It was the snowstorm to end all snowstorms, the worst in a century according to the older griffons, and it had been smothering Griffonstone under layers of white for a week. Endless sheets of snowflakes drove down from an iron-grey sky, blown almost horizontally by the ceaseless, biting wind. Snowdrifts filled the town streets, snowfall filled the world around, and the only splashes of colour came from the smoke trickling up from various chimneys, as if even it was reluctant to venture outside.
Dozens of guttering fires and frost-addled griffons alike seethed as they were cooped up inside, but inside they stayed. No griffon with the sense the Creator gave a concussed duckling would have dared, say, work their regular postal route.
Gabby, in her more introspective moments, had never considered herself particularly sensible. And as she bulled a path right out through the snow blocking the post office’s front door, she found that Gilda seemed inclined to agree.
“Gabby,” the older griffoness started, her beak clenched, “of all the dumb notions ever put forward by every dumb creature in the entire dumb history of the whole planet, this has to be the—”
“Don’t worry, Gilda!” Gabby turned to face her older friend with some difficulty; she had garbed herself with innumerable layers of padded cloth, snow goggles, wing-coverings, and sealskin claw-boots, all of which pooled their efforts to render Gabby nearly spherical and somewhat less sprightly than usual. A few dark feathers poked out around the edges of her exposed beak, and that was all the elements were getting. “I’ve prepared for this. See?”
“I mean, if you’d asked me to sit down and think of the dumbest possible thing a griffon could do right at this moment, I couldn’t have come up with anything—”
“The griffons over in Gyrewynd need their mail, Gilda,” Gabby said brightly, motioning to the heavy satchel she had over her withers. “And I’m all ready to get it to them. And if things don’t go smoothly, there’s a compass and a wind map and a tent and a thermos and three firestarters and flares in my travelling bag and everything!”
Gilda, whose sole concessions to the climate were a scarf, fluffed feathers, and a barely-restrained and constant full-body shiver, gave Gabby a look that could have made a boulder curl up in embarrassment, and which had about as much impact on Gabby as a feather thrown at a cliff face. “Oh, flares. Well, why didn’t you say? I’m sure this blizzard’ll be too scared to so much as lay a single flake on your feathers, seeing as how you’ve got flares.”
“I know you’re worried ...” Gabby started.
“Am I? What gave it away?”
“... but I’ll be fine, honest! I’ve flown the route a million times, and I’m all prepared for the cold and low visibility and wind speed and everything like that! Nor’west over Gareth’s Crossing, west by Unicorn Rock, straight on till Mount Certain Horrible Doom, widdershins round its western face so I don’t get hurled straight into the side in all this wind, and then it’s just an easy long descent from there into Gyrewynd territory. I’ll get there before midday, tops.”
“You’re never getting there,” said Gilda flatly. “Not in this.”
“But I’ve...” Gabby gestured wildly with a well-padded foreclaw, before she hit upon another approach. She flicked her tail up at the great run-down shape of the Griffonstone post office behind her. “I have to. What does it say on the sign up there, Gilda?”
Gilda eyed the post office’s long wooden sign, emblazoned with painted wooden letters, hanging at enough of an angle to keep the snow off. “Nei her rain nor sno nor gl om of ni t shall st GEOFFREY LOVES GRUNHILDA. DISCOUNT SALMON ALL WEEK AT GUNTERS FISH SHACK only stupid griffons read signs this high up,” she said dryly. “I think old Gawain stole some of the letters for firewood last week, and Geoff must have painted that new part after. There’s a rude picture doodled at one end as well, but I’m not sure how you pronounce that.”
“I … what?” Gabby rotated ponderously and looked up, and found Gilda wasn’t lying. “Aw, come on, I spent ages carving new letters.” She hesitated, and then rallied back to her intended theme. “Well, if it was all there, there’d be something about nothing in the whole world keeping these sacred messengers from their appointed rounds. And that’s what I have to do, Gilda. The griffons over in Gyrewynd can’t be left out in the cold, all alone with no-one else dropping by, not knowing if anyone’s trying to get to them. They’ll all be on edge, just like we are. They ought to see a friendly face. The mail has to get through.”
Gilda stared in disbelief. “Gyrewynd wouldn’t care about the outside world unless it came offering bags of money and an all-expenses-paid vacation someplace warmer! The griffons there couldn’t care less if you do this.”
Gabby gestured to her haunches where, over the layers of padded cloth, a set of wooden cutie marks sat. “I care, though. And I know you kinda care as well.”
