certainly not in a body of water housed in an abyss that had tried to off him several times already.

His heart fluttered when he saw a couple of silvery streaks flashing in the water. Fish! If his eyes hadn’t fooled him. But if they were edible, and if he could find a way to catch them, then he could scratch starvation off his list of urgent things to worry about.

It didn’t take him long to pick a direction. Considering how deadly the frozen wastes were all year round, he figured he stood a much better chance waiting for a relatively calm day at the stormy coast.

So he flew east, downriver.

“Fluffing—aack!”

Barely five minutes later, he’d gotten his wings snared in another spider web. Those cursed things were practically invisible even with the lamp light; by the time he got close enough to spot the sheen on the threads, it was already too late to avoid them.

He sheared off a few of his ruined primaries to free himself and resisted the urge to slash the whole web apart out of spite. Although the webs presented a massive inconvenience, a tiny part of him admitted that the web had probably saved his life, either from smashing onto the rocks or drowning in the river.

After another close call, Lenny decided to stay on the ground. Much slower, but at least he wouldn’t have to deal with any stupid spiders. He snorted. With his luck, he’d probably bump into something equally dangerous down there.

He went farther up ashore, perpendicular to the river until he reached the base of the rift’s wall about a hundred metres away from the river. It didn’t rise cleanly up in a straight line, but instead had a series of massive, natural stone columns emerging from the ground in gradually taller and taller clusters until the sheer wall disappeared into the darkness above. They weren’t much, but he did spot several unoccupied nooks and crannies with enough space for him to hide in. Better than sleeping in the open, and if the formations were consistent throughout the rift, he shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a relatively safe space to retreat to when he needed to rest along the way.

Going on hoof gave him plenty of opportunity to explore, too. Branching rods poked out of mushy lumps on the ground, with luminescent globes hanging from their tips that glowed with eerie, amber light. Huge, beetle-like bugs with somewhat translucent carapaces munched on the greyish, vegetative matter around them. They were nearly as large as guinea pigs, trundling in swirly patterns around the luminescent coral-fungi. Surprisingly fast for their size, though – they scattered like roaches the moment he got within leaping distance.

Up close, he saw that the growths had a mixture of spongy and crusty surfaces, like a cross between coral and fungi, though some made him feel a little uneasy with their coloration that mimicked raw flesh. Something about the lumps on which they grew bothered him, too. He could see a few dark, hard objects poking out from under the growths here and there, arranged in a pattern that vaguely reminded him of limbs…

He didn’t feel so keen on looking at it anymore and carried on.

Every now and then, something would squeak or squeal in the dark, followed by silence, and he wondered what sound he’d make if something managed to snap his neck or sink its teeth into his jugular…

Despite his best efforts to remain alert and keep track of everything he saw, the minutes dragged on into hours as he trudged along, blending everything together into an indistinct blur. More rocks, more gravel, more weird ‘plants’ and bugs. A screeching or fluttery noise every now and then. Aside from his growing hunger and the creeping, dull ache in his muscles, nothing changed.

Just a little further…

Sweat trickled down his sides as he huffed and puffed along, but he pressed on regardless of his growing discomfort. A sweet scent wafted in the thick and humid air; he couldn’t put a name to it, but it made his mouth water all the same whenever he caught a good whiff. Like a basket filled to the brim with succulent veggies and fruit, all ripe for the taking…

He might’ve drooled a bit.

Something large and hairy brushed against his foreleg, and Lenny bit back a startled yelp as he leaped away from it. A dead spider, easily a metre across if it spread its legs out. The fangs alone were at least a couple of inches long.

Idiot!

Had that spider been alive and itching for a bite, it probably would’ve gotten what it wanted with him so distracted with thoughts of food. Stupid irony.

Lenny found the reason for its demise quickly enough; it had a dagger stuck in its abdomen, with greenish ichor trickling out from the wound. The ornate handle gleamed with silver gilding in the lamp light as he trotted around the spider’s carcass, sweeping his gaze left and right. His heart thumped hard and fast; someone had been there recently!

“Hello? Is anyone here?” he called out.

No answer.

He unhooked the lamp from his harness and held up high with one foreleg as he hovered up in the air.

“Hey, I found your knife!” he shouted.

Something chirped back, and he shivered involuntarily.

That might’ve been a mistake…

He then flinched when something cold and wet dripped onto the back of his neck. Looking up, Lenny felt a couple more cold droplets splash onto his cheek. After a moment of staring, he recovered his wits and dropped back to the ground to secure the lamp to his harness. Then, he unfastened his packs and placed them on the driest patch of gravel he could find before unsheathing his knife and mounting it on his bracer as he cautiously flew upwards, stopping short as soon as he spotted the tell-tale sheen of spider silk.

Dozens of threads crisscrossed the space directly above him, and several metres higher up, right at the limits of the lamp light, he spotted a figure all tangled up in a mess of sticky silk, still struggling feebly. A griffon, from what he could see of the tail and plumage.

Lenny dispensed with the niceties and simply cut through the threads barring his way, though he made sure not to slice at the sticky parts and keep well away from the whiplash when they snapped. As he got closer to the griffon, he saw that he couldn’t have done a worse job of entangling himself if he’d tried. The fellow had somehow managed to twist himself around several threads at once, and one had practically looped around and gummed up his beak – probably tried to chew through it after dropping his dagger.

Then, Lenny noticed the blue cloak, reddish tunic and owlish plumage. His heart sank.

This is just great…

Of all the griffons he could’ve found in the abyss, he just had to find the one least likely to be of any use. Not that he wanted to complain about finding company so soon after getting lost, but was it too much to ask for someone a little more… competent? He would’ve preferred just about anyone else, even the bad-tempered twins! Maybe even a wimpy pony, because it at least wouldn’t have delusions of grandeur.

Reynard’s struggling got a little more vigorous when he came close enough to make eye contact. His owlish eyes widened, and his voice came out all muffled through the webbing on his beak as his chest heaved with uneven breaths.

“Hey, it’s okay. Just give me a moment to—whoa!”

Lenny performed a quick back-thrust to avoid getting snagged when Reynard threw his weight forward and nearly hit him. Unfortunately, he got himself stuck on a bit of webbing from behind and had to slash it apart to free himself, leaving another sticky patch of silky glue on his rump.

“Quit it!” he growled. “I’m trying to help!”

Reynard’s eyes roved wildly, as if searching for some hidden threat. His pupils had shrunken to beady pinpricks, like a frightened rodent with nowhere left to go.

Lenny glanced around to make sure nothing was sneaking up on him, but his light didn’t reach far enough to give him sufficient warning even if anything decided to enter its radius in plain sight. And if Reynard didn’t calm down, his flailing was bound to attract attention, with a beacon conveniently highlighting their position for anything and everything.

“Hold still. I will—gah!”

He nearly got slapped in the face with a sticky wing.

“Are you stupid? If you don’t stop—”

Reynard’s tail whipped him on the muzzle, effectively cutting him off. For a moment, he simply hovered in place and stared at him.

What would Audri do?

Lenny kicked him in the stomach. Not hard enough to break anything, but with enough force to drive his breath away for a while.

Well, probably not that.

He couldn’t complain about the results, though. After his startled cry, Reynard groaned and curled up as much as the webs allowed him to.

Taking advantage of the opening, he prodded Reynard until he made eye contact again, then growled, “All right, I’m going to say this just once – I. Want. To. Help. Got it?”

Reynard stared at him.

Eh, good enough.

He brandished the knife and flew a little closer. “Keep still. If you snag me, we’re both dead. If I accidentally stab you, you’re dead.”

Reynard blinked a couple of times before he finally nodded. Slowly.

“You strong enough to fly?”

Another stiff nod.

“Right. Hold still.”

Lenny freed his wings first, cutting the silk strands wherever he could to save as many feathers as possible. Some were too badly damaged or glued up, so he had no choice but to shear them off. Same went for some parts of his charred cloak. Bit by bit, he untangled Reynard from the mess, until he was hanging by just a couple of threads stuck to his forelegs.

He hesitated, though. Reynard looked severely on-edge again, with his nervous tics and manic eyes. Heck, just listening to his short, irregular breaths and incoherent mumbling made his ears twitchy and his hair stand on end.

They didn’t have much time to consider other options, though.

“Ready for the drop?” Lenny asked, panting slightly. His wing muscles burned as he fought to maintain height, having to compensate for the lost or damaged feathers.

Reynard flared his wings and twisted violently, but the remaining strands didn’t break.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Six or seven storeys to the ground. Drop.”

He slashed him free, and after a bit of flailing on Reynard’s part, they glided down without much incident.

Once safely on the ground, Reynard plucked his dagger from the dead spider, wiped it on his cloak and frantically scraped at his beak. Lenny’s heart sank further when he saw that Reynard had practically no supplies at all. Just an empty harness and a belt with a few pouches.

A springy snap, followed by Reynard sputtering when he finally cut through the sticky webbing. “We have to get out of here. They’re coming,” he panted.

“What?”

Reynard looked upwards and crouched low, wings at the ready.

“What do you think you’re—hey!”

He lunged and tackled Reynard just as he leapt into the air, then crashed down and scraped themselves on the gravel.

“What are you doing?” he said through gritted teeth as Reynard tried to wriggle out from under him.

Reynard dug his talons into the gravel and clawed his way forward. “Can’t stay here. We have to get out!”

