When Legends Rise

We left Autumn’s home not long after, Tarn had made use of the time we were staying there to tinker with the spares I had obtained, hell, I even got to get my hands dirty helping out, which expanded my knowledge of steam engines from purely theoretical to practical experience. I was even able to make use of a workshop that was located in the town to make a new screw wound reverser which was much more precise than the lever-type reverser it had already been using.

As a way of thanks for ridding the town of the dragon, some local armour smiths had repurposed some of the smaller dragon scales to make me a shield, apparently dragon skin had some inherent magic which made it stronger than the strongest steel. They even had some unicorns enchant it to change its colour to match my own armour. Admittedly I had been dubious about just how durable dragon scales were until Alee had proceeded to unleash a volley of blows on in with her swords...point proven.

Cut to a week later and we were now well inside the realm of Yarvik and well our way to the region’s capital, Tee’s Side, looming mountains and deep canyon rivers had given way to rolling hills and dales which, much like the region's name, brought to mind whispers of memories of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire back home, indeed like the aforementioned counties the folks here spoke in distinctive thick accents, greatly influenced by centuries of on-off skirmishes with nordic-like griffon raiders from the eastern continent. I thought I had a good grasp on a Yorkshire dialect, whoo-boy was I wrong. I’d had to rely on Autumn to translate, much to my own aggravation.

I was also surprised at just how big the ponies here were...well I say ponies, they were absolutely in the realm of horses, though they still had cutie marks funnily enough, some of them made Celestia look short in comparison, and they were built like brick shithouses to boot, which wasn’t all that surprising when you consider that the staple trade of this area was mining, mining and more mining, also steelworking.

I also very quickly learned why the tykes had a reputation for being...rude...

By god were they crass as all hell, the way some of them went on you can forget making a prostitute blush, they could make a pornstar faint with embarrassment, although I did have a little number up my sleeve which I was secretly have Tarn teach me to play which would hopefully one up them

On the subject of my training meanwhile, no sooner had we left Autumn’s birth-home than Alee had began sparring with me, making use of the wide and open front of the boat to make a perfect spot to teaching me the basics. One thing that soon became apparent was that Alee was much better suited as a general teacher for fighting with a blade, pirate she may be, but one thing she had picked up as a pirate was a tome on sword fighting, which covered all the different styles. So, although Autumn was an accomplished combatant, even by Alee’s reckoning, she was too rigid in her form, those little hoof mounted switch blades she wielded, she only knew how to ward off different styles, not how to adapt her own techniques for it to translate across to training someone in those styles.

Alee’s use of magic also allowed her to adapt her own style to better train me through the basis, she could wield her sword higher than she would if fighting her own kind so as to give me a more preferable stance, rather than constantly having to swing down on my strikes Alee could shake it up, coming at me from an angle that most humans would struggle to achieve.

“It’s to get yew familiar with different races of opponent” she had told me, and true enough the races I would potentially be fighting were varied indeed. Sythians, minotaurs, drakes, all races I would potentially fight who had a similar stature to my own, though they each had very different styles. And then there were other less orthodox methods, Nagas; snake like cousin’s of the dragon, who had no legs but four arms which were structured more like the tail of a snake, were notorious for unleashing an ungodly whirlwind of blades, teeth, and scales, she had launched me off clear off the boat and well onto the river bank when she’d shaped her own magic aura into a representation of one of those demons and made me spar with it.

Which brings me to now.

“Block high!”

Our blades met with the spitting of sparks as they locked, we had been sparring for the better part of an entire morning whilst Octavia and Vinyl had trotted ahead to scout out Tee’s Side to gauge what it would be like and whether there would be any potential issues.

I felt the pressure against my blade increase, bringing my mind back to the present, and Alee smirked.

“Come on, monkey boy, focus!” she said, I pulled my blade back and swung it back around from underneath, only for her to bring her own sword down to block me, though she seemed genuinely impressed “Good...so yew can learn...well, come on them. What’s yer next move, and fer gods’ sakes don’t pull yer attacks, ah’m not going to shatter to moment yew touch meh” feeling particularly bold I struck out with my left leg, aiming to clock her in the neck with my shin, though before I could even realise what I was doing I instinctively hesitated, not wanting to wish her harm.

Alee snorted as she ducked, grabbed my outstretched leg and used it to tip me off balance, sending me sprawling on my back. Before I had a chance to get back up the tip of her sword was pressed against her neck.