“All I care about right now is not having to be the one to tell your kin that their only chick born with a bag of broken bricks where most griffons keep their brains died of terminal dumbness! Take yourself and that post bag back inside right the heck now.”
“Sorry, Gilda,” said Gabby, adjusting the strap of the bag over her wither. “But whoever made the sign in the first place did go out of their way to put ‘snow’ on there.”
Gilda’s eyes narrowed. “I’m the headgriffon here, you know. I could just order you not to go.”
That was a bit too much even for Gabby’s accommodating soul. “No, you’re not. We don’t have any headgriffons here. There aren’t any kings here anymore. And Chieftain Gellert’s miles away, and he’s never even bothered handing the place over to any of his lieutenants or any other chief.”
“Yeah? Well, of all the headgriffons we don’t have, I’m the one calling the shots! To heck with what da—Gellert does!” Gilda looked deflated, even so. “Come on, Gabby, I’m trying to get this place up and running. Something we can be proud of, even, if some sort of miracle happens. Don’t mess that up by getting our entire post service—i.e. you—killed.”
“I’ll be okay, Gilda.” Gabby reached up to try and pat the older griffoness reassuringly on the wither; thanks to the thick claw-boots, it ended up as more of a vague wallop. “Hey, if I pull this off, that’ll do a little bit more to help Griffonstone be something to be proud of, won’t it?”
“Just go,” muttered Gilda, pointedly turning to one side. “You win. Bloody-minded twerp. Go get frozen and lost and eaten by snow-leopards. See if I care.”
Relief at having won the argument, sort of, filled Gabby from tail to beak. “I’ll be back soon!” she chirped, edging backwards to get a decent run-up.
“If you get into trouble, I won’t come and save you!”
“You won’t have to!” Gabby replied, breaking into a run which quickly turned into an ungainly galumph when her boots sank through the snowdrift with every stride.
“Seriously, I won’t!”
“I’ll tell the griffons in Gyrewynd you said hi!”
“Tell them they’re twerps, and that they don’t deserve to get mail!”
“See you later!” And with one great bound, which only briefly became stuck on a particularly difficult patch of snow, Gabby flapped up and away with all the effortless grace of a brick. She cut wide circles in the sky as she ascended, buffeted by the driving wind and rising up past the rooftops of Griffonstone.
She struggled to get her proper balance in the air and not faceplant into the sides of any buildings. Flying with this weight of clothing and gear was hard. But she achieved something like a stable hovering position in the open air over Griffonstone. The town was already half-shrouded past falling snow, and she squinted at it from behind her snow-goggles as she tried to get her bearings.
Let’s see… if the main street led up that way (she thought as she flew), then Grover’s Tower would lie to her right. 'Lie' was the proper verb, time having been even less kind to the tower than most of the town, but it had been polite enough to collapse pointing directly north-west-by-north. She glanced around until she saw the long dark shape of the tower, its stone height turned to length and now neatly bridging a ravine. She flapped forwards, aligning herself along it as neatly as a sharpshooter placing a shot. Ahead, the tower pointed straight ahead into whirling whiteness.
She took a moment to savour the start of the journey, as she always did, and cut that moment short when an unexpected gust came buffeting in at her side. After recovering, she was off.
The wind howled anew as it swallowed her up, vanishing the sights and sounds of Griffonstone altogether, and though she credited it to her imagination, the wind’s pitch shifted, and from far, far away, a cold, melodious voice keened out.
Fly on, speck.
Gabby glanced around, but saw nothing but snow. She shrugged, and flew on.
Gilda slammed the door of her hut shut before too much snow followed her in, and finally allowed herself a long and leisurely shiver where no griffon would see her.
The wind shrieked across her roof timbers, and Gilda fed her unenthusiastic fire with several pieces of wood. She blew on the flames to give them life, and eventually something like warmth began to permeate her living space. She glanced back around at her porthole of a window; conditions looked snowy, with a chance of certain wintery death.
“I warned her,” she grumbled to herself, as she settled down in a cushion-pile and picked up a dog-eared copy of How to Win Friends and Influence Griffons, which had been weighing down a pile of the rudimentary paperwork passing for governance in Griffonstone. “Absolutely one-hundred-percent warned her. Her own fault. Who’d fly in this?”
She nestled in. Outwith her walls, snow screamed through the streets and the wind howled.
“Not saving her,” Gilda muttered.
Gabby flew on.
The rocky morass past Grover’s tower fell away in favour of the maze of ravines and saw-toothed cliffs that was Gareth’s Crossing. Normally, the straight-ahead path meandering through the cliffs would keep her sheltered from the high winds. But this time, the wind had inveigled its way in, and hammered straight down the wind tunnel formed by the Crossing’s channels of cliffs and ravines. The winds blew against Gabby, and snarled and curled and whipped up little vortexes everywhere she looked. The snow blew in from every angle, and in some places even contrived to blow upside-down.