“I didn’t save you just so you could—nngggh!—fly blind and get stuck again!”

“They’re after our blood. They’ll eat us. They’ll eat us all!”

Lenny’s spine tingled and his ears flattened as he recalled the flying horrors swarming around him, chirping, biting, urging him to run and run…

No, focus!

He thumped himself on the head with a trembling hoof. His shortened breaths had lost rhythm, and cold sweat had broken out under his coat. He then growled and shook his head. As much as he wanted to just leave Reynard to his panic attack, they stood a better chance together than alone.

Just then, Reynard heaved and nearly succeeded in throwing him off, but Lenny bore down on him with all his weight and pressed his cheek into the dirt, growling, “Listen to me. I know it sucks that we’re stuck down here, but you’re going to have to calm down if you want to survive. No one’s getting eaten today.”

“Can’t you hear them? We’re plucked, stupid pony, we’re—”

“Shut up!” he roared, pressing down on his head to cut him off.

Reynard whimpered and tried to squirm away, but Lenny kept him pinned.

“Listen.”

After another half-hearted wriggle, Reynard lay still and obeyed. Aside from their ragged breathing and a few insect noises, silence surrounded them. Gradually, his breathing steadied out and his eyes regained some semblance of griffish dignity.

“They’re inside our heads,” he said softly as he scanned their surroundings for anything his shout might’ve attracted. “It’s probably how they hunt – drive us nuts until we do something really stupid, then pick us off once we’re too tired or injured to fight back.”

Reynard stared into the distance and said nothing.

“Just… try to ignore it. There aren’t any of them down here.” At least, not any that he’d seen, but he didn’t need to tell him that.

After another moment of still silence, Reynard swallowed dryly and rasped, “Why aren’t there?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the spiders eat them or something. Can you stay put now, or do I have to sit on you all day?”

Reynard shot him an indignant glare from the corner of his eye.

Good. At least he’s got some spirit back.

He tilted his head. “Well?”

Frowning, Reynard heaved a sigh and nodded. “Get off me.”

Lenny did so, and when Reynard showed no signs of freaking out again, he trudged over to his supply packs. “Are you injured? Anything that needs immediate treatment?” he said over his shoulder as he sorted through them.

“I—I’m fine. Just… very tired.”

“Join the club.” He tossed one of the packs at him. “Put these on and we can get moving.”

Reynard caught the pack but stared at Lenny as if he’d just been told to eat his cloak.

Lenny paused in strapping on his own load and frowned. “What?”

“You want me to carry one of these?”

He tossed another pack at him and said, “And I want you to carry a few more.”

Reynard opened his beak, then closed it again and wordlessly attached the bags to his harness. Lenny felt that he’d swallowed a pretty lengthy and uncooperative response, though, if his tense posture was any indication. That was definitely going to become a problem.

He turned away and tended to his own burdens.

Whatever. One problem at a time.

His ears swivelled towards a rather loud gurgle coming from behind him, and he turned to find Reynard rummaging through one of the packs.

“Where’s the—”

“Here,” said Lenny before he could finish. He reached into the food bag, unwrapped a few strips of jerky and passed them to him. “Eat slowly. Make them count.”

Reynard eyed the measly strips and frowned. “That’s it?”

Lenny shrugged. “Lost the rest when I fell.”

“How much more do we have?”

“Between us, maybe enough for three days if we ration properly.”

Reynard looked at him for a moment before he turned away, muttering something under his breath.

Tough luck. Too bad.

He kept watch whilst Reynard sullenly ate his ration, listening for any sign of danger. Aside from the odd chirp or click that sometimes made his hairs stand on end for reminding him of the flying horrors, nothing else really caught his attention. Once he’d finished and they’d put everything on, he began trotting towards the wall.

“Where are you going?” Reynard asked.

“Finding shelter,” he said without missing a step.

“Y—you actually want to stay here?” Reynard sputtered. “We have to—”

Lenny grit his teeth, but forced himself to relax before he turned and growled, “I don’t know about you, but I’m tired, hurt and pretty annoyed that this stupid place has nearly killed me a couple of times already. So… unless you know a shortcut for reaching the surface in a day, it would be just great if we could find a safe place to sleep so that we don’t drop dead from exhaustion halfway up!”

Reynard blinked, but said nothing.

Lenny tapped the side of his head and added, “All in our heads, remember? Going all-out and tiring ourselves is exactly what they want.”

As the silence stretched on, Reynard’s wings, crest and posture drooped until he almost resembled a willow tree. Then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

“Okay then.” He spun back around and carried on. “Shelter’s this way. Not too far off.”

After a short walk to the wall, they reached a small hollow that he’d spotted earlier, nestled between two rock columns leaning against each other. It had only one entrance and no other connecting hollows or tunnels for any nasties to hide in, and was situated a small ways up the series of columns with a clear view out to the shore. They probably couldn’t ask for more, given the circumstances.

Lenny wasted no time in stripping off his gear. Reynard did the same.

“I’ll take the first watch,” he said.

“Very generous of you,” mumbled Reynard as he spread his cloak on the damp rock and lay down.

Lenny ignored his tone. Between his sore muscles, headache and lingering hunger, he’d already dealt with enough problems for one day. Or maybe two; he could’ve easily lost track of time due to the lack of sunlight, not to mention the time he couldn’t account for whilst passed out from the blow to his head.

“I’ll wake you when it’s your turn,” he said as perched the lamp on a rock and set the flame as low as it could go to conserve oil.

No answer. When he turned, he found Reynard already curled up and out like a light.

He sucked in a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he rubbed his throbbing forehead.

Keep it together. We’re griffons. We survive.

If he said it often enough, it might just come true.

Author's Note

Whew. This was a hard one to push out. :twilightoops:

Chapter 1

“This is Griffonstone?”

Lenny Redtail had seen pony villages more impressive than the collection of ramshackle huts and crumbling towers that represented the apex of griffon civilisation. Or used to, by the looks of things. From his perch on the ledge of a neighbouring peak, he could tell that even the colossal tree on which King Guto had built his palace looked dead right down to the trunk; the stiff breeze laden with sheets of rain might blow it over at any moment.

He glanced down at the waxed flyer he held and re-read it just to make sure that he hadn’t somehow gotten the wrong meeting place.

Hail, brave explorers and adventurers!

Rejoice, for fate has finally seen fit to smile upon Griffonkind once more. House Karhonnen has a lead on the location of the great Idol of Boreas, and calls upon all skilled, able-bodied and well-equipped griffons to partake in an expedition to the Abysmal Abyss to retrieve Griffonstone’s rightful heritage.

Meet with House Karhonnen’s representatives at the King’s Roost in Griffonstone at the stipulated time and date for your chance to be a part of this venture. By the grace of the Sky Mother, we shall return with spoils from the deep unknown and restore true Pride to our great nation.

For honour and glory!

Lord Reynard Karhonnen

Beneath that was a long list of terms and conditions that he’d already examined. Lenny did not think much of their chances of success at finding the real idol, but the contract did state that approved participants would get paid a sum in advance, which suited him just fine even if the expedition ultimately failed. Gold was gold, and he was sure that all those stories about missing or dead explorers were overblown by bards and old hens, anyway. If this Lord Reynard really delivered what he promised, Lenny could have a year’s worth of earnings covered for a new set of hunting gear, possibly even a new shack for himself back at Skarhold.

“It’s not much to look at, but it’s still way better than what I get from the way Gilda talks about it,” commented Audri as she swooped down and landed right next to him. “But, hey, at least we can tell Mother to forget about moving here.”

Lenny snorted as he stowed the flyer away into one of his travel packs. “As if we’d even want to. Prey is really scrawny up here.”

“Well, it’s not like you can’t afford to lose a kilo or two.” His sister grinned and pinched him on the upper part of his foreleg. “A bit of hardship would do you some good. We’ve had it too easy for a while; it was getting boring.”

“You calling me fat?”

“I think a little chub is cute on you.”

He felt an eye twitch. “Say that again. I dare you.”

Audri’s grin widened. Then, she leaned in close and whispered, “Yes, Little Lenny. You’re getting fat. And it’s unbearably cute.”

“Rargh!”

He snarled and play-tackled her on the spot. She squawked and grappled with him, unwilling to yield. They giggled like cubs, trading inches of bare, slippery rock on the narrow ledge as they wrestled back and forth. Eventually, they slipped over the edge and had to break off their mock battle to maintain altitude, angling their flight path towards Griffonstone.

“Race you to Gilda’s place!”

“Hey!” he protested as Audri put on a burst of speed, leaving behind a visible shockwave of shed water droplets in her wake.

Gilda was a decent acquaintance of his sister’s. He’d met her some time ago when Audri had asked her to be his guide on his first flight over the sea to Equestria, when he was exploring a little more of the world beyond Griffonia’s borders. Very nice to look at – Gilda, that is. Not Equestria. He didn’t care all that much for Ponyland. It was just too bad that she’d already made it clear that she wasn’t interested in him back then.

At any rate, she had agreed to house them for one night in Griffonstone in exchange for some pork jerky – a specialty of their clan’s over in Western Griffonia that typically wasn’t sold anywhere this high up in the mountains. A very agreeable arrangement, since Gilda had warned them about the ridiculous rates the inns charged up in Griffonstone.

They were thoroughly soaked by the time they reached the house.

“Were you racing out in the rain?” asked Gilda when she opened the door and found them panting and dripping water all over her doormat. Without waiting for an answer, she spun round and waved them in with a hand over her shoulder.

