The morning came and went, and so did our search party.

We left at around noon without anypony briefing Ambrose, which was mistaken as an accident. Obviously we did it on purpose, but it was clear to see that he didn’t think we were suspicious of him.

We were roughly halfway towards our destination when Ambrose spoke up.

“So, what’s the plan?” He had finally asked, not really directing the question to anypony in particular.

It’s a good thing I had thought of a fake plan before I even departed.

“The yaks; if we can reason with them, they might be willing to help us search around in the North. Without them, we’d be walking blindly through the mountains.”

Ambrose nods and looks ahead at the mountainous region ahead of us. Specifically, at Mount Everhoof.

The path to Yakyakistan supposedly travels Northwest, but starts North. My bet was that Mount Everhoof had a few secrets at it’s base that were being kept from us. Either that, or Dwight himself was living on the mountain.

Hmph, or with the yaks..

“The yaks aren’t exactly easy to make deals with, I hope you’re aware of that,” Ambrose remarks.

I nodded in response. “That’s one of the reasons we have Twilight.”

Within the hour we were at the start of the trail, which was made clear by the wooden sign that pointed up the path, and had ‘Yakyakistan’ inscribed on it.

“Celestia said that we might have a blizzard on the lower half of the mountains by this afternoon,” Twilight warned us.

“But if we can get to the yaks before then, we can probably sleep as guests for the night.”

I simply nodded, turned away from the sign, and went to curiously look down the side of the trail. It dropped off in a steep slope, surely more than a hundred feet, and was clouded near the bottom by snow. The weather was weird around here, but it didn’t concern me too much.

“Ambrose! Don’t–”

Shocked at the shouting coming from Twilight, I turned around just in time to catch Ambrose by his mane.

“You bastard!” Ambrose howled.

My back hooves slid and scrambled to not slide off the cliff.

Ambrose tries to back away from the cliff, while punching at my arm in the hopes that I’d let go. “When I’m done, I’ll get your bitch princess, too!”

I tightened my grip on his mane. “I'm afraid I can’t let that happen!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Twilight start charging toward Ambrose with her horn ready.

My hind legs slid on the ice, and I threw out my other hoof to grab more of Ambrose’s mane. The stupid bastard shouldn’t have let it get so long that it would hang out of his helmet.

“Just go get help, Twilight!”

With my whole body on the ground, I rapidly slid off the cliff with Ambrose in my grasp.

thud

thud

THUD

I blacked out and bounced off the snowy slope a few times on my way down. The last thing I remember hearing was the sound of Ambrose’s body fall beside me. He made a grotesque snap and crack, that let me know he wasn’t coming back again.

I woke up cold, like really cold.
I saw bodies. At least six or seven, but I couldn’t see past that. Just the outline of a dark grey wall to my right, which I assumed to be the bottom of the long and winding trail I just left above me.

With a groan I got up, feeling a little numb in my legs. I started to walk forward, past one or two of the bodies, when a call came from behind me.

“Ohh, ho ho! A live one!”

I muttered and turned around, “Who the fuck?”

“Surely you’ve heard of me,” A griffon stands on a snow covered rock, beckoning to me. He’s literally ghost white, with electric blue eyes... But what I found disturbingly nasty, was the fucking yak skin coat he was wearing to keep warm.

“I am Caelum Exspiravit, the Griffin warrior who was expelled from his own Kingdom!”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re just some asshole who’s in my way of getting home.”

His blue eyes narrowed into a glare, and he pounced forward at me.

“I will make you remember my name!”

With only a second to think, I attempted to dive out of the way; only to end up tripping over a frozen corpse.

As I fell to the ground, he caught me in my side with his talons, leaving three
bloody and painfully throbbing tears on my body.

The griffon, now angry, turns and looks down at me.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Poor pony need a bandana to hide his ugly mug?”

Just as he was about to swipe his talons down into me, I flipped onto my back; bucking a hoof into his front leg, and snapping the bones within.

With a Griffin screech he fell for a second, and a voice in the back of my head kicked in.

Run, Cross!

I jumped up and started galloping as fast as I could manage. The pain in my side grew increasingly stronger, and I could feel a little bit of blood pour down my body and onto the snow.

I didn’t care, and I kept running diagonally towards the gray wall. That is, until I noticed a perch roughly six feet up the wall that kept ascending until it was at a cave, about twenty feet up from the ground.