It was a short eternity before the cliff faces descended and the pointed shape of Unicorn Rock jagged up through the blizzard ahead of her. Gabby hammered hard against the driving wind as she neared it, and raised a foreclaw to wipe off her goggles. This didn’t actually stop the whole world being blurred into indistinction by snow, but at least the blurring happened slightly further away from her beak.
Her wings and legs ached, but at least they weren’t actually freezing. Nearly every part of her that hadn’t been flapping fit to burst was getting increasingly cold, especially her beak. She’d tried singing something suitably jaunty to keep her spirits up and her beak exercised, and had spat out a snowdrift’s worth before giving up. She’d thought the song as hard as she could instead, and it helped only a little.
But Unicorn Rock was a familiar landmark on this route, and it meant she was making progress and hadn’t gotten blown too off-course thus far. She re-oriented herself in the air as she sped around the rock, bracing herself against the sheets of snow scythed right off its face, and aimed for a sheltered spot. Once she’d found a little cubby-hole, she pulled out her compass. “West!” she shouted, struggling to exceed the wind for volume even where she hovered, and the little enchanted needle swung precariously to and fro under its glass case before finally deciding on an angle for west. Gabby looked where it wobbled, trying to make out any sign of the next landmark, Mount Certain Horrible Doom. The great pony explorer Literal Minded had passed through these parts centuries ago, and griffonkind had liked his style.
There was no sign of the mountain, save for a wedge-shaped section of the white tumult in front of her that seemed to be tinted slightly darker. On a usual clear day, the mountain would be visible from Griffonstone. And even on a clear day, it’d be a short but hard flight through an expanse of sky filled with sporadic gusts that had really missed their life’s calling as battering rams.
Gabby’s beak chattered, and her wings and legs felt like they’d been filled with lead pudding. And even after the mountain, there’d be many more miles yet to go. But she reached back with her free foreclaw, and felt the edge of the cutie mark that had been made for her. It was the only thing she bore right now that didn’t feel heavy.
“Neither rain nor snow nor glom of nit,” she said to herself, and hefted the straps of the post bag. “No quitting helping others just ‘cause it gets hard. Come on. It’s not too much further anyway.” She smiled her most upbeat smile and looked down at the compass once more.
Reflected within the glass, pale and terrible against the shapeless blizzard, a pony-shaped figure stood atop the peak of the rock.
Gabby’s smile froze. She flapped mid-air, eying the figure in the reflection. There couldn’t be a pony all the way out here, surely, least of all a pony out and about in this weather. But put like that, it didn’t look that much like a pony. Especially when you looked at the small details.
Ponies shouldn’t have manes and back ends that hung in the air like a cold mist. Ponies shouldn’t look as if they had been clotted together from ice and snow and spectres. Ponies shouldn’t have bared teeth that jagged down into razor-sharp points, or a too-tall emaciated frame that looked like winter-coloured hide had been stretched over a skeleton.
Ponies shouldn’t have eyes that burned white.
Turn around, speck. The cold voice came from high above, carried by the wind and rasping right across Gabby’s ears. In the reflection, the edges of the not-pony’s mouth twisted, exposing more teeth.
She clapped the compass shut and slowly put it back into her satchel. She turned around with all deserved trepidation, ready to fly off with all the speed she had, and looked up to where the reflected figure should be, wondering whether and hoping that the image in the compass had been a trick of the light and the voice a trick of the brain. And as she turned and looked up, that was when the snow descended.
It hit Gabby face-first like a falling building, an entire blizzard’s worth scything down from the peak of Unicorn Rock. She tumbled helplessly down through it with a startled squawk, scrabbling and flapping and clawing about for space to breathe, to fly, to flee. Snow crashed into her open beak, ripped the goggles right from her head and got into her eyes, and her whole world turned to tumbling, frigid, white chaos as the snowfall drove her down.
Her wings flapped frantically, and Gabby desperately sought out any passing wind currents that could help her, any passing anything. Her sense for weathercrafting thrummed down her left wing as she hit a snarl of twisted winds, and she seized it. One hard flap from a wing caught its force, unbound the snarl, and forced the whirling collection of freed zephyrs to propel her right out through the snowfall. She punched clear into relatively open air, wheezing and blinking, her wings working on brainless reflex to get her stable in the air again. Her vision cleared just in time to reveal the oncoming face of Unicorn Rock, and she twisted upright in the air to hit the rock with her claws. She did so, knocking all the breath from her body, and for a second had no more thought than snatching her breath back between coughing up lumps of snow.