Lenny tried not to get any water on the rugs strewn about the living room as they made their way to the crackling fireplace.

“Thanks for letting us stay over,” said Audri as they discarded their hefty travel packs and settled down in the glowing warmth. “By the way, you look awfully cheerful.”

“Uh huh. It’s probably because I’ve got two soggy dweebs in my house,” Gilda grumbled, passing them a pair of worn towels. “You brought the stuff?”

Lenny pulled a bundle of waxed paper from one of his travel packs and tossed it over to her. Gilda caught it deftly and peeled off the string keeping it wrapped up in order to get a whiff of its contents, inhaling deeply before she sighed and flashed them a grin. “Okay, that’s some good meat. You can stay.”

Audri returned the grin. “It always is. Anyway, I’m serious about you. I mean, you look kind of… happy. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Lenny could feel his temperature rising, and it wasn’t because of the fireplace or his recent exertion.

Great. Thought I’d gotten over that…

He kept his ears perked to listen but otherwise tried to avoid involvement in the conversation. Instead, he focused on getting himself dry.

“You remember that pony I went to school with, the one I wasn’t talking to? Well, we’re not mad at each other anymore. And I’m actually getting along with a few more griffs nowadays. Greta’s not half bad once I got to know her,” Gilda explained. Then, her gaze flitted over to him and lingered on his half-erect wings. “Answer is still no, Lenny.”

Argh.

“Yeah, yeah, I can take a hint,” he replied, wings wilting.

“Whatever. Just don’t let my Gramps see it. He’ll never shut up about great grandkids if he does.”

Audri chuckled. “Sounds like our mother. Anyway, I heard that you were the one who found the idol. What happened? Why didn’t you bring it back?”

“Yeah, about that… I decided that hauling my buddy out of that pit was more important.” Gilda shook her head. “You’re not serious about joining that dumb expedition, are you? Reynard’s a bigshot wannabe and Gramps says that House Karhonnen’s getting outmanoeuvred by all the other nobles since his dad kicked the bucket. That whole thing’s gonna be a waste of time. It’s just a dumb chunk of gold, anyway.”

“It’s a valuable, dumb chunk of gold,” Lenny pointed out. “That’s why he’s paying folks to help him get it back. And having more gold is kind of nice.”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Right. Let me know how that goes. I’ll just be here doing actual useful stuff.”

“Like?” Audri prompted.

“Getting this dump back into shape, starting with getting griffs to work together.”

“Won’t finding the idol help with that?”

“Teeny tiny chance of finding it and bringing it back,” Gilda retorted, pinching the air. “Besides, I don’t think you’ll even get that far.”

“Why not?”

Gilda’s eyes narrowed, and she shook her head as she turned and ambled off into the kitchen. Her voice carried over from there. “I don’t know what the stories are like once they reach Skarhold, but out here, people who try going into the Abyss either don’t come back or get really messed up. And no one’s going to trust some dweeby lordling who can’t even keep his house from falling apart.”

Lenny shrugged. “We’ve come this far. Might as well take a look.”

“Yeah. It can’t be that bad if he can afford to pay in advance like that,” Audri pointed out.

“Uh huh. Smells like desperation to me; probably not worth the effort.” Gilda came back holding a lightly steaming tray. “Anyway, scones?”

They snacked on Gilda’s confectionaries whilst waiting for the rain to thin out so that they could find the King’s Roost and sign up. But it kept pouring like crazy, and they quickly resigned themselves to a nap when hailstones began thumping on the roof. Not that Lenny could complain – they could use the rest after their lengthy flight from the town at Griffonstone’s foothills.

By the time they woke up, the sun had already drifted down to the edge of the horizon, and Gilda had apparently gone off on some errand of her own. They hastily left the house and made their way straight for the inn.

Despite its place on top of a mountain range, Griffonstone somehow managed to have terrible drainage at the same time. Lenny saw muddy puddles everywhere, mixed with piles of trash left outside on the streets. Come to think of it, even calling them streets would’ve been pretty generous. Peddlers and loiterers milled about as well, barely speaking save for curt exchanges or transactions. Some played dice out in the mud under crude shelters whilst others sat around sputtering fires, drinking a pungent brew from dirty tin cups as they huddled together for protection from the rapidly falling temperature.

“Wow. So much for the capital, huh?” Audri whispered as they walked past a pile of splintered beams and mortared rock that might once have been a mansion.

Lenny just grunted and plodded on. Some of the griffs they passed had given him stares and sidelong glances, which was marginally better than some of the cities he’d visited. No outright confrontations yet, which he took as a sign that maybe Griffonstoners were half-decent folk, after all.

They found the King’s Roost easily enough; unlike most of its neighbours, it looked decently maintained and even had a couple of guards stationed outside, armed with pikes and garbed in armour with blue cloaks. They probably belonged to House Karhonnen. Lenny noticed their steely eyes watching their every move as they walked past to enter the inn. He ignored them and went in after Audri.

Aside from a few discreet clusters of griffons sitting at the farthest corners, the place didn’t have many patrons, perhaps due to the presence of armed guards outside. A row of tables stood in the middle of the cosy dining floor, as if in expectation of a large crowd eager to sign up for the expedition. Reality apparently disagreed, as only one attendant sat behind the tables, abandoned by his colleagues from lack of work and looking half bored to death as he toyed with a quill on the worn, wooden surface. Stacks of paper – probably unsigned contracts – lay on top of each table, almost completely undisturbed.

An owl-headed, brown-eyed griffon sat at a private table behind the lone attendant, flanked by another two guards. He had mostly light-brown, well-groomed plumage and was dressed in a rich, dark coat with a sword belt around his waist. He fiddled constantly with a golden medallion in one hand, whilst poring over a scrappy map of some sort spread over the table, idly tracing something on it with a talon. Lenny noticed that he had near-perfect scaling on his forearms, immaculate and polished talons, relatively small wings and unpronounced musculature – all the signs of a griffon who had gone a long time without any real work or exertion.

Small wonder so few had signed up for the expedition.

“Guess people trust this Reynard as much as Gilda does,” Lenny said in an undertone.

“You sure that’s him?” she whispered back.

“He looks like the type.”

“Well, so long as he has the money…”

Just then, the griffon turned towards the kitchen and called out, “More wine, Garland! And bring along some of those scones while you’re at it.”

His smooth, somewhat simpering voice grated on Lenny’s ears. There were only a few types of griffs that Lenny disdained, but this guy was rapidly matching up to their common traits with each passing minute.

A brownish-green earth pony dressed in a simple tunic came hurrying out of the kitchen, balancing a tray laden with a jug and plate of pastries. Once at his employer’s table, he bit on the tray and somehow managed to transfer everything over without spilling a single drop, and then beat a hasty but very silent retreat to the kitchen when Reynard dismissed him with a haughty wave.

Lenny locked eyes with the stallion for the briefest of moments on his way back, and he couldn't quite decide whether to pity the bleak, broken spirit he saw behind those purple eyes. It might’ve just been his imagination, but the averted eyes, submissive posture and flighty gait all reminded him of a cowed animal skirting the shadows in fear of a predator. He pictured himself in that position for a moment and felt his stomach churn; a few minutes of that would’ve driven him crazy, even more so if he had that tittering griffon for a master.

He had to take a moment to clear out the unpleasant thought as they approached the lone attendant, who perked up and gave them a wry smile when they reached the table. “You here to sign up?”

“Yes,” Audri chirped.

The griffon eyed her from crest to feet in a moment of silence before clicking his beak in approval. “Well, you certainly look fit enough for it. That’s good. Can’t tell you how many dirt-pickers have tried to weasel their way in. Poor slobs could hardly lift a chair, let alone survive the climb down.” He slid a contract over to her side of the table, adding, “Here, just sign once you’re done reading it.”

Lenny stepped right up to the edge of the table next to Audri’s and looked pointedly the attendant, who seemed more keen on watching his sister read than actually attending to him. He cleared his throat, but that only made the griffon flick his eyes over to him briefly. None of the other griffons nearby paid him any mind, either.

Right…

He rapped on the table loudly enough to get their attention and growled, “Are you going to give me my contract or are you waiting for me to say please?”

The attendant frowned. “Servants don’t get their own contracts.”

“Yeah, that’s nice to know. I’ll be sure to tell any servant I come across.” Lenny rolled his eyes and gave him a scowl. “I’d like a copy of that contract now, if you don’t mind.”

The griffon stared at him, glanced at Audri and then looked back at him. “Is he yours?” he asked her. “Because if so, you should know that subsidiaries do not get a separate share of pay or spoils. You split it with any underlings you bring along. It’s in the contract.”

“Yeah, I saw that. But he’s not an underling, he’s my brother,” Audri coolly replied. She then grinned and tilted her head in Lenny’s direction. “You don’t have to talk as if he isn’t here, by the way. Being ignored really gets under his skin.”

“Getting a contract will put me back in a good mood, though,” Lenny added.

“Umm…” The attendant stared at him, glanced at Audri and then looked back at him. A moment later, he turned to the guards farther back, but they all looked similarly perplexed. Eventually, he called out to Reynard. “Milord, this one may need your attention. We hadn’t anticipated this… complication.”

“All right, I guess that really is him,” Audri whispered.

“Just send him on his way, if you please.” Reynard hadn’t even bothered to look at him.