“And that’s yer head” she said, looking less than pleased “Yew need to stop holding back, I know yer mindful of how yew apply yer strength, but I’m not weak by anyone’s standards, yew needent worry about hurting mey, and if yew do, ah can still walk it off” She then pulled the blade back, flipped it around and rammed the hilt into my forhead, stunning me. “there’s some motivation for you!” Autumn, who had been half watching from a perch on the roof of the Defiance’s cabin up until this point, suddenly perked up and shouted out

“Hey, what the bloody hell are you doing!?” she asked, the shark-like kelpie ignored her.

“From now on every time yew hesitate, it’ll be a bruise somewhere on yer body” Alee said, before holding out a hoof, which I begrudgingly accepted.

“Were you trying to bruise me or give me a bloody concussion?” I asked, rubbing my forehead in the spot where she’d hit me as she heaved me up, when I pulled my hand away I discovered that she’d actually broke the skin, creating a small cut which bled slightly.

“Walk it off, yew mewling quim, you’ll be facing far worse on the road to Germaney” she said, before striking me in the backside with the flat of her blade, making me stumble forwards with a yelp “now gow on, we’ve been sparring all mornin, have yerself a breather”

“Wait, what do you mean worse?” I asked, walking over to a bench placed to one side of the cabin door and sitting down, continuing to hold a hand to my forehead.

“Oh, that’s easy” Autumn said, jumping down from the roof of the cabin, a ghost of a smirk on her face “The fauna between here and Heimut aren’t the nicest. There’s sabre toothed cats, short faced bears…”

“Hydras, wyverns” cut in Alee “chimeras, feral equines”

“Feral Equines?” I asked.

“Oh yeah” the kelpie said, nodding enthusiastically, before looking off to one side with a cheeky smirk and tapping her chin with a clawed hoof in the manner one does when pretending to be thinking back about something “supposedly the descendents of the cursed bastard of spring of ponies and dragons. Round about yer hight, they have great big scales running along their back and chest, they also have nasty hooves which split into three claws...oh, and they may or may not breath fire” I deadpanned.

“If you’re trying to scare me, it isn’t working” I said, conjuring a ball of fire in the palm of my hand “fire is my element” Alee’s expression dropped to a sulk.

“Daineann dia duit, moncaí!” she spat “Yer no fun”

“Ní bheidh sé a thuiscint tú, ach is féidir liom!” A female voice called from the back of the boat, and it took me a moment to realise it was Tarn, for one her usually soft voice was gone and replaced with a harsh tone “Gheobhaidh tú cúnamh an asal an chéad uair eile!” Alee recoiled in surprise as if struck, before her head dropped, a dark smile coming over her as one of her eyes twitched in annoyance.

“Damn river folk, I forgot kobalds tend to get around” she muttered, before walking to the side of the boat “ah’m off fer a swim, ah need to clear mah head” and with that she leapt into the river, producing a small splash as she began swimming upstream.

“I tell you” I said to Autumn, watching her wake disappear around a bend in the river “That mare is hard to read, one minute she’s as serious as a priest at a funeral...the next she’s cracking jokes, I swear she’s giving me tonal whiplash” Autumn frowned, as she walked over, reared up using the bench for support, and moved my hand out of the way with a hoof, examining the cut on my forehead.

“I don’t fully trust her, she sets me on edge” she said, before catching my raised eyebrow and adding “not because she eats meat, you twit, I’m not specist like that”

“Could have fooled me the way you go on about me being a “predator species”, whatever the fuck that means” I said, before hissing as she tentatively touched the cut with a hoof.

“With you it’s different, and there’s a whole lot of other folks out there who are worse than me. If I were being prejudice I’d be doing a whole lot worse, and I certainly wouldn’t be paying what she just did any heed” she shot back, before lightly hitting me in the arm and dropping down “you’re fine by the way, quit making a fuss”

“I wonder” I muttered, fishing out a book from my shoulder bag which had been lying on the bench. It was a book on magic, specifically verbal griffin magics, I’ll admit my first thought when I flicked through was “great, real life dovah” alas no, I would not be running around shouting Fus Roh Dah towards my enemies, about the only similarity was that it could be shouted, though that wasn’t a prerequisite either. Could be said in any manner the caster required. This system used what I could only guess was ancient norse, and its structure system often had a leading word which specified the mature of the spell, with all words which followed specifying the specific spell.

“Try not to blow up the boat this time” Autumn said, noticing me flicking through the spell book and cautiously backing away.

“It’d be a hell of a fucking trick to blow this ship up using a healing spell” I muttered, before finally finding the spell I was looking for, just a simple healing spell “Hu...Huggan Skathi?” as I cast the spell I waved my hand over my forehead, directing the magic to the afflicted area. Almost immediately I felt a cooling sensation, and the pain receded, when I hesitantly prodded where the cut used to be I found it had healed perfectly.