At her back, the world grew colder. Gabby coughed wretchedly, and kept one claw on the rock as she turned around to see what it was.
The not-pony was in the air behind her, its skeletal frame huge in comparison to hers, at least three times as tall at the wither. Its milk-white eyes blazed out from a long and skeletal face, its deep sockets filled with guttering pale flame. As she blearily took stock of it, it twisted through the air towards her, moving in sinuous snake-like motions, its teeth glistening like icicles.
Gabby seized at her satchel with her free foreclaw and wrestled her little crossbow out it, already loaded with a flarebolt. She pointed it skywards and pulled the trigger. The bolt flew free, was hurled off its path by the wind, and erupted in the sky above a few seconds later. Pink light filled the world like a second sun, shining down through the falling snow all around.
Gabby panted, looked up at the bolt as the flare light dimmed and it fell down through the air towards the unseen ground. Then she looked back towards the creature.
She’d seen one, though this surely couldn’t be the same thing. The crusaders had shown her a book of Equestrian history when they were still trying to see whether ancient history might be her forte, in between the farming and the scuba-diving, and something like this had writhed across one of the early pages. The real thing was scarcely an improvement.
At last. Alone, hissed the windigo, its voice a saw blade drawn gently across the eardrum. Afraid. It leaned towards her. A feast.
Out past Gilda’s window, from far off in the distance, the dimmest of dim pink flashes lit up a patch of snow-shrouded sky.
“Oh, screw it,” snarled Gilda. She put down her book and reached for her scarf. “Junior Speedsters Intemperate Training Course, don’t let me down now.”
She pulled on her scarf, and with some reluctance, an embarrassingly-pink bobble hat dad had sent her as the winter had set in. She rose and made for her door, and after some consideration, picked up a pitted spade as well. It was good for digging stranded griffons out of snowdrifts, and for ruining the day of anything trying to prey on stranded griffons for that matter.
“Once I’ve dragged her back, I’m making her into a rug,” she muttered. She opened her front door and was hit by a solid wave of snow for her trouble. “An actual rug!”
Gabby tried to remember what she could of the windigo in the history book, and her memory failed her, dedicated as the bulk of her mind was to the enormous problem of the windigo in front of her right now. “Ah. Um. Hello. Can I help ya?” she said.
Hungry, rasped the windigo, its voice like a razor blade given vocal cords.
Gabby hung off Unicorn Rock, too frightened to even shiver in the face of these sharp teeth and pale eyes. But she had enough presence of mind to notice and stammer out, “I-I’ve got some dried cod here, if you’re hungry—”
A feast of wrath. Division. Isolation. Fear in the dark places. The windigo wound closer, its teeth and terrible bright eyes filling the world. Its breathing was ragged, and defied description in its frigidness. Isolated speck. No other griffons. No help coming. No harmony coming. My winter doing its work.
“I … Your winter?”
My winter. My creation. A winter to keep all contained, all locked away beyond help. Wrath blooming in the darkness of desperation. One feast, then another. Bonds breaking in the cold, and griffon feasting on griffon while I feast on all. The windigo peeled back what little pale skin ran along the perimeter of its teeth. And I will live. I, the last. And you … you first.
It lunged forwards, its teeth champing for Gabby’s wing. But terrified reflex kicked Gabby downwards, and she let herself drop like a stone off the face of the rock, plummeting just as the windigo snapped at the empty air where she’d been. As she fell, her wings spread and controlled her descent, and she forced herself up and onto a horizontal flightpath. Above, the wind roared.
Snow stung her eyes as Gabby flew blindly onwards. She might have been headed back to Griffonstone, she might be flying towards Mount Certain Horrible Doom, she might be striking out into the wilderness; anywhere was fine so long as it wasn’t where the windigo was. An icy blast of wind raked side-on into her suit, the cold of it piercing right through the padded cloth and through to the bone. She swerved wildly through the air as the wind battered her, and accepted her new trajectory with little fuss. All she had to do was fly.