“Right.” The attendant nodded and turned to Lenny. “Milord has spoken. You can either share the profits with your, uh, sister, or nothing at all.”

Lenny shared a look with Audri, who simply shrugged and gestured for him to go ahead. He had to suppress a grin as he whistled sharply at Reynard and said, “Hey, if you’ve got a problem with me, why don’t you come over here and say it to my face?”

“If this is a joke, it is in rather poor taste.”

“The only joke here is your recruitment policy,” he retorted. “You’re barely getting anyone, and yet you still want to get picky over stupid reasons?”

That finally earned him a scowl. Reynard got up from his seat and padded over to them, adopting an air of aloofness as he appraised both of them and said, “This expedition needs skilled griffons, not pack mules – though a few certainly wouldn’t hurt…”

Lenny felt his blood simmer at the insult, but before he could get a word in edgewise, Reynard went prattling on. “Some ruffian already tried to round up as many beggars as he could to claim all their payment in advance; I had him thrown out.”

“Look, we’re not fooling around,” Audri insisted. “I mean, sure, my brother looks a little different, but Lenny’s as competent as I am, and I’ll vouch for his skill at hunting and tracking and whatever else you need done on this expedition. He’s no pack mule.”

Reynard raised an eyebrow at her, then turned to Lenny. “Is that so? Tell me, then. What interest does a pegasus have in finding the Idol of Boreas? This quest is a matter of griffon honour; it’s not one of your singsong friendship and harmony adventures.”

Lenny snarled and flared his wings as he locked eyes with Reynard. “My name is Lenny Redtail of Clan Skarhold, and any griffon honour is my honour. I want to take part in recovering the idol because, one, you’re paying well enough, and two, I want to be remembered amongst those who did what no one else could. I’m no long-face softie; I can pull my weight.”

After taking a moment to weigh the risks, he made a show of sizing him up and added, “Maybe even yours, too, if you were coming along. Though I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, not when it looks like your friends here are all wondering if you can even meet your own recruitment standards.”

Reynard stiffened and glanced around at the other griffons, who all suddenly seemed very keen on studying the floor, their weapons, food and just about anything else aside from meeting their master’s eyes. A low growl came from his throat as he spread his wings to match Lenny’s pose.

Struck a nerve. Good.

He heard grips tightening on spear shafts and creaking floorboards as Reynard’s guards shifted their balance in anticipation of an order to attack, but he did not withdraw his challenge. He took note of their positions to defend himself anyway if things got ugly – hoof stomps on toes worked wonders on those who didn’t watch their footing.

To his credit, Reynard neither backed down nor called for help. They stared at each other, unmoving for a tense minute or two, until his adversary’s gaze flicked over to Audri’s face, focusing on the red face paint around her yellow eyes.

“Those are Skarhold’s markings?” he asked.

“Yes. We both got ours when we came of age,” Audri affirmed.

Reynard’s eyes narrowed as he returned his gaze to Lenny, before he finally huffed and folded his wings. “Very well, then. Let’s see you keep up with the rest of us tomorrow. If you fail, Skarhold honour will pay the price for trusting a pony with a griffon’s job.”

With that, Reynard turned his back to Lenny and retreated to brood over his map, leaving them to read and sign their contracts in silence.

The attendant assisted them without complaint this time, and once they had completed everything, said, “We march in the morning, so everyone’s meeting up at the field outside before sunrise for the final inspections. You’ll be given standard supplies and gear, so everything else you want you’ll have to bring on your own. If you pass inspection, we’ll put the advance payment into your respective accounts to be retrieved upon return. Rest well – you’ll need it.”

“Not sure if that was the smartest thing to do,” Audri quipped once they’d exited the inn. “For a moment I thought he was going to challenge you to a duel.”

“He’d lose.”

She rolled her eyes. “He’d pick a champion to flatten you, dummy. You’re not that good.”

He retorted with a grin. “That would just prove my point, though.”

“And leave me to deal with your bruised ego for ages, after I drag you back home in a stretcher.” Audri shook her head and punched him in the shoulder, but her eyes glinted with amusement. “There’s only so much I can do for you, you know.”

“Uh huh. Love you too.” Lenny paused and sniffed the air, turning towards the middle of town where the smoky scent must’ve drifted from. “I’m hungry.”

She sighed. “Of course you are.”

Griffonstone looked very different after nightfall. Although it didn’t look like the city council could even afford to maintain street lamps, with the only illumination coming from nearby taverns, houses and cooking fires, that didn't stop the locals from adding some much-needed life to the scenery at the night market. Griffons went to and fro between hawker stalls, purchasing food and whatever odds and ends they found interesting. Lenny and Audri decided to spend an hour or two just wandering around and observing the city’s surprisingly vibrant night life.

They eventually had to turn back, though, knowing that they would have their beaks full getting ready for tomorrow. He and Audri settled on buying some skewered mice before continuing back to Gilda’s place. A little lean and over-salted, but they went down nicely enough with some mountain grass he found growing by the side of the road. Having a hot meal in his belly also helped with the chilling wind blowing from the north.

When they got back, they found a somewhat weary Gilda nursing a cup of tea at the dining table, with the crumbs of her dinner scattered on a couple of plates. A lone oil lamp hung from the ceiling beam above, providing flickering light together with the crackling fireplace.

“How’d it go?” asked Gilda.

“Lenny got into a wing-measuring contest with our employer the first chance he got,” said Audri.

“Well, he was asking for it.”

“Wha—what the hay did you do?” Gilda demanded.

“Oh, he just questioned his griffonhood in front of his subordinates, that’s all.”

Gilda blinked once, twice, then groaned and covered her face. “You’re crazy. Both of you. If you join his little party tomorrow, he’ll… he’ll—”

“Never let me live it down if I chicken out after a stunt like that,” Lenny interjected as he took a seat at the table and poured himself some tea. “I’m not giving him the satisfaction. Also, I kind of accidentally put my clan’s name on the line.”

Gilda arched an eyebrow and gave Audri a sidelong glance.

“Too late to take it back. I’m not leaving him alone.”

“Yeah, I’m done trying to save your hides,” Gilda muttered, throwing up her arms. “Reynard’s not hardcore like his dad, but I bet he’s going to try something. If there’s anything a noble likes holding more than gold, it’s a grudge. Also, you do know there’s a reason is called the Abysmal Abyss, right? It’s bad enough without ‘accidents’ happening, if you know what I mean.”

“Right, I’ll be careful.” He took a swig of tea without bothering to savour its fragrance or taste. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to watch my back.”

Gilda folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “This one’s different. I don’t know… I just got a feeling. Should’ve kept my mouth shut about finding the idol. Never expected a whole flock of crazies to go after it.”

Audri took a seat next to him patted Gilda’s hand. “Nothing we can’t handle, so don’t worry. We watch out for each other.”

“I hope so.” Gilda downed the last of her drink and yawned massively. Then, she pushed herself away from the table and began shambling up the stairs to her bedroom. “I’m out. Try not to get yourselves killed or whatever.”

“Little early to roost, isn’t it?”

“You try three freaking hours of ‘negotiating’ with Gina for some materials to repair Greta’s workshop that doesn’t involve gutting your wallet and then come back to me and talk about roosting early,” Gilda groused, feathers ruffling involuntarily. She smoothed her crest and shook her head, then resumed plodding up the stairs. “Good night. Firewood’s at the back, keep it stoked if you need. Remember to shut the door when you leave.”

With the living room pretty much all to themselves, Lenny and Audri spent the rest of the night inspecting their gear and making sure that they had everything in working order for the following day. Once satisfied that they hadn’t missed anything important, they snuffed out the lamp and unrolled a pair of thin, worn mattresses in the living room.

As they lay side by side, basking in the warmth and glow of the fireplace, he asked, “You think Gilda might be on to something?”

“Hmm?”

“That this whole thing’s a waste of time.”

“For that Reynard guy? Probably. For us? I think it’ll be a good experience with a chance to earn gold on the side.” Audri shrugged and added, “We were getting bored at home, anyway.”

He snorted. “Tell me about it. Mother’s still dropping hints to ‘range farther out’ for someone to give her grandkids with me. But…”

A sudden sense of foreboding ambushed him, stealing his words away. He’d felt it niggling at the back of his mind since leaving the King’s Roost, but now that he’d had some time to cool down, nothing kept it from making him feel that he might’ve bitten off more than he could chew. Enough to make his ears droop; he hated that.

“You ever get the feeling we might be one of those guys they sing about?” he murmured, toying with a tuft of frayed cotton on the mattress. “The stupid ones who get themselves killed doing something like this?”

“Nope.”

Lenny waited, but she didn’t add anything else. “That’s it?”

“Yup.”

He felt a grin coming on. “Hah. Sounds exactly like the kind of attitude those stories warn us about.”

“They also say there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.” Audri yawned and snuggled up to him. “Night-night, Lenny. Big day tomorrow.”

He tucked his head under a wing and closed his eyes. “Yeah. G’night.”

Chapter 4

Lenny slowly peeled his eyelids up and groaned as he stretched to work the kinks out of his limbs. He could still feel the cuts and bruises, and his tongue felt thick and dry in his mouth, but at least some rest had dulled his discomfort to a more tolerable level. Instead of feeling half-dead, he just felt chilly and miserable, though he had to admit that it was far better than getting chewed to bits.