I got up to the wall and onto my hind legs. With a strong jump, my hoof grazed the edge of the rock surface.

”Come on!”

I got a little lower and charged a jump, this time grabbing ahold of the ledge.

Climb, Cross, climb!

I scraped my hind hooves against the wall until I finally found a rough edge to rest one of them upon, and with one hard push off the edge I was able to grab onto the cliff using my other hoof as well.

“Aaaagh!” I yelled as I pulled myself up, straining my body and making my side only hurt more.

I hastily made my way up the side of the rocky, snow covered wall.

I muttered aloud, “You made it, Cross.”

The cave was deep, and the first thing my eyes landed upon was a colt in yak skin.
Then I noticed all of the pony bones around the cave.. And one unfortunate yak skull, which was clearly the victim used to make this new ‘trend’ in apparel.

That griffin’s a damned yak-skinning pony eater!

I stumbled into the cave and collapsed onto the cold ground, landing just next to the colt.

For a few minutes I stared at the kid. He was barely breathing, but that was still enough to matter.

Finally, I heard a noise from the entrance, and then a voice that echoed into the cave.

“You hurt me pretty good, you red-eyed fuck! I told you, though... I told you that you would remember my name..”

I could hear his leg drag against the stone, and with what little strength I had left in me, I pushed my front legs off of the ground to turn my head and face him.

“Caelum.. It’s Caelum Exspira–!”

Blood sprayed from the Griffin’s neck. A knife, so fast that it was like a blur, was quickly inserted and pulled out from the side of the Griffin’s throat.

His body hit the ground and continued to spurt blood, but my eyes were still trying to focus on the stallion that stood before me.

“D- Dwight.. You-”

I collapsed again, and tried to make words of what Dwight was saying, all while my vision was gradually getting darker.

“Next time, I’ll kill you too. You ruined my plans.. And had the audacity to come after me?! I raised you, kid!”

And then, just like that, the darkness overwhelmed me.

I don’t know when, but at some point I began to drift back in and out of consciousness.

“Get the colt first. You, bandage...”

“It’s Twilight! You’re going to be okay!”

I remember being carried out of a blizzard, but everything just went black again after that.

The sound of a heart monitor beeping scared the shit out of me, and my eyes opened to a comfy room in the Castle. I figured I must be in an infirmary for a royal guest or VIP.

With a quiet groan, I slowly pulled myself up slightly and lay my back against the pillow. When I glanced down I saw that my torso had been wrapped in a bandage. My side bled through the white of the bandage, leaving it red.

Upon looking to my right, I found Twilight sound asleep in a chair.

I guess she’s been worried sick about me..

As if she could hear my thoughts, or feel my gaze, Twilight slowly opened her eyes.

“Cross!” She exclaimed and sat up with a bright smile. “I’m so glad you’re okay, you’ve been out for a few days!”

“Days? What the hell happened?”

“You.. You had hypothermia, and those griffon talons went deep enough to expose muscle. You were lucky you didn’t suffer any nerve damage–”

She shook her head and leaned forward, interrupting herself. “How are you feeling?”

I gave her a gentle smile. “I’ll be okay, that’s all that matters.”

Twilight gets up and gives me a gentle hug, which I kindly return.

I asked about my cave-friend, with a hint of concern in my voice. “Hey, um.. Where’s that colt? Is he okay?”

Twilight released me from her embrace and looked at me. “He’s... stable. At least, he is now. He had severe hypothermia, and his parents are gone." She frowned sadly. "As it turns out, his parents were identified as the two bodies that those guards had found to the East.”

I looked back at her with an upset expression. “Is there anypony who can take him in? Any other family, family-friends?”

Twilight shook her head slightly, “No, but I.. I was considering adopting him.”

“Really now? Twilight that’d be amazing. Are you sure you’re ready for that sort of thing, though?”

She giggled. “I’ve raised Spike, I think I can do it. Until I find myself a nice stallion, probably one who has a heart like yours, he won’t really have much of a father figure; but with friends like you, I think he’ll be alright.”

I chuckled and immediately winced at the sharp pain in my side.

Twilight notices, and offers to help. “I’ll let a nurse know you need your bandages swapped out, I’ll be right back.”

When she returns, a nurse comes with her. After a painstaking minute of having to sit straight to be wrapped up, the nurse leaves us to it once more.

Twilight picks up a sealed scroll from the bedside table and gives it to me. “A letter came for you this morning.”