She accelerated, bulling on through the snow and wind, not even bothering to glance round at wherever the windigo may be. The ache in her wings and the cold in her everything became mere background noise as adrenaline worked her heart like a drumset. Through the blur of snow, a great and oncoming darkness came closer and closer. Gabby realised that it was Mount Certain Horrible Doom she was urgently flying towards, briefly considered wheeling back towards Griffonstone, just as quickly remembered what else was at her rear, and flapped her wings like clappers. The mountain had natural tunnels riddling it, it had crevices, it had caverns, it had hiding places and spots to set up an ambush. It was all the safety the world currently had to offer, and so she made for it. The air just behind her jangled with cold, threatening to leech away whatever warmth she had left. The windigo couldn’t be far behind. It was keeping pace, and Gabby wildly wondered whether it was capable of outflying her, and it just wanted her to hopelessly flee. She forced the notion from mind and flew on.
She’d shot the flare. Other griffons would notice. Gilda would notice. They’d come for her, surely.
She sped through through the haze of snow, and the darkness of the mountain took form before her, the jags and contours of the great rough rock face coming into focus. Snow crowned its peak and ledges, but here and there, chasms and rents opened into darkness. One of them rose for Gabby’s attention, a wide gash descending sharply under a lip of dark stone. She flapped upwards briefly and flew down at it, capturing as much of the wind at her back as possible. Fifty feet, forty, thirty, twenty, ten …
With a piercing howl, the wind shifted and struck forwards like an assassin, its hammering force suffused with a great and unnatural cold. Gabby yelped as the sudden gust sent her flapping out of control towards the lip of rock, and she madly corkscrewed through the air to try and right herself and aim for the gap. Her wings rose and fell, and her sense for weathercrafting screamed suggestions in her ear.
The windigo had to be sending this wind out somehow. But whatever it sent, she could master. She was a griffon, and there wasn’t any weather she couldn’t bend to her will. With one great wing-stretching effort that stretched her will and technique to their utmost, she arched her wingspan and slammed down. The pelting winds buckled, their angle sharply descended, and Gabby was swept down under the lip of stone with inches to spare. White and grey blurred past her vision before she found herself spiralling down through empty blackness.
Gabby’s aching wings objected to every part of this, but she forced herself into a slow descent, squinting through the darkness as best she could. She found herself in a great cavern, lit only by a few rays of murky light spilling in through the ceiling rent and a few distant strands of luminescent moss. Rocks and boulders peppered the rough stone floor, and a light dusting of snow and ice covered everything she could see. No wind came gusting in after her.
Gabby alighted on one of the boulders, her wings all but shuddering with relief as she drew in deep, rasping breaths. She whipped off her satchel and drew out her other flarebolt, which she loaded into her crossbow with trembling claws. Maybe Gilda and the others could have missed the first one. She had to make sure as best she could. They’d surely come.
Once it was notched in place and the bowstring drawn back, she fumbled out one of her three firestarters and held it in her other claw, one talon flicking away at one end of its red, chalk-like body. Enchantments in it flickered to life, and flames blossomed to life at that end. Gabby had never held something so warm, so soothing, and as the firelight painted the cavern around her with gentle orange, she thrust out the firelighter ahead of her like a brandished torch. With her other claw she aimed the crossbow up at the gap in the ceiling, eying it to try and make sure it would shoot right up into the sky.
And as she aimed the crossbow up at the gap, the pale head of the windigo appeared there, its teeth bared and its eyes blazing within the black sockets of its skull.
Gabby jumped back and her claw tightened on the crossbow trigger. The bolt snapped clear of the bow, zipped up over the surprised windigo’s left ear, and the instant later, pink light screamed across the slash of sky. Gabby flicked her gaze away, but not before briefly seeing the light filter down through the translucent form of the windigo, its haze becoming spectre-like.
Her vision cleared as she tried to blink away the afterglow of the flare, focusing on the bright aura of her firestarter. The world came into focus, and the bright aura of the firestarter become a single point of flame.
And past that point of flame, maybe ten metres away, the windigo rose before Gabby, towering over her even where it hovered above the cavern floor. The wind and snow and ice that was its body drank in her firelight, and the trapped flames writhed within it.
Gabby dropped her crossbow, held out her firestarter like the most pathetic shield it was and looked up into the wendigo’s eyes, wide and white and deranged. She stood rooted to her boulder and feeling utterly alone and helpless, and it rasped, with no small amount of pleasure suffusing its tone, Cornered, speck.
Gilda circled Unicorn Rock like a creature possessed, her gaze flitting over every crack and crevice, the knuckles of her foreclaw white around the handle of her spade. “Guto’s tailfeathers, Gabby, where are you?” she hissed to herself, opening her beak as little as possible to keep the snow out. “Come on! I’m freezing my tailfeathers off, never mind Guto’s!”
Light flashed at her side, and Gilda turned to see the brilliant pink glow of another flare from the direction of Mount Certain Horrible Doom.