But he could look on the bright side of things for only so long; the lamp had gone out. He distinctly remembered telling Reynard to keep it on when they switched places, but apparently he’d failed to do even that. There just enough ambient light from the alien vegetation for him to form a rudimentary image of his immediate surroundings, and as far as he could tell, Reynard was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t hear him, either – only the distant murmur of flowing water and the chittering creatures of the deep.

Had something gotten him whilst he slept? It seemed plausible enough, given their circumstances, but he would’ve expected Reynard to put up a fight or call for help if that had happened. But he found no signs of a struggle – no scent of blood, urine or drool of any sort.

A sinking feeling crawled in his belly as he groped his way to the supply packs, and it turned to a chill when he felt his stuff clattering loosely inside the baggy canvas. More than half of his food had gone missing, and he was quite sure that an animal wouldn’t have bothered to close the bags, let alone put it back in place. One whole pack had disappeared, too, along with Reynard’s meagre belongings.

“Well… crud,” he muttered.

That’ll teach me to let my guard down.

He really should’ve taken some precautions, but he had been so worn out at the end of his watch that he’d simply forgotten.

Growling, he leapt into the air and perched on top of the twin columns over the hollow, squinting as he tried to make out anything that might resemble a griffon sneaking off. The clusters of fungal growths around the place provided enough light to make the rocks cast murky shadows, but there were far too many gaps of pure darkness between them for his liking, and though he did spot some movement here and there, they looked like they belonged to nothing bigger than a rat.

After a moment’s consideration, he risked a quick shout of Reynard’s name, but its echoes quickly got lost in the vastness of the abyss. No one answered. Beads of sweat trickled down his temple as the seconds turned to minutes, but he couldn’t come up with a plan to find Reynard, or even decide if that was a good idea at that point. He probably stood a better chance if he just cut his losses and move on from there.

Lenny waited another couple of minutes, then glided back down into the hollow to take stock of what Reynard had left behind. Doing it without proper light made the process exceedingly tedious, and his growing desire to punch Reynard did not help at all.

His ears perked up when he heard the crunch of loose gravel nearby, and he froze in place. The noise came at irregular intervals, possibly from someone on all fours walking on rough and uneven ground. A dark silhouette appeared at the entrance of the hollow, and it muttered something in Reynard’s voice.

Lenny heaved a sigh and growled, “Where the heck have you been off to?”

The figure started, and despite the dark, Lenny was positive that Reynard was scowling at him.

“I needed to relieve myself. I had no intention of doing it in here,” he replied.

Lenny frowned. “Any reason you needed to take half the food with you? And how far did you go? Didn’t you hear me calling?”

A moment of silence.

Then, Reynard shrugged and huffed, “I considered it… insurance. And I did hear you; I was just a little occupied at the time, and you’ll forgive me for not wanting to draw attention to myself when I was out in the open.”

Lenny had already opened his mouth by the time he realised that he had no real retort to that. Reynard did have a point about keeping quiet, though going alone without telling him probably wasn’t the best idea. Not that any of them had come up with brilliant ideas recently, but they really didn’t need to make it easier for the abyss to finish them off. And he definitely didn’t like the bit about ‘insurance’, as if Reynard needed to hold essential stuff hostage to ensure his good behaviour, but he could let that slide for now.

Just before the silence got awkward, he found his voice again. “Fine, but next time, let me know if you’re going off somewhere. Did you take the lamp?”

The shadowy figure prowled off to one side and scrabbled around for a bit before Lenny heard his talons clinking against glass. Reynard then lifted it up to him and curtly said, “No, I did not. It was with you the whole time.”

Lenny blinked a couple of times, then gingerly took the lamp. “You can actually see that well in the dark?”

“Well enough, under these conditions. A gift that runs in Karhonnen’s bloodline,” Reynard said with a hint of aloofness in his voice. “Many a time has it allowed my ancestors to thwart an unprepared foe when—”

Makes sense. He’s part owl, thought Lenny as he tuned out Reynard’s narration. “Uh huh, that’s nice. It’ll come in real handy for the mess we’re in. Now that you’re back, care to tell me exactly what you took so I can make sure we didn’t lose anything?”

“Oh, you mean like the lamp?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I was more concerned about the food, actually.”

From the silence that ensued, Lenny had a sinking feeling that Reynard’s bag had come back significantly lighter than when it had left. He sighed and beckoned him closer. “Let me see that. How much did you eat?”

“Enough to stop feeling like I’m about to collapse any minute,” Reynard said in a measured tone as he tossed the pack at Lenny.

“Well, that’s just great,” he muttered after rummaging through its depressingly spacious insides. “I think you just ate a day and a half’s worth of food in a single sitting. Well done.”

Reynard sat down with a thump on the crunchy gravel. “You… you cannot be serious. That was barely a snack. I’m not even full!”

“Well, sometimes we mortals have to make do.” Lenny snorted and set the bag with the others. He then refilled the lamp and retrieved his flint and firesteel. When the last spark finally set the wick alight, he blinked to adjust to the sudden brightness, fixed Reynard a stern glare and continued, “Especially when we’re miles beneath a mountain with no sure way to replenish our supplies.”

“Why would we even need that much food, anyway? It wouldn’t take us that long to climb back to the surface.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s the brightest idea. Not with the giant spiders, flying face-eaters and who knows what else we’d find on the way up. Heck, we couldn’t even finish climbing down. What makes you think we can manage it going the harder way?”

“Well, I don’t intend to stay here and rot,” Reynard growled. “We have to try.”

“We wouldn’t even make it halfway. Besides, we don’t have any proper gear left for climbing, and,” – Lenny flared his tattered wings in emphasis – “I have trouble flying. If we fall, we’re probably done for. I don’t think we can count on being lucky enough to have webs to catch us a second time. Or not get eaten by the spiders if we do land on them again.”

Reynard scowled. “Then what would you suggest?”

He shrugged. “Long term? No idea. But for now, I’d say we’d stand a better chance if we first figure out how to avoid starving. And any shelter we find down here is likely to beat what we can find up on the wall. If we’re lucky, we’ll come up with a plan for escape once everything else is settled.”

“So, you’re essentially telling me that your plan is to build a quaint little hovel inside a bottomless pit filled with bloodthirsty critters and hope that one day, you might remember that the quickest way out is to go straight up?”

Lenny took a moment to parse through his words, then nodded. “Got it in one, except for that last bit. There might be another way out.”

“Do tell.”

He glanced in the direction of the river, lurking in the darkness beyond. “Well, the abyss does go all the way to the coast. Maybe—”

A dry chuckle cut him off. “Oh, that’s rich. It would take us ages to traverse this place horizontally. I thought you didn’t want to die.”

Lenny took a slow, steadying breath, unable to decide whether he preferred Reynard as a whinging snob or a nervous wreck. Once he’d fought off the urge to pummel him, he calmly said, “Both plans are stupid. But mine might be a little less stupid because I don’t yet know for sure that it’s impossible. Besides, staying down here gives us a chance to find if anyone else survived. Either way, I’m not budging until I know how we’re supposed to stay on our feet and feed ourselves once the food runs out.”

Reynard shook his head. “That’s not good enough for me. We’re wasting time here when we could be making headway to the surface.” He turned and padded over to their stash. “I’m ordering you to leave. Pick these up and let’s go.”

“No.”

Slowly, Reynard turned around to face him. “What?”

Lenny settled down comfortably on his belly and shook his head. “You heard me. I said no.”

Reynard dropped the pack he held and folded his arms. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten after that knock to your head – it looks admittedly severe, I’ll give you that – but I hired you, not the other way around. I expect you to do your job and follow orders.”

“You hired me to help you find the idol and get back home in one piece, and that’s what I plan to do. Getting home alive, I mean. I’m pretty sure that we can scratch the idol off the list of priorities at this point.”

“You gave your word to follow my orders on this expedition.” Reynard’s crest rose as he took a step forward and growled, “Does that mean nothing to you?”

“What?”

“Don’t play coy with me!” He swept a hand out viciously, as if decapitating someone. “You know full well what I’m referring to, or were you merely lying to stop Sir Grell from humiliating you in view of everyone?”

A little heat rose into Lenny’s ears as he remembered how easily Grell had beaten him in a fight that couldn’t have lasted longer than a minute at most. Still, credit where it was due, and luckily for him, the one who’d earned his respect wasn’t the one demanding it right now.

Grinning wryly, he said, “And he’s absolutely welcome to beat me within an inch of my life for breaking my promise. I think I’ll take that over getting eaten or splattered on the rocks, thanks. But Grell’s not here, and besides, I get the feeling that he’d side with me on this. Until we come up with a plan that isn’t guaranteed to get us all killed, we should stay on the ground where it’s safe.”

Reynard arched an eyebrow. “Safe?”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, relatively safe.”

“That’s just… you…” Reynard raised and pointed a talon at him, but slowly lowered it as his words petered out. Then, he threw up both hands and spat on the ground. “Damnation, I should have known better than to hire a pony to do a griffon’s job. I thought you lot were supposed to be good at following instructions.”

“Well, feel free to crack out the whip at any time,” Lenny retorted with a toothy grin. “Fair warning: I kick and bite.”

Reynard’s eye twitched.

Lenny tensed up as his hand edged closer to the sheathed dagger on his belt. He had his own knife, but that lay out of reach somewhere in the pile with the rest of his belongings. Not that he needed it, though; he felt reasonably confident that he could take him on with just wings and hooves if things got ugly. Still, Reynard didn’t seem all that keen on getting physical, so that just left them staring at one another, accompanied by the faint, distant chittering of insects and dripping water. Their shadows stretched, long and forlorn in the flickering lamplight.