“Great, you didn’t botch it” Autumn said, taking flight and landing on the roof of the boat’s cabin before settling into a laid down position “At this rate you might be able to cast a stable levitation spell. Just do me a favour and practice levitating when I’m not around”

“Watch it, Autumn” I said, looking up at her “Keep talking like that and I might just start learning weather magic to call down a lightning bolt on you” Autumn let out an audible, sarcastic laugh at that.

“Ha, you do realise you’re talking to a species that can manipulate the weather, right?” she asked, at which point my mind decided to perform a mental reboot as yet another ridiculous and fantastical aspect of this world became known to me.

“Uuuuuh…” I said, intelligently “What?” all things considered Autumn’s response was perfectly reasonable for the situation of encountering someone who up until this point had been silently oblivious to a fact considered common knowledge…

She proceeded to faceplant the roof of the cabin...hard. She then slowly extricated her face, when seemed to stretch to a cartoonish degree, from the roof

“Please tell me you aren’t that fucking dense” she said, practically seething.

“I come from a world where my kind is the only intelligent species, remember?” I asked “there’s no magic, no flying, no...whatever cantrip all the other races tend to have. So you could do with cutting me some slack in this regard”

“Fat chance of that, you’ve had every chance to notice the weather patrols doing their work up until now” she retorted, before muttering, punctuated by an eyeroll “Next you’re going to tell me the sun moves by itself”

I stared at Autumn owlishly, before responding, eyes narrowed

“The sun doesn’t move, the earth orbits the sun” the resulting eye twitch Autumn began to suffer from told me everything I needed to know, and I proceeded to jump up, turn around to face her and throw my arms up in the air dramatically “Oh fuck it, I give up on this fucking planet”

“That’s a tad excessive” Autumn said, regarding me with a sideways glance.

“Nope, fuck this backwards ass planet, fuck your senseless logic, fuck your magic, fuck your flying” I said, before levelling a finger at her “Fuck you, and most importantly fuck Fantasia for dragging me across dimensions to this world that makes no sense” it was right as I mentioned Fantasia that Autumn proceeded to go several shades paler and begin staring off to one side. I felt a pit of dread rising in my stomach as my shoulders sagged and I cautiously turned to find the aforementioned god stood off to one side watching me with what could best be described as a shit eating grin.

“I’m flattered, but there is a time and a place” she said smugly.

“Of course you’d choose that moment to be listening in” I said, sitting back down on the bench “that aside, it’s about time you showed up again. Though is there any particular reason why?”

“Can’t an immortal simply descend from upon high to visit her chosen warriors with no real reason?” she asked, a mischievous grin lighting up her face.

“Yeah...last time you showed up you made him a bloody warlock” Autumn cut in “so even I’m put on edge by your sudden appearance”

“If you must know” she said, ruffling her wings “I came to hopefully provide some insight into the additions to your little group”

“They won’t be the only ones, will they?” I asked, guessing where she was going, at which she nodded, for a split second I could have sworn she looked...sheepish, apologetic?

“You would be correct” she said “I cannot restore an ancient order of guardians with four rag tag individuals. In their hayday there used to be some 50 active, but I think for our immediate purposes...12 will suffice, in two teams of 6. Autumn, you already have Octavia and Vinyl to your team, and Onælan you have Alee and Tarn”

“When will Tarn and Alee gain their powers?” I asked “and for that matter what will their powers be?” at this she giggled and...petted me on the forehead with a wing...talk about emasculating.

“Now now, focus not on the end goal, it’s the journey that matters” she said “but soon, very soon, Tarn is showing promise, but Alee has yet to prove herself, I gave you four powers from the start as a nudge, but those in turn who join your company will each have the chance to prove themselves and be rewarded for their efforts.” she then looked at me specifically “as for you, keep striving to protect those around you as you have done twice so far and I might just reward you for your efforts with some of your old memories”

“Are you going to give my name back to me?” I asked, at which she raised an eyebrow.

“Do not be so presumptuous” she said.“if you must know I have a very specific reason for keeping your name”

“And that would be?” I asked , raising an eyebrow.

“When it comes to old magic, words have power, names have power” she explained. “For someone as unique as you I could not risk it”

“Of course” Autumn said, her voice oozing with realisation “Zebra magics, they can kill somepony simply by weaving their name into the right rhyme. But if that’s the case…”

“Why didn’t you do the same with everyone else?” I asked.