“Pete’s sake!” she yelled as she reoriented herself, forgetting briefly all about the snow blowing everywhere. “An actual rug, I swear to ggmphht! Blaach! Gah! Screw this winter!”
Gabby forced herself to maintain eye contact with the windigo. It hurt, like trying to outstare the sun. The mad intensity behind the windigo’s stare could have melted rocks. As she watched it, it casually turned to its right and began to circle her, keeping its own gaze on her all the while.
She wheeled to keep it in her sight and jabbed forward with her firestarter. The windigo hissed and seemed to draw back imperceptibly, even from across the gulf of metres. The fire really was a ward, of sorts … but it wouldn’t last forever. She’d have to light another.
“Why are you after me?” she ventured. “I’m just the post-griffon for Griffonstone, I’ve done nothing to you. Let me go. Please.”
For a long moment, nothing but bleak, echoing silence in that mountain-cavern, nothing but the sound of the wind beyond. Then the windigo spoke. Griffonstone withers. I hunger.
“You … you hunger? What for? I don’t know what you want.”
Another eternity of silence, and the flame of the firestarter crept closer and closer to Gabby’s claw. Not always. Fed once. Fed on the fear and aggression, the hatred, the hot jealousy, the snarls and spite. Every division a morsel. For me. The last.
“...Aggression?” Gabby looked up at the windigo with helpless bewilderment. “So … so why go for me? I’m not feeling that aggressive.”
The windigo lunged forward suddenly, and Gabby whirled the firestarter wildly before her. The windigo drew back as quickly as it’d come, and cold, twisted laughter slithered out of it, something between a mad pony’s whinny and the scream of a gale. You will wither. I will make you helpless. And you will know that no griffon will come to save you. See what you feel then.
Gabby opened her mouth to reply, and in that moment, the fire licked against her claw. She gasped at the unexpected pain and fumbled the firestarter right out of her grasp. It fell atop her snow-dusted boulder, the flames hissing on contact. A deep growl came from the windigo, and Gabby all but tore open her satchel to retrieve the second firestarter and claw it alight. It sputtered fire into the sudden darkness, and Gabby tremblingly rose it once more.
“You’re wrong!” she said. “Other griffons are going to come! I sent up flares!”
Watched your pathetic kindred scrabble and squabble for centuries, purred the windigo. They will not come. Not for you. Not for a thousand flares. Not even if they loved you, and they do not. My winter will keep them cooped up. Simmering in their own frustrations. Thinking of nothing but themselves, and nothing of you.
“Y-you’re still wrong! And what do you mean, ‘your winter’?”
So little fear, so little division, so little spite and suspicion and wrath in my last redoubt, and that little withering day by day, the windigo said. Warmth and harmony, growing and unending. So, my winter. One great outpouring of my strength, to break the fellowship of Griffonstone before it blossoms. Worthwhile. You will wither first. All others will follow. My winter will never die, never again. The old days once more, from every song I heard from my kin.
Gabby held the firestarter closer, for whatever comfort its guttering warmth offered. “What songs?”
A silence. And when the windigo spoke again, its voice was lower. Softer. An age of winter. Wrath between the tribes that came across the spine of the north. Wrath unextinguished even when they made it to sunlit lands. So my kin taught me. A feast for us. Weak body after weak body littering the north and freezing under the snow, one by one, as we fed. A winter that summoned us, and which we made all the greater. So my kin sang. Until the tribes united. The last word was spat. I, the last. The least. The one born in starvation after that time, hearing only the songs, sustained by what my kin could spare. Nursed and sung to even as they withered and went, one by one. Living on whatever scraps your meagre kind offered.
Gabby watched the white eyes initially settle and then seethe anew as the windigo hissed its words, and the firestarter slowly dropped in her grasp. “I heard that story,” she said softly, and took a deep breath. “Just from the other direction.”
The windigo didn’t answer save for a long, low venomous growl that could have come from the depths of a stormcloud.
Gabby looked away briefly, and then looked up again, defiance flaring in her heart. “I went to Equestria, you know. I went to see these tribes, thousands of years after they unified against your … well, family, I guess. I wanted to find my purpose, and they helped me find it. Look!”
She reached around with her free claw and brandished her wooden cutie mark. “I help others! Whether or not they appreciate it, and whether or not I get thanked. Because it’s the right thing to do, and because if I do it, maybe other griffons will help others out as well! And all of us in Griffonstone are trying to do the right thing, stand by each other a little more. Maybe you think you can coop us up, pick us off, try and make us hate each other. But you’ll have to try hard! I sent up the flares, and I’ve got faith they’ll come here to help me! Even if they can’t get here, I’m sure they’ll try!”