A minute or two passed. Reynard eventually muttered something that might’ve been about Lenny’s parentage before stomping off into the dark. The crunch of gravel and shifting stones didn’t get too faint before they stopped, so he guessed that he’d simply gone a short distance to sulk in private. That suited him just fine. He probably could do with a little cooling off as well.

Might as well be useful while I’m at it.

He dug through their supplies and stuffed his slingshot, hunting knife and water canteen together in one of the battered travel bags, the one with multiple compartments. After a moment’s thought, the tinderbox and flint went in as well. The oil wouldn’t last forever, so it wouldn’t hurt to start searching for something else to burn. If he lucked out, he might even find an alternative like glow worms or fireflies whilst out foraging.

A shadow of doubt snuck up on him just as he grabbed the lamp, though. Taking it would mean leaving Reynard in the dark. Although he didn’t really need it by his own admittance, it still felt a little too backstabby for his taste, even if the snob did deserve a crack on the beak.

It took him a couple of minutes to find Reynard a little ways off from their hollow, hunched over as he sat on the ground fiddling with something in his talons that glinted in the lamplight. Jewellery of some sort – maybe a ring, by the looks of it.

“Hey.”

Reynard didn’t look his way as he murmured, “What is it now?”

“I’m going foraging, and there’s only one light.”

“So?”

“You’ll either have to come with me or wait in the dark.” Lenny quickly glanced around with his ears perked. He didn’t pick up anything particularly unnerving amidst the background chatter of insects, but that offered little comfort, given what they’d gone through. “Best if we stick together.”

Reynard scoffed but still didn’t turn to face him. “Afraid to go out alone?”

“Actually, I was going to mention safety in numbers and that you might learn a thing or two about foraging,” Lenny muttered as he rolled his eyes, “but sure, let’s go with that.”

“Leave me be.”

“Look, we—”

“I said leave me be!” Reynard snapped as he spun round and flared his wings. Barely a moment later, the fire went out of his eyes, and he slowly wilted as he turned away. “I… I cannot. I am in no shape to assist you with… whatever task you have set for yourself. Take the lamp or leave it. I don’t care. Just go.”

Lenny simply stared at him. Then, he set the lamp on the ground and started forward, one wing raised in preparation to shake or slap some sense into him. But something about the way Reynard seemed to have shrunken in on himself made Lenny slow down, until he came to a complete stop only a couple of strides away.

Great. Now he’s depressed, too.

He suppressed a growl and sighed. “All right. I know it’s been a lousy day, but it would really be great if you could help me with the foraging. I know you paid us to do all the work, but with just the two of us left, you’re going to have to pick up some of the slack.”

No answer.

“Okay, fine.” Lenny turned back and hooked the lamp onto his bag, then plodded off in the river’s direction. “Stay in camp and try not to do anything crazy. If I’m not back in three or maybe four hours…”

He paused for a moment and glanced over his shoulder. Reynard hadn’t moved. Frowning, he shook his head and murmured, “Never mind. Just hope I do come back.”

The walk down to the river felt longer than he remembered, but then again, he didn’t have to stop every now and then to leave markers for helping him find his way back the last time. He used rocks to make little mounds and stuck debris like bits of driftwood in the middle in such a way that no one would ever mistake them for natural formations, all leading to the leaning twin columns that formed their shelter. They might even increase the odds of someone finding them, if anyone else had survived the fall.

An unearthly chill refused to stop crawling over him as he trudged on. He had a hard time not thinking about the others. Gilda, Erin, or maybe one of Reynard’s soldiers lying on the ground, screams frozen onto their faces, eyes glassy and lifeless…

Quit it!

Lenny shook his head and growled to himself. No time for freaking out. Survive.

Nothing bothered him on the way there save for a few buzzing insects almost as large as dragonflies that tried to land on him. For what purpose, he couldn’t tell, and he did not care to find out if they wanted to suck on his blood or sting him. Flapping his wings or flicking his tail kept most of them away, and the couple that didn’t take the hint got squished easily enough.

Closer to the river, the gravel gave way to mud and stagnant water. Massive clumps of worms and other glistening creepy-crawlies writhed in the shallow pools, and after slipping and sliding knee-deep into one of them, he decided to risk a little flying. He didn’t know if the abyss had any native skin-burrowing parasites and was quite happy to leave it at that.

After a series of short glides and a longer sweep along the river’s edge, he found a convenient outcropping of stable rock overlooking a miniature cove of sorts. The crystal-clear water was calm there, almost still. The rounded edge sloped downward at a rather gentle incline, two or three metres deep. Disappointingly small fish swam close to the bottom – hardly worth the effort unless he had a proper net for catching a whole lot of them. The clusters of shellfish stuck to the sides of the cove looked more promising, though.

On the other side of the rock, the expansive river flowed at a steady pace. Not quickly enough to form white rapids, but he could see large, smooth humps of water where they flowed over submerged rocks without breaking the surface.

Once he’d set down his stuff safely away from the water, he sat at the edge of the rock and held out the lamp over the dark surface of the river. For a while, nothing notable happened. Then, his heart quickened when he saw a silvery flash. He hadn’t been wrong the first time; there were fish of respectable size in the river. It was just too bad that he hadn’t found anything on the way there which he could’ve used to make a fishing spear. A quick flight around the area confirmed that there was nothing useful nearby.

That just left him with the mussels. They were too deep for him to reach from the edge, and he had no idea if the river even had a low tide to count on for exposing them. He’d have to swim – and expose himself to anything possibly lurking in the water.

Having Audri around would be great right about now.

Sighing, he dimmed the light and lay in wait, watching the river for any sign of predators. A moment later, he found himself wondering what his big sister was doing right then. His ears drooped. They used to go spearfishing together when they were little – and they’d mercilessly tease one another for every mistake, which sometimes escalated to lively scuffles that rarely wound down until their teacher threatened to sell them to the circus.

Lenny wiped the half-formed smile off his face and pushed the thoughts away. Not the best of times to get distracted.

He didn’t see anything really noteworthy as the minutes passed. No large shadows moving beneath the surface or glinting eyes of any sort, save for the fish out of his reach. No sudden splashes or swirling clouds of disturbed mud.

The flowing water and its gurgling soothed him, though. Almost to the point where he could forget his scrapes and bruises. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine sitting by the river on a cool evening somewhere in the foothills of Western Griffonia.

At least, only in the intervals between muffled fluttering or chirps in the shadows. Those noises easily pierced the illusion and made his hairs stand on end whenever he heard them relatively close by. After nearly losing his composure for the third time, he took his knife out and kept it mounted on his foreleg brace just in case something decided to tangle with him.

Half an hour must’ve passed by then, maybe more, and he’d seen no sign of gators or anything else that might attack him in the water. On most days, he might’ve waited longer and taken more precautions, but he didn’t have the luxury this time.

Aside from the icy coldness, which was probably because it came from the glaciers up north, he found nothing objectionable about the water, so he drank to his satisfaction and filled up his canteen. Then, he set the lamp at the water’s edge and dipped a foreleg in, resisting the urge to withdraw from the biting cold. Good for drinking, but he couldn’t say the same about swimming in it. Gritting his teeth, he held on to the edge with his forelegs and went in hind legs first. He fought to keep from shivering too much as the water lapped around his nether region and allowed himself to sink up to his neck. After taking a moment to steady his breathing, he filled his lungs and dove under.

Between the lamp and the crystal-clear water, he had no difficulty making out the mussels all nicely clustered up on the rocks. He just needed to work fast and prize them off before he got chilled to the bone.

Prying mussels off the rocks was repetitive, brainless work, and he appreciated its effectiveness at keeping him from thinking too much about the present circumstances – just a familiar and comfortable task to lose himself in for some time. A little pressure here, some leverage there, back and forth, a twist and a firm tug. Turn around to check his surroundings. Go up for air, then dive and repeat. One by one, he plucked them loose with their root-like beards trailing sediment, and chucked them out of the water. Easy pickings.

The chill soon got to him, though. It started with the occasional shiver in his midriff that soon worked its way through him until his entire body trembled, and no amount of steady breathing whilst treading water could make it stop.

Yeah, I’ve had enough.

He’d collected just over a dozen decent mussels at that point, more if he counted the damaged, undersized or potentially unhealthy ones. Probably couldn’t ask for more, all things considered, so he grabbed onto the edge and prepared to haul himself out.

Then, something in the water caught his eye. Blinking, Lenny turned around and floated quietly, listening with cocked ears as he scanned the river.

Bluish light pulsed beneath the surface. Almost imperceptible in contrast to the yellow reflections of the lamp, but definitely something new.

Though he really wanted to get out of the cold, identifying the light’s source might prove useful later on, so he took in a deep breath and plunged beneath the surface. Once below, he only needed to wait for a couple of seconds before the light pulsed again. This time, it didn’t go out. A tiny orb of turquoise light bobbed in the darkness just beyond the little cove, illuminating any bubbles or dirt that the current dragged past it.