“Everyone else has families, and in some cases rather significant ties as a result” Fantasia said, before focussing on me “you do not. To go sifting through every single record of Octavia to erase her name from existence...that is something that is beyond even my power” her form then began to shimmer, signalling that she would be leaving once more “Oh, before I go, one more thing…”

“Yes?” I asked, raising an eyebrow

“I know about you and Octavia, and Tarn” she said, levelling a deadpan look at me that told me she was less than impressed “do try not to reproduce whilst you’re travelling, having to raise a child whilst protecting the world is no fun for anyone” and with that she disappeared, leaving me flustered, not to mention bewildered.

“Cockblocked by a god” I muttered, pulling a canteen of water out of my shoulder bag and taking a gulp from it “That’s certainly a first…”

We continued to make due progress towards the realm’s capital, we even caught up with Octavia and Vinyl, who were in the process of galloping back to find us.

“Alee swam off in a huff a few hours back” I explained when Vinyl asked about her absence “You didn’t happen to see her, did you?” Octavia shook her head

“No” she said “though she might well have seen us and swam along the bottom of the river so as not to attract our attention”

“Great” I muttered “The last thing we need is a kelpie gone-” I was cut off as the water to the left of the boat exploded and a form shot skyward. The thudding of hooves on woodwork announced Alees sudden arrival as she landed, panting, with a rather large fish in her mouth, she spat it out and looked up at me, a soft frown on her face

“Ah brought meat for the two of us, Onælan” she said, before adding “Tarn tew if she’s in the mood” and with that she picked the fish up with her magic and began carrying it into the cabin of the boat.

“Alee, wait-” I began, but she snapped her head around to look at me.

“What?” she barked “Did yew think ah was just gonna swim off and leave the lot of yews after a simple scrat?” I was taken aback by her outburst.

“Uhh...No” Was all I said “Actually I was just going to thank you for the fish…” almost immediatly Alee’s face flashed through a range of emotions, before she settled upon a scowl and scoffed.

“Whatever” she muttered, before turning around and walking inside the cabin “Ahm gunna go gut a fish…” and she left me feeling, for lack of a better word...wounded.

That evening we docked in Tees Side, as we walked our ways through the dockside I found my head was perpetually on a swivel, no matter where you looked I could see all kinds of races working on and around many a great ship, both river and ocean going, all of them hard at work shifting crates of fish, unloading minerals like coal and ore with great dragline buckets, and all the while the workers sang various songs and shanties to keep them moving to a beat. For someone like me who was intrigued by industry it was fascinating, I had stopped for a moment to watch some griffins unloading an ore boat when I heard Autumn calling my name.

“Come on, Onælan!” she called, the rest of the group were now some distance away “Or should I start calling you ore-head from now on?”

“Says the Wrakjon of Iron!” I retorted jogging to catch “speaking of which, I haven’t seen much of your powers, or any of yours” I looked at Autumn, Octavia, and Vinyl in turn as we spoke. The latter was the first to respond.

“I’ve got sound powers alright, just haven’t had much chance to make use of them”

“Remember, dear, Iron or gravity isn’t as direct as fire” Octavia said “give us time to figure our own powers out”

“All you have to do is point and shoot, Guardian of ash, it’s not that simple for me” Autumn snarked, before looking at the ground under her and lifting her hooves one by one, a look of perplexion on her face “All I’ve got is a sense of things beneath the ground...I think I can sense ore seams running through the earth...”

“Well, next time way wanna forge ourselves a wicked blade, way’ll let yew know” Alee said, rolling her eyes. “Though it makes may wonder if ah’ll end up with powers. Will ah be able to swim through the skies apon currents of air? Or perhaps bend the very mountains to mah will?” at this she pulled a pose, lifting a foreleg and flexing her bicep.

‘Oh you have no idea…’ I thought, though I doubted it would be something so ill-fitting of her biology as air or stone. The banterous tone we shared quickly faded about 10 minutes later when we entered the town proper and were presented with a scene of total chaos.

Store fronts and homes stood burning and raided, with many sizable holes in each building from where something had elected to barge through the walls instead of using the door.

“Weapons?” I asked, looking at Autumn as I readied my shield.

“Weapons” she nodded, a wave of energy rolling along her body and her own armour appeared as I drew my sword and summoned my mask, Vinyl and Octavia quickly followed her lead, whilst Alee levitated her double blades to bare and Tarn unshiefed her dagger, and with that we began running towards the sound of a commotion.

“You know” I said as we ran through the streets “just once I would like us to visit somewhere without having to deal with God knows what terrorising the locals”

“Fantasia’s watching us and laughing, I’m sure of it” Autumn said, letting out a mirthless laugh as we rounded a corner and came face to face with just one of the many creatures which were laying waste to this city.