I carefully broke the seal and let the scroll fall open in my hoof... I read through the whole thing, stopped with disbelief, and read it again; the second time I dropped it and couldn’t quit smiling. It was like internally I wanted to cry, but externally I wanted to jump up and down in joy.

“I’m going to be a father, Twilight!”

Her jaw dropped and immediately turned into a wide grin. “I don’t know what to say– I.. Congratulations!”

I tried to sit up against the pillow a little further, and reread it one more time.

I smiled, wanting to chuckle badly. “You know what the best part about this letter is?”

“What?” She asked with a giggle.

“It has a written excerpt from Applejack, threatening me in the event that I would leave Rose.”

I laughed, and in between laughing held my aching side.

Twilight laughed with me, and insisted on reading it.

Cross ah’ knew it’d happen eventually, but if y’all leave Rose ahm gonna come find ya, and they’ll have ta be putting more than just one Cross in the ground! -AJ

“Oh that’s rich!” She giggled some more.

The realization slowly hit me, as my memory started to come back.

Next time, I’ll kill you too!

“Twilight, where’s Dwight? Tell me, please tell me that Celestia or somepony found him on the way to the cave.”

Her expression made my stomach sink.

“Fuck.” I slumped in the bed and stared at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry, Cross.. We tried. We followed his tracks but they disappeared as the blizzard got worse.”

“Twi, this isn’t going to get any better. Not now, that was my chance to get him because now— he knows that I betrayed him.”

She frowns at me. “Cross, you’ll get another chance at this. I’ll stand by you, I told you this when we first really started talking. We’ll catch that bastard, I swear on it.”

I turned my head towards her, a little shocked.

“Don’t give me that,” She sighed, “I saw what he and that griffon did.. We recovered the bodies and the bones. We had came with half of the guards in the Empire, expecting the worst...”

“No,” I interrupted her, “You shouldn’t have had to see all of that. Nopony should have, and nobody should have to see it again.. But we both know that it will, it will happen again. We have no idea where he’s gone to now.”

I put a hoof over my face.
“This can’t be happening.. I’ve got to go. I have to find him.”

I looked down at the cords hooked up to my left arm, and carefully took them out myself.

“Cross, you can’t! You’re still too weak–”

She could have said a million different things to me just then, and it still wouldn’t have mattered, because I was already pushing myself out of the bed.

“Cross, you’re gonna get yourself hurt.” Twilight said, as she made her way around the hospital bed.

“I don’t really care, I have to–” My legs felt as though they couldn’t support me, and I slipped. Luckily Twilight was there in time to catch me.

I yelped, and for a moment was panting.

“T- Twilight, I’m begging you.. Please, get me out of here.”

“Cross, I can’t. You need to heal!”

She helped me onto my hooves, and forced me back into the hospital bed.

“I can’t let you go out there and kill yourself, Cross. Rose needs you.”

I clutched my side and looked up at her weakly. “And what about all those ponies out there, who Dwight could just massacre like he did here– we were lucky to get to that colt when we did, Twilight.”

She sighs and holds one of my hooves in her own. “One thing at a time. Nopony could save anypony in the condition that you’re in. There’s being a hero, and there’s being a fool.”

I smiled a little at her.

“Haven’t you learned yet, Twi? I’m foolish, foolish for being a hero. But I’ll take it over being a murderer any day of the year.”

It was the middle of the night, Twilight had me convinced about not being an idiot, and we were both asleep in my hospital room.

That is, until a loud ruckus came from down the hall. Quite a few sets of hooves were resonating down the otherwise silent hallway.

“What is–”

Twilight, wide-eyed and pale, jolts up to her hooves “It’s coming from the colt’s end of the hallway!”

Before I could stop her, she was gone.

I was left there alone for about six hours, and it seemed like almost all of the staff was busy with other patients.

When Twilight came back into the room, she was exhausted and sat down with a slump.

“The colt had a slow bleed internally, they were lucky to have caught it when they did. He just got out of surgery.. I refused to leave his side.”

“My god, Twilight, are you alright? I know that wasn’t easy...”

She nodded tiredly, with her eyes already closed. “It wasn’t, but he’s okay..”

“I’m glad.. For the sake of both of you. I think you both need each other now, fate has put him in your hooves and you’ve taken him in with a warm embrace. If you want to go spend the night with him, don’t let me keep you. Just go ahead, you don’t need to say another word.”