Lenny squinted as he swam toward it with an outstretched hoof. It might serve as a substitute for the lamp when he eventually ran out of oil, or it might fetch a good price as an exotic oddity from the bottom of the abyss. Heck, if nothing else, he might just keep it as a pet if it was a living thing. He never really considered himself the artsy or expressive type, but even he had to admit that it looked beautiful, and he really, really wanted it. A blue moon in a vast, starless night sky. A precious light guiding the lost. Bobbing like a luminous fishing line’s float in the—

He froze.

Oh no.

Slowly, as imperceptibly as he could, he used his wings to propel himself backward to the river bank. His heart raced and pounded so loudly in his ears that he almost expected the noise to bring every predator in hearing distance down on him instantly. He fought to keep his shivers to a minimum, even as the burning in his lungs warned of a growing need for air and demanded that he make a frantic break for the surface. But he knew better. No sudden movements.

The light followed him.

Every fibre of his being screamed for him to explode into action, but he refused.

As it entered the lamp’s radius of illumination, a hulking, pitch-black form materialised behind the turquoise orb. So black that he saw it not because of the lamp shining on it, but because it ate up all the light and stayed a dark blob in contrast to the stones and grey mud of the river bed. A huge, misshapen head with thin, serrated teeth poking out from a broad, indistinct mouth. Oar-like fins lazily undulating on either side of its body. Massive, globular eyes fit to swallow him in their lightless depths if he looked too closely.

His back bumped against rock.

Just a little more…

His hind hooves found purchase on the slope, and he edged closer and closer to the surface. The hulking shadow filled nearly half of the cove, its turquoise orb still dancing before him like a confused shrimp just asking to be eaten.

Then, he bent his hind legs and tucked in his wings.

Now!

He leapt up with all his strength. His head exploded out of the water, and as soon as his wings breached the surface, he spread them out and propelled himself with as much downward thrust as he could bring to bear. Water fountained up with him and rained from his coat as he frantically pumped his wings, and he slowed to a laborious hover only after reaching a height of at least two storeys above the water.

Almost anticlimactically, the monstrous fish hadn’t lunged after him. It simply swam a lazy circle in the cove, as if puzzled by the disappearance of its prey. The shadow eased itself out of the cove and into the river proper, and then the blue light winked out of existence. He realised that it wasn’t quite as monstrous as he’d thought whilst in the water with it – no larger than an adult gator – but it was still big enough to ignore his dinky knife had it decided to attack. Probably hadn’t gone for the kill because it had never seen anything like him before.

Lenny dropped back onto the ground and hurriedly dragged or tossed his belongings farther away from the water’s edge. A couple of shellfish tumbled off the pile and back into the water, but they could stay there for all he cared.

Once he had everything a safe distance from the water, he heaved a massive sigh and simply sat on his haunches, staring off into space as water dripped from his mane. His chest throbbed and his breaths came in short, rapid bursts through chattering teeth. Now that the adrenaline had worn of, he could feel the chill digging into him through his sopping wet coat. He couldn’t stop shivering as he pictured a huge maw clamping down on him, sinking its long teeth into his meat as it dragged him screaming into the depths. Gone without a trace.

But eventually, his heart rate and breathing slowed to a reasonable pace until he could trust himself to move without shivering like a nervous wreck. A blinding flash lit up the world around him, and he winced at the brightness and shielded his eyes with a hoof. Then, as he sat there shaking his head and trying to blink the afterimages out of his vision, an ominous rumble filled the darkness around him.

He frowned. Thunder and lightning. At the bottom of a several-miles-deep gorge?

It had come from somewhere downriver. Far, far away, judging by the delay between the flash and rumble. Lenny sniffed the air and found it thick with humidity, carrying the promise of rain. After everything he’d seen, he didn’t feel inclined to doubt the possibility. There’d be time to figure out how it worked later, preferably in the comfort of nice, dry shelter.

Without the sun or a towel, he did his best to dry off by shaking his hair and feathers. A hiss escaped him when he felt a stinging sensation on his back, and his fetlock came back with little streaks of red after rubbing it. His straining must’ve reopened the cuts. Nothing he could do about that at the moment, so he quickly packed everything into the bag and hurried off with the lamp bouncing at his side.

Finding the way back was easy enough; he simply went to the nearest marker he’d set and retraced his steps through the marshy grounds. More buzzing insects harassed him along the way, but he easily fended them off with his wings without suffering more than a couple of bites. They itched almost immediately, but at least they weren’t immediately debilitating. Hopefully he’d suffer no worse effects as the day – or night, he couldn’t tell – wore on.

He passed a few of those fungal ‘groves’ on the way. Despite the urgent niggling at the back of his mind to return to camp at full speed, he found himself slowing down to get a better look. From a distance, the fungal growths resembled leafless, skeletal trees, and their amber, luminescent globes glowed like lanterns hung in the woods for a festival. Bugs of various sizes trundled about, grazing on the organic matter that covered the ground like a lumpy, mushy carpet. On occasion, something would lunge, snare one of the grazers and vanish back into the shadows, leaving its prey’s startled chirp as the only evidence of its presence.

Most of the critters skittered away as he approached them, and he found himself wondering if any were edible. If he squinted just right, he could almost see some of them as bulkier, creepier crayfish that could go on land. They couldn’t be much harder to hit with his slingshot than rats, and he had plenty of practice with the latter.

Maybe next time.

For now, he would make do with a few samples of fungus. The globes’ meaty stems gave little resistance when he sliced through them with the knife, and he nodded in approval when he found that the severed ends didn’t leak any fluids. The globes kept glowing steadily as he stuffed them into the bag, separate from the other goods.

He cleaned his knife, then went on his way.

Just before reaching the gravelly shore, Lenny spotted something glimmering from the bottom of a muddy rock pool. After stopping and circling the pool to ensure that the golden thing wasn’t another predator’s lure, he fished it out of the pool and held it close to the lamp for inspection. His eyes widened. It was a gold coin of sorts, a little warped and notched at the edges. Definitely not an Equestrian bit – ponies liked their coins real thick and heavy, whereas this one was relatively thin and elegant – and it didn’t look like any of the mints used by griffon clans. At least, nothing this century.

His pulse quickened when he realised that he might be holding something from a bygone era – before ponies had mastered the world, when Griffonia had kings. He glanced up at the miles of darkness separating him from civilisation and wondered what kind of journey this coin must’ve endured.

Yep. This one’s a keeper.

He carefully put it into a separate compartment of his travel bag and hurried on. He’d already left Reynard alone for a few hours.

Silence greeted him at the campsite. He called out in a low voice as he crept about, searching for Reynard. No one answered. Upon searching the hollow, he realised that someone had gone through their stuff same as before. One bag missing, the others somewhat lighter.

Again? Really? This is getting old.

Lenny ground his teeth and kicked a stone into the shadows. At worst, he’d hoped to find Reynard snoring in the hollow, or maybe sulking somewhere nearby, but no, he had to go on another adventure by himself. He kicked another stone, but instead of sailing after the first one, it struck the rock column and rebounded onto his forehead. Snarling, he picked it up and hurled it out into the darkness.

As its clacks and clatters faded away, he noticed an unusually bright speck of yellow light in the distance, upriver and relatively close to the wall. At first he thought he’d spotted someone with a lamp, but it neither flickered nor moved. Still, it deserved some investigation for being far brighter than any form of natural luminescence he’d seen so far. He just needed to play it safe and approach it nice and slow; the last thing he wanted was another close call like the one in the river.

Armed with just his knife, slingshot and a dimmed lamp, he dumped his bag with the others and trotted towards the light at a steady pace. The light did not waver or shift as he closed the distance. When he had narrowed it to about a hundred metres between them, he could make out a clothed figure lying prone and unmoving as a vaguely pony-like shadow stood close by with its snout low to the ground.

Lenny considered calling out to them, until he recalled that their original party had no other pony members. So, he’d either found someone from a separate expedition by pure luck, or ponies actually lived in the Abysmal Abyss. He stood still for a moment, flicking his tail as he watched, but when no other useful information presented itself, he decided to press on in silence. No sense in making himself known until he had a better idea of how they’d react.

The lamp would probably give away his position if he got any closer, so he hid it behind a boulder and stalked forward with as much speed as he dared. His heart skipped a beat when he got close enough to recognise Reynard sprawled on the ground, unconscious. The orange-yellow light which had drawn him closer came from an amulet of sorts around his neck – the crystal at its tip lay next to his head, highlighting the misaligned and ruffled feathers. His blue cloak had new rips and tears streaked with dirt and what looked suspiciously like blood. A little farther behind him lay the missing bag, sporting similar damage to his cloak’s – probably the result of sharp claws or teeth.

More importantly, he could finally make out the finer aspects of the ‘pony’ circling Reynard like a scavenging wolf.

What the heck is that thing?

It had greyish-black, glossy hide with armour-like segmentation at its joints and various parts on its chest, curved horn on forehead, tubular ears, a spiny crest similar to a fish’s where a mane should be and glassy wings on its back. Its amber eyes had no pupils, and he wasn’t sure if they glowed or were simply reflecting light from Reynard’s amulet. More distinctly, its limbs were pockmarked with holes that seemed to go through the entire appendages. Like cheese.

A cheesy bug pony.

Just then, it plodded over to Reynard and sniffed at his head. Then, it opened its mouth, and Lenny saw the fangs.

Predator.

With practiced speed, he fitted his slingshot onto his bracer and stuffed a few choice shot stones into his mouth as he leapt into the air. His heart raced as he beat his wings hard to compensate for the damaged feathers, and the buggy pony heard him coming.