From the windigo, no answer. The wind howled in the chaos beyond. The fire licked closer and closer to Gabby’s claw, and she carefully reached down to her satchel to pull out the third. The last. She touched the end of her existing one to its tip, and the dwindling flames took hold.
And then the world erupted. Before Gabby could so much as blink, the blizzards came screaming in from the gap in the ceiling, snow and clods of ice whirling down like the outgallopers of an army. Wind scythed into her from every direction, sending her sprawling off the boulder and scything the firestarter from her grasp. She crashed to the cavern floor, all the breath knocked out of her, and she could only watch the firestarter fall as if in slow motion. Winds whirled around it mid-air with terrible force, and its flame flickered and dimmed. And then it went out, with only a crescent of vanishing sparks to mark its demise.
The instant after, a hoof colder than Gabby thought cold could be stamped down on her chest, knocking any residual scraps of air, and with nothing else but darkness to see by, she boggled blearily up at the mad, gaunt, monstrous face of the windigo. Its ear-breaking roar blotted out the world. DO YOU FEEL FAITHFUL NOW?
Only darkness. Only the eyes. Only the weight of the world crushing the life from her chest.
And from outside, a thin noise carried on the wind.
“...aaaaaghdangitdangittheheck’swrongwiththesewindssonuvaaaaaargh—”
Now, rasped the windigo, as Gabby strained to make the sound out, desperate hope rising in her. Off with your wings. And you will lie here to see what your friends are made of.
“—how’sagriffonmeanttoflyohcrudohcrudohcrudisthatagapwhat’sdrivingthewindthereGabbywhatthehellhaveyoudoneAAARGH—”
And as the windigo opened its serrated smile wide, a figure came rocketing down from the gap in the ceiling, trailing white like a comet and shrieking with what could have been terror or battle-fury, it was hard to tell. They came plummeting down towards the windigo and Gabby, and the windigo barely had time to look up before steel blurred in the air around the descending figure. Something cracked across the windigo’s face, and it blurted out a very incongruous Glerk! as it rocked backwards away from the force of the blow. The figure landed on the cavern floor next to Gabby in something between a planned landing and an ungainly crash, and squawked furiously as they did so.
“Gilda!” wheezed Gabby with unbridled, albeit hoarse, delight. For it was Gilda that had come plummeting down like the more miraculous sort of asteroid, and she unsteadily rose up next to Gabby, her feathers rimed with frost and her scarf blowing in the wind, a steel spade clenched in one claw and ready to be swung again. The bright pink bobble hat on her head only fractionally undermined the image. “You saved me! I knew you would!”
“...I … yeah? Yeah. Yeah, like I said I’d have to! I told you this sort of horse-apples would … would ...” Gilda tottered slightly as she tried to shake a certain discombobulatedness out of her expression and focus on the windigo. “What the heck did I just save you from?”
“It’s a windigo!”
“The heck’s a windigo?” Gilda eyed the windigo owlishly as it slowly rose again, and in turn slowly drew back as it did so. “Oh, peeve, it’s … big.”
“It’s a creature from old Equestrian legends! It feeds off hatred and disharmony between beings, and it’d been living off Griffonstone for years and years. That’s where this winter comes from! It wants us to turn on each other again!”
“Well, that’s super for it! Hey, so you know how I said it’s big?” Gilda stood between Gabby and the windigo as the latter turned towards them, and she brandished the spade like it was a tribal sabre. “How about we fly far the heck away from it? You go first, and I’ll —”
What Gilda said was drowned out as the windigo opened its mouth to release an eardrum-splitting howl, an action which matched the snarl of the wind outside the ceiling rent. Gabby looked up and saw the winds there snarl and coil it on themselves, vortexes of snow twisting like dervishes with more fury than she’d ever seen.
No, growled the windigo. You will not be doing that.
Gabby looked to Gilda, and saw the older griffoness’ face scrunch up in confused despair as she looked up at the winds clotting up their exit. “Aw, come on, no, no, no.” She looked back to the windigo, closed her eyes, breathed out, and said, “Gabby? You see an opening, you fly out and take it, right? And if you don’t see one and take it, I’m going to haunt you, alright?”
“What? No! Gilda!” Gabby grabbed at Gilda’s forelimb, but she was too encumbered and tired, and Gilda slid forwards into an upright stance, whirling the spade in both hands.
Come forwards, hissed the windigo. Such wrath in your heart, so ripe to be redirected.