She sat up again slowly and gave me a long, gentle hug. “Thank you, Cross. I’ll come back to see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, sure thing princess. Take your time, and get some sleep.”

Twilight woke me up the next morning so that I could eat breakfast.

I hadn’t had anything to eat but typical hospital food up until now, and believe me when I say that I was thankful for her kind gesture. Eggs, toast, juice (I could have used a shot of alcohol but I didn’t complain), and a biscuit. It doesn’t sound like anything special, but it was the best damned breakfast I’d eaten in quite a long time.

“Yeah, I figured you’d appreciate that,” Twilight remarked with a laugh.

“Appreciate it?” I wiped my mouth, “Twilight, I was dying from all of that horrid oatmeal. You’ve practically saved my life twice now!”

She rolled her eyes, and followed my gaze that had wandered to the doorway.

Celestia let out a sigh at the sight of me wounded and hooked up with wires. “I’m still sorry about the accident, hunter.”

I shrugged slightly, “I’ll be alright, Princess. I’m just grateful you came to my aid.”

“You kept Twilight safe, it is I who should be grateful for you. Even if we have temporarily lost our lead.” She offered a small smile to me, and handed a stack of papers over to Twilight.

“Is this-” Twilight paused and skimmed over the first page.

“Indeed, I went ahead and got all of it together for you.” Celestia tried not to let any tears of happiness well up, but despite her efforts, one little tear streaked down her cheek.

Twilight set the papers aside for a moment to hug her mentor. It was one of those heart felt, one-on-one moments that didn’t require any further discussion.

After the long hug was broken, Twilight sat down and retrieved a quill from her saddlebag to fill out adoption paperwork.

“How are you healing up?” Celestia asked, wiping her eyes of tears with a hoof.

“Far slower than I wanted, but according to the nurse I should be good to leave within a day or two. I just have to get my strength back and prove that I can get around.”

Celestia nods, “I’m glad to know that you are doing better now. We were all pretty worried about the depth of that wound.”

“Yeah, I was too. I’ve never come face-to-face with a griffin before, and after that, I don’t think I ever want to again.”

The princess sighed. “You just happened to meet the wrong one, it seems. I assure you that you’ll meet another one day, who will change your mind.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you again for coming to save me, princess.”

“You’d do the same for me.” She winked, and trotted over to give Twilight one more hug.

“I’ve never been more proud of you, than I am today. I’ll write you in a week, to make sure Spike doesn’t get to read my letter before you do.”

Twilight giggled and agreed that that would probably best.

The next few days after that were annoying. I had to stay two days longer than expected because I pulled my stitches in my sleep, and it had hurt like a bitch. But we were finally on the train, and I had nothing to worry about other than my injured side.

Twilight sat across from me with the colt at her side, letting him have the window view. He was pretty smart for his age, considering he wasn't old enough to attend school, but was already learning to write; though according to Twilight he can't read, and although he can speak, he chooses not to. The train ride felt like it went by faster leaving the empire than it did coming to it.. Probably because things weren't awkward with Twilight anymore. Actually, we were practically family now.

The colt didn't give us any trouble. Throughout the train ride he kept to himself, watching the scenery with wonder, taking naps against Twilight, and snacking on train cart food.

By the time we had arrived at Ponyville, the spell had worn off and my eyes were back their natural teal color. Twilight helped me off the train so that I didn't fall off the steps, and then we went our separate ways.

With a slow and easy trot, I made my way all the way to my house without going through the orchard– since the orchard was uphill to the house, I was making it easier on my side to go around.

A pile of mail was left on the porch, but I barely paid it any attention. My focus was solely on the front door of the house, standing wide open.

"Rose..? Rose, are you here?" I called out upon entering the house, and was initially about to go upstairs to see if she was sleeping– until something caught my attention. Out of the corner of my right eye, I saw something on the dining room table.

It looked like a piece of paper with a feather laid across it, so I went over to investigate. As I grew closer though, I realized that the damned thing was massive! I determined that if it had come from a pegasus, the pony would have had to have been almost twice as large as Rose's brother.

Not expecting to get much else out of the feather, other than guesses, I moved it aside.

Written in large and bold calligraphy were two words that sent chills down my spine.

Find me.

Author's Note

Not the final chapter, just the last in the Empire. Life has me a little busy at the moment so the next chapter could possibly be a little delayed. If you're reading this from the future though, you don't have to worry about that. Carry on over to the next chapter, if you wish!