It whipped its head up and locked eyes with him just as he placed a stone in the slingshot’s pocket. He then bit down on the hard strip behind the pocket and pulled his head back whilst straightening his left foreleg, feeling the wood, leather and stretching rubber creak as he put more and more tension on them and lined up his shot.

Eat this!

He released. The stone whizzed through the air and struck the creature on its neck. It yelped and leaped backwards, hissing and baring its pointy teeth.

Lenny kept his flight path in a tight circle around the bug pony and spat out another stone into the sling’s pocket. Its ears flattened and it shrank back when he took aim again – it apparently knew a weapon when it saw one – and snarled when the stone struck its back. Crouching low, it then leaped into the air with stunning speed.

“Oh, feathers.” Lenny dropped a couple of stones as he rolled aside to avoid its snapping jaws.

He pumped his wings and put on a burst of speed to gain some height, then released another shot just before the creature could properly adjust its trajectory. The stone punched through one of its buzzing wings, and it let loose a piteous shriek as it dropped to the ground and turned tail.

Lenny almost felt sorry about the parting shot that struck it in the rump, but he needed it to get the message not to faff around with him. Especially not when he’d have his hands full dealing with an unconscious and hopefully not fatally-wounded Reynard.

Once the creature had fled out of earshot, he dropped to Reynard’s side. “Hey, can you hear me? What happened?”

Reynard groaned.

Okay, not dead. Good.

Lenny pulled his cloak away to inspect for injuries. He found some cuts and scratches on his back, hind legs and the leading edges of his wings. They bled a little, but most of them were already clotting up, staining his tunic. He found some swelling, too, after carefully flipping him onto his side to check his chest and belly. Nothing serious, as far as he could tell, though he did worry about how little resistance Reynard put up at the invasion of personal space. His breathing sounded mostly normal save for a little wheezing. His half-lidded eyes had rolled back into his head.

He put a hoof on his shoulder and shook him gently. “Come on, come on. Don’t play dead. Can you hear me?”

One blink. Then two. Slowly, Reynard opened his eyes and took an eternity to focus on him. “Oh, hells. Not you again,” he slurred.

Lenny rolled his eyes. “Happy to see you, too. What happened? Did that thing drag you off?”

He got an incoherent murmur for an answer.

“Right. Guess I’ll ask later. Can you move?”

More mumbling and a tiny nod.

Grumbling under his breath, he grabbed Reynard’s bag, stowed his slingshot and then helped him onto all fours. Thankfully, Reynard had enough coordination and presence of mind to lean on him and hold on with one arm around his shoulder rather than act like an inanimate sack of rocks. They stumbled and staggered their way back to the boulder where he’d hidden the lamp, then all the way back to camp. Once Lenny had him lying in a relatively comfortable position, he set about cleaning his wounds. Only a couple really needed proper attention; he bandaged them with strips torn from Reynard’s cloak, despite his feeble protests. The rest should scab up easily enough.

By his reckoning, Reynard had probably collapsed from overexerting himself, either fighting or fleeing from whatever creatures that had bitten or clawed at him. He gradually regained lucidity with each passing minute, so at least he hadn’t been driven to the point of fatal exhaustion. Too bad that his sullenness grew at a matching pace; he didn’t volunteer any information about his little ‘adventure’ even after Lenny had finished treating him.

At least the amulet made his job much easier. Warm, golden light poured out of the teardrop crystal’s facets with an intensity that almost matched a campfire. Magical stuff like that did not come cheap in Griffonia.

“W’thr…”

He cocked his ears and leaned closer. “Eh?”

“W—water…” Reynard croaked.

“Right.” He made a quick dash to the bags and swiped the canteen, then passed it to him after removing the stopper. Reynard drank so greedily that for a moment Lenny thought he might actually choke. Once sated, he gave it back half-empty with the barest hint of gratitude in his curt nod.

Lenny took a swig himself, set the canteen aside and then pointed at the teardrop crystal hanging from Reynard’s neck. “Okay, we seriously need to talk. What happened? And where did you get that from?”

“I had… a minor setback.” Reynard didn’t meet his eyes.

“Yeah, no.” He shook his head. “I’m going to need way more than that. Say, like what attacked you, and did you do something to tick it off? Because I’m probably going to be the one dealing with it if it comes back later.”

Reynard winced as he stretched his foreleg and rubbed a tender spot on the back of his neck. “They didn’t come to me.”

“They? You’re still awfully vague,” he growled, feeling some heat working its way into his temper. “Come on. You owe me a little explanation for saving your butt multiple times already.”

“I tried climbing out on my own, all right?” Reynard snapped. “I took what I could carry and flew straight up.”

Oh, nice going. Really. Lenny felt his forgotten headache squeezing its way back into his skull, and the inside of his nostrils felt a little drippy, but he kept his expression neutral and asked, “How far did you get?”

“It is difficult to tell. I flew up straight for maybe an hour, cutting my way through any webs I came across. When the winds became too strong to fight, I climbed. And then…” He huddled up like a chick in the cold, and his wings twitched as he gazed into the distance. He shuddered. “You can’t imagine how many filthy creatures make their nests in the wall.”

Pretty sure I can, actually…

“All manner of monstrosities harried me on my way up, until I encountered those… flying screechers again.” He shook his head. “I descended, and they gave up only once I got below the webs.”

“Rough landing?”

“Clearly.” Reynard presented his swollen, scraped forelegs, then leaned back with a grimace as he gingerly massaged them. “I had no recourse but to return to camp, except that I lost my way… and apparently my consciousness as well. And here we are.”

Lenny frowned as he remembered the creature sniffing at Reynard’s unconscious form, its amber eyes boring into him as he lined up a shot. “What about the bug pony thing? Where did that come from?”

Reynard stared at him. “What? I saw no such creature.”

“The thing that was going to eat your face when I found you.”

“I passed out, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. I do not recall encountering anything remotely like a pony down here.” He blinked a couple of times, then added with a shrug, “Except for you, of course.”

Okay, so we’ll figure out where Bug Pony came from later.

“One more thing.” Lenny jabbed a hoof at his glowing amulet. “What’s that and where did you get it?”

Reynard started and looked at him with shrunken pupils, as if he’d just realised that he’d said something inappropriate. Slowly, he glanced down, delicately caressed it with his hand and murmured, “It was a gift.”

“An awfully useful one, I’ll bet,” Lenny said as he folded his forelegs. “And you didn’t say anything about it before. Why?”

Reynard fiddled around with the crystal for a moment, then locked eyes with him. “Do you trust me?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Do you trust me?”

Lenny frowned, wondering if it was a trick question. Reynard seemed to have gained an awful lot of composure since touching it. Still, if he wanted an honest answer…

“No. Not with my life, at any rate.”

“You’ve answered your question.” Reynard closed a fist around the crystal, whispered softly to it, and the warm, golden light vanished. He then casually slid it out of sight into his tunic. “The feeling is mutual, Lenny Redtail – you’ll forgive me for keeping a few secrets that might tip the scales in my favour, should you ever find yourself weighing my life against yours.”

Seriously?

Lenny found it difficult to navigate Reynard’s logic with the renewed throbbing just behind his eyes. And just then, the insides of his nostrils itched. He scrunched up his snout to relieve it, but it simply tickled and itched harder until he drew a short, sharp breath, followed by a couple of false starts before he let loose a mighty sneeze. As he blinked to clear his watering eyes, a ticklish thread of snot dripped from one nostril, which he hurriedly wiped away with a fetlock.

By the time his brain had caught up to what he’d done, he found Reynard staring him with the corners of his beak curled in disgust.

“Heh. Excuse me.” Lenny pulled his head back and sniffled to keep anything else from dribbling out.

“You… never mind. I’m deathly tired and I just want this nightmare to end when I wake up.” Reynard winced as he yawned and crawled a few tail lengths to a more comfortable spot with finer gravel and fewer rocks. And without further ceremony, he collapsed into a sagging heap and snored away.

That yawn was contagious. Unfortunately, Lenny could not follow up on it with a nap despite the fatigue threatening to seep into his bones and bog him down like heavy mud. He smacked himself in the cheek with a wing to ward off the drowsiness and marched to their stash, where he busied himself for a while sorting their inventory to his satisfaction.

Everything was more or less in order, except for the fungal globes. Since they’d gone impractically dim and mushy in less than an hour, he could rule them out as a replacement for the lamp. Good thing that Reynard has a magical backup, then, he thought as he chucked them out of sight.

Once he had everything accounted for and a rough idea of how long they could last with their present supplies, he perched atop the twin rock columns over their hollow and took the first watch.

Lightning flashed in ‘sky’ further downriver, filtered through a thick, grey expanse of clouds that completely filled the abyss from wall to wall. Thunder reverberated through rock and his bones alike. He sneezed again and grimaced as a shiver worked its way through him from head to tail. Cold conditions had never gotten to him that easily before, but then again, he usually hadn’t first fallen into bottomless pits and fought giant spiders before swimming in freezing water.

Some adventure we're having, all right.

Reynard had hired them to get him in and out of the abyss alive, and then nearly offed himself trying to do it alone. And Lenny, a reasonably seasoned hunter, had just caught a cold after nearly getting himself eaten by a fish.

He wasn’t sure, but something about that must’ve been hilarious. Nothing else would explain why he had a grin on his face.

Gilda might’ve been on to something. We’re a bunch of morons.