“I’ll redirect your face off your neck! Square go, you twerp!” Gilda slammed the spade off the stone, ringing it like a bell. “Come on! Stay back and get safe, Gabby!”
The windigo stepped forward, but there was the faintest of hitches in its step …
Gabby’s mind surged into desperate action. “Gilda, no!” She struggled forwards and this time got a hold on Gilda’s forelimb. “Not like this! Not quite!”
“Smaller twerp, get off!”
“No! I won’t let you do this alone! I’m helping you!” And for all the words were utterly true, Gabby consciously rummaged around for the emotion, thrust it to the forefront of her mind, forced it there with iron-hard determination. Wrath didn’t stop the windigos, hatred didn’t stop them, but friendship, harmony, helping others …
There was another hitch in the windigo’s stride.
… that might just do it.
“Think about helping other griffons, Gilda!” Gabby yelled. “Think about your friends in Ponyville! Think about why you came out to this cave! Think about why you were ready to save me!”
“Why any of that?!”
“Trust me! Please!”
No, snarled the windigo. Winds gathered about it and lashed into the pair, forcing Gilda back several inches across the stone and sending Gabby tumbling right onto her well-padded back. But the winds didn’t seem to bite like they had before. With a note of desperation, No!
Gilda grabbed for Gabby to try and pull her to her claws, but a second flurry of gusts struck them, fiercer than the last, and she toppled down beside her with a startled squawk. She made as if to rise, and Gabby seized her by the withers. “Please,” she murmured. And Gilda, after a long instant, subsided.
No! screamed the windigo. I am winter! Your harmony is nothing but a flame to be snuffed out! A flame beneath the snow! Who are you to defy me! I, the last! I will feed!
It tried to take a step forward, but instead seemed to be physically forced back. It rallied, tried again, and was all but torn back across the floor. It writhed desperately up into the air, circled, tried to dive down, and whatever fire burned in Gabby’s heart seemed to blaze out and force it back until it was almost at the ceiling.
And if it wasn’t for that same fire, Gabby wouldn’t have done what she did next. “You don’t have to keep trying this!” she called out, scrabbling atop the protesting Gilda and looking up at the windigo. “There’s another way, I think! Remember what you were saying about your kin? About the songs they told you? The way they nourished you?”
I shall do as they did, speck!
“They nourished you,” Gabby said, her voice catching just a little even she tried to meet the windigo’s mad, desperate eyes. “Even when they didn’t have to. You had what we had, you had friendship and love and harmony once! That kept you alive as well, didn’t it?” She reached out with an outspread claw. “You could ...”
There was a terrible, long silence.
And then, with all the fury afforded a thwarted storm, the world screamed around Gabby, and the eruption of wind and noise and desperate, desperate cold tore all her senses away.
It seemed like a few minutes before she recovered, and she found herself on the same cavern floor, lit by pale rays of light filtering down through the rent in the ceiling. Gilda was curled up next to her, and groaned groggily when Gabby prodded her.
There was no sign of the windigo. Nothing but a fading chill in the air.
“Gabby?” croaked Gilda. “What did you do there?”
Gabby didn’t answer for a long minute. “What I had to,” she said quietly, touching her cutie mark. She looked up towards the pale, snow-shrouded light. “Maybe it worked. Maybe it couldn’t.” And then, because you couldn’t have taken the optimism out of her with all the intrusive brain surgery in the world, “Maybe … maybe it’ll take time. It usually does.”
“Urgh,” grunted Gilda, scrabbling to her claws and righting her bobble hat. “That’s the last time I’m risking my neck for you. Don’t think I’m joking. I’m not.”
“I’m sure,” said Gabby. “Thank you. I owe you one. I owe you lots.”
“Really, I’m not! And I’m going to skin you and make you into a rug for risking yourself like that!”
Gabby turned to Gilda and offered up her most disarming grin, while hefting the much-battered postal bag. “Can you hold off on that till after I’ve delivered this? Gyrewynd still needs its mail.”
Gilda stared at the bag. And then at Gabby. At the bag, at Gabby. Bag, Gabby, bag, Gabby, wall, bag, Gabby. “You … wha … after that?! You … what’s wrong with your head?”
“Something something, snow, something something glom of nit,” Gabby murmured to herself, flapping unsteadily up into the air, paying little heed to Gilda’s protests at her back. “Something, something, sacred duties.” She flapped up to the rent in the ceiling, out into the brisk and snowy air, and perched atop Mount Certain Horrible Doom’s lip of rock to see what she could see.
What she could see was, admittedly, still mostly snow. But outside, quietly, with no great fuss, the snowfall was beginning to peter out.
The world began to thaw.
